Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Day The Violence Died With Matthew Jay

Episode Date: May 23, 2018

Cartoons101's own Matthew Jay joins us this week as we go waaaay in-depth into animation history for this cartoon loving episode of The Simpsons. We chat about Ub Iwerks, Schoolhouse Rock, Kirk Douglas' long life, one of the show's most meta moments ever, and so much more. So pull up a big plate of liver and onions, buckle up in your rocket car, and listen to us liberal freaks go too far! This podcast is brought to you by VRV, the streaming network full of cartoons, anime and more. sign up for a free 30-day trial at VRV.co/WAC and help support Talking Simpsons! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

Attention Talking Simpsons listeners, would you love to hear us give the same treatment to Futurama? Who would do a thing like that? Who could do a thing like that? Then you'll be delighted to know we're doing just that for Futurama's entire first season. Hey, when you look this good, you don't have to know anything. And it'll only be available for people who donate at the $5 level to the Talking Simpsons Patreon. Oh god, no! And along with 13 episodes of Talking Futurama, you'll get all 23 episodes of Talking Critic,

the entire first season of Talking Simpsons, monthly community podcasts, interviews with Simpsons writers, and so much more! Shut up and take my money! Remember, go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons to get your hands on podcasts from the world of tomorrow! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we make Ted Kennedy pay.

I'm your host, electricity engineer Bob Mackie, and this is a chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with us today? Henry Gilbert in are you the creator of high and lows because you are making me laugh and who else talking Simpsons ethnographer Matthew J Oh, wow. Today's episode is the day the violence died Which one did you the car? Today's episode aired on March 17th, 1996, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real-world history. Oh, my God!

Oh, boy, Bobby. Sri Lanka beats Australia in the Cricket World Cup, Kirby Superstar hits the Super NES, and Disney unveils plans to renovate Tomorrowland in 1998. No! What would it turn into? I'm confused. It would get shitty and brown and blue,

and it looks gross. I mean, but what is it now? It's the same. It's still Tomorrowland? They changed the colors, and they updated some attractions. Yeah, now it's just Star Wars. They've changed a lot of it back,

but Disney Parks fans don't like this generally because they made it really ugly and dumb looking. I mean, the last time I was at Disney was in 2010, and i don't think i went to tomorrowland then so what i don't think i saw it tomorrowland right there i i just didn't i don't know what you're going space mountain i might have i don't know it's been a long time tomorrowland's a bit of a joke in that it was obviously if you're going to imagine the future in 1955 that future will change all the time like could we go to the moon where questions asked at original tomorrowland yeah they should lean into that more and make it more retrofuturism that's

that's the cool part of it now but uh what about the extra terrestrial yeah which is now gone in disneyland they uh they finally updated the pizza restaurant to pizza planet so now instead of pizza port which the thing people accidentally call it all the time, Pizza Planet, it now actually is. From Toy Story, right? Yeah, so now there's a new thing in Tomorrowland. It was about time they did that in Tomorrowland. I was just at Disneyland, my first ever Disneyland trip.

It is as magical as they say. When I was there, I was like, now I understand how freaks like Matt Jake love the theme park so much. What about Kirby Superstar? I love Kirby Superstar. A 1996 Super Nintendo release. The PlayStation had been out for a few years at this point,

but Kirby games are typically the last first-party games released on Nintendo systems, which means the Switch is dead. Yeah, the NES did that. The 3DS did that. The DS did that. Game Boy, Game Boy Advance. Wii and even Wii U,

but the Wii U was dead on arrival. And the N64, too. Kirby 64 was one of the last N64 games. The Kirby Super Star Ultra, well, that was the re-release on the DS, but Kirby Super Star, to me, is the best Kirby game because it let Masahiro Sakurai, the director of it, do what he always really wanted, which was make seven minigames that are pretty full for minigames

instead of trying to make up an entire Kirby game. I mean, I think two are just minigames, but then there's five Kirby-ish games in there or something like that. But they're like two-hour digestible experiences. It was the orange box before the orange box happened. It's a very pretty game, too. I mean, if you're going to make a Super Nintendo game in 1996, you've got to bring it, and they definitely brought it great music everything kirby's dreamland 3 might

have been after this i'm not even sure yeah i think it was a 97 game like we're in 96 that was a 97 game and i think kirby's dream course was also after this too i mean the super nes uh as bob famously said about old nintendo systems well the reason you keep putting games out on them is that millions of people own them. So that's why Super NES still kept getting stuff. But it was just that in this case, unusual, Nintendo as a publisher was not going to have

their internal teams working on that. They're working on the new Mario for the new system. So they get help to do it who are second-ish party. They're basically first party. In case you're wondering, Dream Chorus is 95, Superstar is 96,

and Dreamland 3, 97. That is a... Like Harvest Moon and Kirby, Dreamland 3 are like the last Super Nintendo games in America, pretty much. All right, well, we have a new guest here,

so Match A, other listeners of our other podcast might know you, but this is your Talking Simpsons debut. Why are you on here? What's your expertise? I've been a fan of the simpsons since before i can remember i don't think there's a time in my life i mean i was born 1989 just like the television show young people on this show a lot of my first memories involve the simpsons the first time i said the word damn at least the first

time i said in front of my mom which i think was the first time i ever said it was i said what time is the simpsons on and she said it already came on and mom, which I think was the first time I ever said it, was I said, what time is The Simpsons on? And she said, it already came on. And I went, damn. And then all the adults in the room laughed. But I learned that word from The Simpsons. All the important parts of my life of me becoming a new kind of nerd are very much tied in with The Simpsons. Like, it taught me how to be a movie nerd, especially when The Critic happened as well. When the DVDs came out, that was a huge moment in my life because, know i'd never seen season one probably except for a couple reruns they didn't get reran much and i bought those dvds and it's the first time i just like watched an entire season of a show just again and again and watched the commentaries

and absorbed it all and then i continued to be that kind of nerd throughout my life yeah i mean for me the commentaries uh we can't talk about them enough on this show like buy all the dvds listen to all the commentaries because they're very important to me at a young age because it not only informed me like how good joke writing works and how to refine a joke, but also like here's how TV production works and here's how TV writing works. And here's what working with a network is like all these things that you really don't learn unless you're in the business are all in those commentaries. You hear stuff about the writer's room or how much it costs to license a song or all these great little insider stuff you would know that Simpsons was way ahead of the curve on the DVD stuff with that too.

Yeah, it was the precursor to my obsession with podcasts. Just listening. I would just put them on and not watch the show. Just listen to them. I ripped them to CDs and would listen to them in the car.

So really cool. Really cool guy. What's the story? You picked up a girl and had the Fight Club commentary? No, it was the Back to the Future 3 commentary. And I was made fun of mercilessly for that. It's like, now I'm a podcasting superstar.

And she's doing fine. She's doing fine. We're still friendly. But also, Matt, you run your own animation Patreon, which is why this is a perfect episode for you. Yes, I am a big fan of the history of animation. I make the show Cartoons 101 on YouTube, which has its own Patreon, patreon.com.com.com.com.

Where I do a podcast about old cartoons and talk to the people who made them, like Bill Oakley, who is a writer on this show at this time and is on the commentary. Now we're in direct competition with Matthew. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. I'm the underdog. You're the fat cats now.

You guys are over 10 grand. Damn it, you'm the underdog. You're the fat cats now. You guys are over 10 grand. Damn it, you're right. Yeah. We're the big dogs here. And you're referencing that because this episode heavily references the history of animation. It does.

And I think it's a bit responsible for some of the misconceptions about the real story that this episode is based on. I like how much fun they have with it. And this is really a sequel to the season four episode, Itchy and Scratchy the Movie, which also draws 4 episode Itchy and Scratchy the movie which also

draws back into Itchy and Scratchy history and I feel like Oakley and Weinstein are sort of the showrunners for this season and the next and they're sort of the stewards of Simpsons history so they're really all the things that have happened so far are informing their shows that a lot of showrunners would just ignore or ignore as a joke

to make fun of the idea of continuity. And we get references back to like we see uh disgruntled goats yeah we don't see ku klux klan yes i think he was only a limited edition item at that uh itching scratchy land yeah which is a reference yeah reference to that episode itching scratchy land so they bring a lot of that stuff back uh including a joke that we'll get to that is a reference to one of my favorite periods of animation? And then some of the dates actually fit. Like they replay the footage of Steamboat Itchy on the show as well. They say the dates in there, though technically that does not add up to 75 years.

If they say that Steamboat Itchy first appeared in 1928, which is what they say in the, this episode, then how is it their 75th anniversary? Unless they mean the studio of russ meyers which was established in 1921 i think the studio is the date because that's what's on the placard on the gate of the studio so perhaps they were toiling in obscurity for seven years before they finished a real cartoon and and i love another cartoons like playing crazy yeah yeah yeah i i love this one as a kid

too because even when i was 14 when this episode aired I really liked I was already super into animation history I guess I had felt by watching Roger Rabbit and then some television specials around the same time I was like I know everything about animation yeah I mean I wanted to be an animator for maybe six or seven years of my life and I was buying animation magazines at like Barnes and Noble and doing everything I could to learn about it. So this was like crack cocaine for me this episode. I went to school for it. Bad decisions. I knew I didn't have the raw talent, so writing for me.

Neither did I. Well, in The Simpsons, they often get at their most meta with Itchy and Scratchy. I mean, the peak of that will be in the Poochie Show next season. But this is close to it. This is a super meta episode that's very inside about animation production, joking about animators, joking about animation fans. Every animated show, because it's so time consuming

and because it takes so much of your life and your being to make because of the amount of work required and how we can't hire enough people to do it because it costs so much every animated show eventually has a show about making cartoons because that's all they can draw on at that point well we've already made every joke about having a baby i have six kids and i gotta feed them i've done every airplane joke i've done every joke about anything that happened to me in my childhood every joke about having an agent the only thing left in my life is that i i work on a cartoon and i feel like this era especially like the 80s and the 90s as a kid i remember like it being a big deal like oh it's

mickey mouse's 60th birthday it's bugs bunnies this birthday like daffy duck turned 80 last year no one gave a shit yeah it's an inundation of anniversaries that's how it was uh for comic books too when i super got into spider-man comics and superhero comics in general part of it was uh for comic books too when i super got into spider-man comics and superhero comics in general part of it was the hard push from marvel like it's 30 years of spider-man spider-man's 30th anniversary 30 30 30 and then when that anniversary is over the very next year they're like 30 years x-men the x-men have turned 30 30 years x-men like god damn action comics just had issue a thousand yeah and fucking nothing like there was one day of like people tweeting about X-Men, the X-Men have turned 30. 30 years X-Men. I'm like, God damn. Action Comics just had issue 1,000, right? Yeah.

And fucking nothing. Like, there was one day of, like, people tweeting about it, but, like, there should be people, like, marching in the streets. Like, Action Comics had 1,000 issues. How crazy is that? Well, as a mega comic dork, I was disappointed by 1,000 issues of the action, only because they had resisted renumbering up to, like, 920. But they're like, nah we got to relaunch with

the number one and so it made the thousand feel cheapened to me and then i also i paid the fucking eight bucks to read issue 1000 a lot of bad stuff in there that's just like this is lame anniversary shit for nobody but mega fans and i don't even like it well speaking of anniversaries uh i'm i've always been a big fan of lap desks everybody get one they're great but my first one and this is something i said earlier on the podcast my first one had a picture of mickey mouse and it was the the 60th birthday and it was gross caucasian skin mickey mouse in a tuxedo i hate that mickey mouse is he still the official mickey mouse no like the like the he's like a white man well it's sort of it there's they're right now kind of two official

mickey mouses or mickey mice uh one of them is the shitty cg one that everyone kind of hates but it's on a kid show that's very popular yeah the other one is the paul rudish fucking awesome one his skin is like just the color white yeah not like a white guy skin white and when you go to the parks now it a couple years ago it was like you'd see a lot of the cg now it's almost all the 2d one including is getting a ride like the ride really wow it's replacing uh the great movie ride it's getting mickey and minnie's like train madness or whatever it's called it looks awesome yeah i was just there on shirts and stuff it's kind of a mix of mickey though i also i love the intentionally

retro ones that are drawn of like yeah you know 1930 mickey there's a lot of the like 1930 mickey next to 1940 mickey next like you see a lot of like the evolution of mouse or if you see the classic musketeer hat they still sell there it looks like the 50s ish mickey who is dumb looking i have that oswald hat as well and oswald will play big into this oh yeah yeah and wes archer uh directed this episode fantastic i i can't get over how great these 1930s, 1920s characters look. I want to see the dinner dog cartoon. Dinner dog. Wes Archer and his team on the animation,

this episode needed great animation to match the story they were telling, and they were there for it all the way. I think this is Wes Archer's last episode before going to King of the Hill. Perhaps. I believe so. One of the last. and he had been there from the beginning which really pays off in even simpsons referencing themselves in animation history in this episode and wes archer is one of the underrated stars of it in our interview with david silverman he talked up the importance of wes archer as well in the original shorts he does one more and that's homer palooza that's his last episode all right a well in the original shorts. He does one more, and that's Homer Palooza. That's his last episode.

All right. A reach in the end, though. So I guess the episode begins with a quick itchy and scratchy cartoon. I really want those hats with the ax on them. Me too. Why don't they sell those at Simpsons Land or whatever? I know. Universal, they really should.

I do have an itchy hat. I do too. I'll have a scratchy hat. Okay. I have the itchy one, the big. Is it the big plush one that you can't actually wear in the park because it's 90 degrees? Yeah.

And it's crush. Well, it crushes my head. My head is too big for most hats. Mine, I think it fits fine. It's just so heavy. It's so heavy. You don't want that much like fabric. You don't want to stuff the animal, like you've skinned a stuffed animal and then stuck it

on your head like you're Davy Crockett or something. And I like that in this INS short is that scratchy had already died of a lingering illness off camera when the episode begins that's that's pretty great yeah he turns his ghost eyeballs into like ice cubes for his drinks and in today's age the kids don't know what marathoning was then i just i miss the days of like well it's an anniversary or it's a whatever so we're going to show 12 hours of this today. It's what made a Mystery Science Theater marathon really matter because I could marathon MST3K all day long every day if I wanted to,

but when it was just up to the programming masters of cable channels to show it to you. Turkey Day. I mean, Turkey Day was great. I just love when networks are not as precious about their program. It's like, oh, yeah, Beavis and Butthead all day. It's going to be nine oh yeah beavis and butthead all day just it's gonna be nine hours of beavis and butthead go watch it or something titans go it's not all are they really just chubbing that in your face all the time is that the most popular show on the network it is quite popular i think

it's just they produce it so fast that they have a million episodes and can't play it all the time without repeating too much they hide all the good stuff on their app but mine was always uh every like fourth of july and new year's twilight zone on sci-fi channel i would plump down and watch as much of that as i could i think those still happen it is the best version of that now to me is the return of turkey day every year now where you just via a stream get to watch the same mystery science theater episodes with fans because they do what they would do back then which is they have their own little interstitials that i mean once in a while the adam west would host it or something but like they would come out and tell you to buy the poopy tape or they would tell you like about behind the scenes

stuff and now you have you have joel and jonah sitting there on the couch talking about it that's great i love this episode but i think the one kind of thing that falls flat for me is the message about cartoon violence like i feel like that was merkin's thing and he hits it a lot harder and a lot better their attempt is like a little bit weak oakley and weinstein aren't really into it yeah the idea of desensitization from violence merkin was super into that of just saying like it doesn't matter or it is going to happen to kids but who cares yeah oakley and weinstein they like the humanity of these cartoons which is why they went on to make mission hill because they wanted to make a show about like these people don't have a cartoon. Give the 16-year-old to 20-year-olds

to 25-year-olds a cartoon to watch. Yeah, enough of this family shit. But after a long INS marathon, it's time for the news. Tonight, a stowaway bear is terrorizing space shuttle astronauts. But first, a sneak peek at tomorrow's itchy and scratchy parade.

Hello, everybody. I'm here live on Main Street, where dedicated fans are already staking out the best seats for the big anniversary parade. Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad. Bye, kids. On your way back,

pick up a six-pack of beer. Bart, Lisa, it's 11 o'clock at night. Where do you think you're going? Downtown. We gotta get seats for the Itchy and Scratchy Parade. I won't have my children sitting alone on a cold, dangerous street all night.

Home where you go to? Oh, why can't they just take the gun? I love that Kent is not leading with the most interesting story. A bear snuck into a space shuttle. Later he'll get to it, but there's just no time. Gotta talk about the parade.

Gotta talk about the preparations for a parade. How do they not know about this parade? Bart andisa they really should i mean i guess there's no like twitter or anything like that just like oh this the tv told us about a thing now we'll go to it it should have advertised it better i as a kid i got the excited at the idea of attending parades but actually doing it was never fun for me i hate parades parades are just like this pre-TV idea. That was the only time they were actually interesting where you couldn't look into a box and have it show you things. You have to go into the street like, oh look, there's a thing and there's another thing.

And things keep coming by me. But that's like watching a parade on TV. I think it's cool because they show you all the parts, all the important parts. Like, oh, the cast of Spongebob the Musical are doing a song from it or you get to see, I put this on Disney 80ss 90s this thanksgiving uh all the times that marvel had their own floats where all the marvel heroes just

fucking fought each other on them but if you're on the street level it's yeah if you're there and you're just waiting like waiting sometimes it's like a long time in between two floats because the both floats are performing so you're in the middle where there's nothing happening and i don't even like standing for a concert i don't want to stand for a parade and speaking of being a disney parks fan like parades they're cool once you see them but sometimes you're like i need to get to fantasyland and i can't i can't get in between this parade that's happening yeah i did i liked the electric light parade when i got to see it once i'm jealous i never got to see it live uh but it was one of the re it was one of the times they brought it back in like the late 90s

and at world i think it was early 2000s but then recently when i was there i was there for my honeymoon i wanted to watch the romantic fireworks but it was the end of the third day and i was like i'm gonna do this for the sake of this relationship and so we can see these fireworks i am so tired i don't want to stand another second well you got a slam dunk a churro. Life-giving calories. So many churros when I'm there. My girlfriend gets very upset at how many churros I eat. I am almost never without a Diet Coke and a churro in my hand at Disneyland.

I got the special rose gold churro there that had like strawberry sprinkles on it. I'm very hungry, yes. I am too. I had a pumpkin one the last time I was there. It was in December. So they sold the pumpkins. Sorry. We should have had a lunch break in between these podcast recordings. Homer is referring to a gun that they obviously don't own yet because on Cartridge Family

is when he finally owns a gun, right? But discontinuity. Sorry. Sorry, folks. I like that this episode. I don't know if Homer's... He must say doe at least once in this episode. I think he does.

But I like that we get a lot of alternate does where he goes oh why can't they take the gun and then when they wake up and the parade stuff's in their way he goes oh nerds yeah they could have gone doe and it would have been like yeah he said doe but they said something else it caught me off guard and i laughed they held back on doe but also henry for the gun thing i remember with surly joe homer saying marge get my gun and him shooting at the boogeyman or boogeyman in the house oh yeah that's shotgun class a lot of people he's had a gun for a while he really shouldn't homer should not own a gun if anyone should i so when they sit down i love how plain the people are who steal bart and lisa's hello yeah they look like one of them at least has to be an animator or a partner

of an animator they're just so specific young people which we never see on the simpsons like people in their 20s that's true the only the the age bracket that uh oakley put on mission hill because they didn't do it on simpsons and we speak of a bygone era of things this scene is such a bygone era for me of like the days of bootleg tapes. I miss them. Hey! Hey, my friends, baby. How come I've never seen that itchy and scratchy before? Perhaps because you are a prepubescent ignoramus. This is a bootleg copy of Itchy and Scratchy Meet Fritz the Cat.

Because of its frank depiction of sex and narcotic consumption, it is not for infantile intellects such as yours. Now, toodle-oo. Oh. Cool. narcotic consumption is not for infantile intellect such as yours now toodle ooh cool i'll give you 10 bucks for that are you the creator of high and lowest because you are making me laugh that drawing is worth exactly 750 dollars american it's valuable huh oh your powers of deduction are exceptional i simply can't allow you to waste them here when there are so many crimes going unsolved at this very moment. Go, go! For the good of the city, loser.

God, the sarcasm is off the charts there. Bart's reply of loser is a correct one. Yeah, I do. So the sell that the comic book guy has should be like a hundred times more in value. Yeah, it's grossly underpriced. I think he, well, because it's for for a lost cartoon maybe he thinks it's a fake or something could be but like ebay it is free if you had a steamboat willie sell it would be priceless you couldn't even sell it like sotheby's would have to insure it or something like that

uh so this scene squeezes a lot of my nostalgic lands because uh it's a bunch of my childhood things coming together which as you mentioned bootleg dvds it's the cat and tapes yes when i when i was a kid half of every comic convention was bootleg dvd booths like you i would just wander around and look at all these cartoons including like all of the tracy allman simpson shorts which were never officially released like i see whole dvds oh yeah yeah or pilots for shows that you never get to see i owned the justice league pilot on one of those i had the fantastic four movie and always the star wars holiday special yeah star wars i see that everywhere and there were there were so many different kinds because they were taped in different markets so you'd be like oh this is the one that has these commercials

this one has these and also uh being i was raised in comic shops i hung out in comic shops from when i was like nine until like 18 and i was just the kid i was the kid that all the adults would make fun of because i didn't know any stuff they were talking about but also um as a kid i would look i would read books about animation and magazines about animation i'd be like what the hell is fritz the cat these all mentioned fritz the cat and now as i'm older i'm a huge ralph backshee fan i'm a fan of our crumbs work is it possible to be a huge ralph backshee fan i think i'm the only one because ralph backshee i'm slightly roasting you matthew i'm sorry no that's fine and i now i'm the kid at the podcast that all the adults are making fun of actually as the time you listen to this there

either just was or soon will be a video about ralph back she on cartoons 101 because that's what my patrons voted for this month but uh i want to see that like i like him more than his work it's not that he's never done bad things but i feel like he fell off pretty hard a long time ago and never really got back up there well he's the biggest american animation auteur whose career is not tied to a major mega corporation so that's why he kind of felt he had trouble like finding work that wasn't like sell what he considered like selling his soul to disney yeah the company's like cool world supposed to be his big break it didn't work after being in the industry for like 30 years at that point well he at least sexual pre-sexualized

a lot of kids with that. Yeah, I will say, don't ever watch the Ren and Stimpy adult party cartoon. Yeah, absolutely not. If you do, there is a cartoon called Fire Dogs 2 in which the first time they aired it, it wasn't finished. So there are live action wraparounds with Ralph Bakshi on like a sitcom set in black and white. Good God.

But most of the cartoon is autobiographical from John Crickfaluci's point of view in which it's ren and stimpy uh watching uh the ralph baxi stand and take a shit yeah and having to get him toilet paper and stuff like that she was a big hero to john k oh yeah yeah which stinks now thanks ralph but what about fritz the cat because i will say i have seen it and i'm like I'm so glad I didn't exist in the 70s because the 70s look filthy and gross and racist and all of that. It felt like you're supposed to. I felt like I was supposed to see it for animation history.

But any times, I've never watched the whole thing. When I've watched parts of it, I'm like, I just feel gross. I feel like skeezy. I mean, the series it's based on is straight out right here in the bay area in the 1960s in the early 1960s indie comics were really getting started in america as in back then really you had to be a major publisher especially in new york pretty much to publish comic books like not just marvel dc but archie gold key and some other lesser ones but ec comics as well but meanwhile in san francisco in the 60s where they were starting to print posters for the

psychedelic hip clubs man they also figured we could print comic books here and so there was a big expansion of folks doing comic book work that didn't have to go through the man man and could have dirty things like sex and pubes and all this and drugs and one of those guys was our crumb robert crumb who uh he speaking of skeevy i get skeeved out by him he does like giant women he's like to crush him he's like weirdo but it's he's a very broken man yeah i've seen the documentary chrome oh yeah great documentary also uh the documentary comic book confidential uh covers a lot of the underground comics with an x explosion of that of that time it's great it is a great history of comic books from like 1930 to 1986 and it's the only time they can interview some of the

people in that because they'd be fucking dead by 1990 when the comic booms out. The versions of Itchy and Scratchy we see in this fake movie are very well done in terms of that movie style. Like the sketchy little shading lines around Itchy's face. It looks a lot like... Which I also... The thing you're saying about Fritz the Cat being so dirty and gross. Big budget American animated films don't get to be that. So it's still 40 years later unique

and interesting to watch and i i consider i think his career goes up and down a lot but i think yeah i think all of his movies are worth watching especially american pop which for my money if you're talking about animated films not tied to a mega corporation it's probably the only great one like they're all probably better than heavy metal i would think it is better than heavy metal actually sucks heavy metal is not a good movie but it's super cool i i still consider that to be a really cool if you've never seen animated boobs before then you're like whoa boobs like but we watched anime we've seen quite a lot of boobs you get to see where the fifth element got everything yep oh yeah 100 i well so our crumb this comic was a hit and so they sold or he gave

the rights to backsheet to make an animated movie in the 70s which its big selling point was like it's the x-rated animated film you'll never it's never happened before what could give this next is right after uh urban cowboy yeah all that stuff like the the x-rating wasn't uh didn't mean porn it just meant something we can't show in major theaters. And Ralph Bakshi, I think he did a good job with the source material, but R. Crumb hated it so much that he killed Fritz the Cat immediately in his comics. He never did another Fritz cartoon. He gets stabbed with an ice pick by his girlfriend, I think.

But there's a second Fritz the Cat movie, right? But not by either of them. Right, right, right. It's called The's a second Fritz the Cat movie, right? But not by either of them. Right, right, right. It's called The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, and it's not good. One thing I did forget about Ralph Bakshi, by the way, this is a Simpsons podcast, we'll get back to it in a second,

is that he's the guy behind one of the first quote-unquote Nicktoons that was commissioned by Nickelodeon, Christmas in Tattertown. Whoa, yeah. It was like one of the first pieces of original animation that was not like, it wasn't just anime or some Canadian thing or some British thing it was like let's fund some

animation and I think it was supposed to be a series but it never got picked up for a series I mean Ralph Bakshi probably couldn't finish yeah he has a lot of actually first I want to say I said Urban Cowboy met Midnight Cowboy Midnight Cowboy is the X rated best picture winner Ralph Bakshi yes he has a lot of trouble like sticking with a thing and

making it happen his all of his movies happened and they're each a miracle like each of his movies is basically the same story as the thief in the cobbler oh yeah yeah like it's where like he had this passion project that he tried to make and it's based on like 50s nostalgia or like a like a weird thing like a weird idea that animated cartoons films don't get to be about and each one happening is a total miracle except for cool world which was funded by a actual studio but then he kept fucking up but he made a lot of dumb like he worked for terry tunes he made a lot of their horrible shorts uh and then he eventually when he couldn't get any more movies made fred sybert who uh i've referenced on your podcast many times because he's made most cartoons of our childhood

happen in some way he brought him on to make a What a Cartoon shorts for Cartoon Network. He made two of them and he hated the way they turned out because they had to chop them up because they let Rob Baxley make kids cartoons. Yeah, yeah. I will say that for all you Tatterheads out there, Christmas in Tattertown could have been the first Nicktoon. It was picked up in 1989 for 39 episodes, but that was abandoned. So weird. That wasn't going to happen. What if that was the first Nicktoon?

It would have just been a disaster. We might not have had Doug or any of those ones that came. And yeah, I mean, the film itself is about being a dirt bag. And it's just, there's definitely the novelty of like, a cartoon swore at me. A cartoon grabbed a woman's breast. A cartoon shot somebody in the face. Like, a cartoon did all these things. And it's about a lot of the stuff that films of the 70s during that you know 70s hollywood

boom were also about and i i think that is it still sets it apart from animated shows now animated animated movies don't get to really do that also includes sexual assault which yes it does which stinks but it made 90 million dollars too which like that's 70s 90 million dollars that's insane amounts of money that's crazy that probably just that just made his career for the next 30 years or 40 years it's still what he's most famous for yeah even though he's made like seven other movies but at the time i don't think you could buy or find a copy of fritz the cat on vhs like i knew i't as a kid. At least it wasn't in my local Blockbuster, which was about as much searching as I could do in 1996.

They wouldn't carry Fritz the Cat. Yeah, that's true. God no. Hollywood Video might. Your mom and pop video store would carry that sleaze and filth. But yeah, talking about the comic book store nostalgia too, I remember going to my local comic shop and on the TV they just have on some bootleg

nonsense and I'd be like wow what is this anime you would know this you don't have a friend in japan like me you sent me a fan sub my comic store was odd in that it was a very small comic book store but it was also a place that sold lottery tickets so it would be a mix of nerds and just like sad cigarettety old men like just wandering in to get their fucking scratch offs i ate a sandwich at a place like that recently it was like a deli that also had lottery tickets, so I'm sitting there eating a pretty good vegetarian sandwich, and there's just people coming in in droves

to buy from the little machine and then bring it to the lady and get their 30 cents and then go back out and scratch again. You're guaranteed to have a consistently sad clientele if you have a lottery ticket machine. Though, compared to most 90s comic shops, Android's Dungeon in Springfield is actually pretty good like big yeah it's huge it's not full of long boxes everywhere that you have to like walk around

like the majority of the comic shops i went to in the 90s were basically they were a basement above ground and a storage unit that you could buy comics inside of they were not really shops mine was legends in the defford mall uh which was a mall comic shop yeah it was in a mall it still felt like the shitty comic like it was nice and the people there actually were nice but it still was dingy and gross and had like an old carpet and the walls were kind of dirty because it's still a comic book store they're not going to pay someone to come in and clean things but it wasn't a mall so you felt safe going there and i would go there every weekend to play hero clicks and stuff and they basically were my babysitter service and

would tell my dad like we're not a babysitter but this kid's cool so whatever there was uh one comic book store and i promise we'll get back to the episode soon there was one comic book store i remember when i was in grad school at kent at kent ohio and maybe it's still open but it's like it was barely a store i feel like the guy had like ocd hoarding problems and he turned that into a store so he would avoid being treated or having his stuff taken away and you could barely move around in the store and he could too because he was a very large gentleman and if you looked in the windows like that that spawn is from 1998 it's 2006 you need to change these comics so like all the comics on the rotating racks were at least like 10 years out of date like things are just just, it was a disaster.

Who was paying the rent at that? I have no, I never saw anyone in there but me. And I would only go in there like, something will crush me if I'm in here for too long. I have to make it out. Those are my favorite shops to go. Yeah. Once in a while you still find a shop like that. I had felt like, so during the 90s there's a boom where there were comic shops everywhere.

Then they all closed because of the comic crash when Marvel went bankrupt and all that stuff. And then I felt like we'd kind of evened out with Funko Pops and stuff, where you can see comic shops that stick around, like Mission Comics here in San Francisco. I mean, we're in Berkeley right now, but over in San Francisco. The Meltdown Comics just closed. So the one that felt like it would always be there in Los Angeles closed. So what a weird place to be in. I couldn't believe that place closed.

Couldn't they have a Patreon or a Kickstarter or something? They just let it close? That's what Mission Comics says. They have a Patreon. I feel like there's something unspoken about Meltdown shutting down, I think. Chris Hardwick shut them down. Well, I mean, it does happen when he left Nerdist. I don't know.

Oh, good point. I would bet there's some story we're not being told here about Meltdown. Yeah, probably, which is a shame. Maybe the guys that own it will go on to do something cooler i also i follow a thread on for employer of bob mackie something awful uh which is about guys the threads run by guys who like work in comic shops or own comic shops called like the comic retail thread or something and a guy tells stories about like yeah like the funko bop market is crashing like we like we lean too hard into it and it's a real problem.

That'll be the death knell for every chain bookstore that's left because if you go to a Barnes & Noble, it's like, yeah, the books are upstairs. Oh, dude, I worked at Barnes & Noble and was the guy putting those out and being like, aren't we a bookstore? And then when we had like our third rack,

I was like, fuck this place. This is not a bookstore anymore. I thought every fan lasted forever. You tell me it's gonna crash? Bubbles can burst? The Simpsons will be right back. I know there's a lot of hearsay conjecture

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or one of the many shows we talk about on What a Cartoon, you can sign up and try out a free 30-day trial on us. And if you do it, a little bit of money gets kicked back towards your pals at Talking Simpsons. Where do you do it? You sign up at tiny.cc slash tshulu. That's the link to go to that'll help out the show tiny.cc slash tshulu I have to remind myself of this scene of comic book guy 2 to be like don't be comic book guy who

lords it over a younger person like by not being as old as me you haven't seen everything so fuck you don't be a gatekeeper yeah it's it's a danger of every of every nerd please don't do it or even just like it has nothing to do with age sometimes the thing just escapes you or you have your own reasons for not like i had only it was like two years ago i finally watched jaws because i was like i just i never saw it on tv or i never seen the beginning on tv so i didn't want to sit down for it and then i finally did and yeah this movie's good yeah it's as good as i thought it would be henry's the worst kind of nerds uh don't use that moment as a way to like oh let me tell you about this like no fuck you how dare you not know about this wrong

yeah kill yourself you haven't seen that yeah you fucking idiot how the fuck do you exist you yeah when i was growing up it was the the common phrase would people would say like oh you should just kill yourself like what's the point why you still live and like why would you say that don't ever say that ever especially not because someone hasn't seen blade runner or whatever movie you're talking about we leave the comic shop the parade has begun i love the gag at the start of uh nerds is just such a great exclamation oh nerds but also that that homer saying like is it the car like homer like most regular adults has no clue what a cartoon is it doesn't really care that that goes back to the end of itching scratchy the movie doesn't go which one's itchy that's the mouse itchy's a jerk yeah and it's a there's so many callbacks to this and uh then we get the parade with our first celebrity guest of

the episode represented on this next float is roger meyer senior who founded his company in 1921 and struck it big when he teamed up a mouse named Itchy with a cat named Scratchy. Here we see him creating the two comical characters out of thoughts he plucks from his head. And that man waving from the front of the float is his son, Roger Myers Jr. Oh, isn't this just the most fun you've ever had in your life, Dave?

Yes, Suzanne. It is. So it took me a while to find this because I'm like, which old newsman are they parodying? It's actually David Brinkley, who I completely forgot about. I know most of the old newsmen just because they were all retiring when I was actually watching the news. But I do have a clip of him. Brinkley died into our youths. That's how soon he died.

He hated us. And most of the press was not crazy about him talk about Nixon there was very little relationship we covered him we what he did we put on the air and he did some good things not as many as he might have but he did some the devil is due. And he had a vice president who nobody liked, and for good reason. Spiro Agnew. He must work there or something. It was a joke. And he hated the press, and the press is not entitled to hate anybody as a press. It's not our job to hate or love. Our job is to tell you what happened. And I think we did that with Nixon in reasonable fairness.

Okay, that's enough. It reminds me of that scene with Principal Skinner being questioned who shot Mr. Burns. Well, I... Yeah, I mean, it's not a perfect impression, but they get the fact that he is very dry and low energy and has a lot of pauses in his speech. So that is a parody of David Brinkley. We don't have to play the death jingle because it's not really him.

Yeah, well, Suzanne Somers still with us. And I'd look to see if she had had any weird things lately. Not really. Most of all, the news of her is like Suzanne Somers appears at place. So she's just enjoying regular fame of just like, oh, hey, you. She's 71 years young. Although when she was in this episode, she was at a new height of fame. Certainly not as famous as she was during Three's Company.

But on Step by Step for a TGIF generation, she became a mom, not the mom. She made a whole new generation of people discover their first boners. That show was basically Horny Brady Bunch. Like, what if it was Brady Bunch, but they were all horny? Oh, some of my first TV crushes came from that show. I mean, Mr. and Mrs. Brady, they definitely implied doing it a bit,

but not as much as on the step-by-step parents were just like, yeah, we're gonna have sex. They're always about to fuck. Yeah. Hey, if your wife is Suzanne Somers. Well, also, the male star on it, too,

was a heart... Patrick Duffy? Patrick Duffy was a heartthrob of the 70s as well. Coming out of the shower? Oh, someone's gonna get shot in that room tonight.

And she does a great job. I didn't know this was her because she's doing such a parody of herself. She has, like, two lines, though. I wish they gave her more to do,

but it's, like, just basically two lines about this parade. And she's doing such a parody of herself she has like it's so lines though i wish they gave her more to do but it's like just two basically two lines about this parade and she's got that uh she's got the simpsons uh big guest star for a small part sound yeah echoey room that they probably did it in like her her living room it's a good caricature of her from the 90s too yeah and also she must have hosted many parades like this one, so she could just get into that mode immediately. Like, oh, isn't this just marvelous? It feels just like when you would see Katie Couric or whoever or some other newswoman hosting the Macy's Parade. Yeah, it's a fun pairing of the bubbly color commentator and the serious newsman who covered the death of Kennedy. She would do some of the Disney paradesades uh for the disneyland and disney world specials

i love it and matt lauer is not going to be on these parades no more on the nbc uh macy's one see you later see you never matt lauer anderson cooper just got three times as much work and uh well i wonder if kate if he's gonna be back with um kathy griffin now it seems like she's out of that doghouse uh so the parade is also full of dudes with their costumes from the itchy and scratchy land as well like there's so many so many great things and that looks just it's the design they had of uh meyer senior from previous ones that's right itchy and scratchy land i think was no it was itchy and scratchy movie to introduce the idea that like alex rocco's character didn't create itchy and scratchy it was his dad so they

could do w Disney jokes. I don't think they actually brought up... I could be wrong. I think Roger Myers Sr. entered the picture in Itchy and Scratchy Land. Okay. It was always Roger Myers Jr., but that would just imply that he was the Roy Disney of that group. The first time you saw Myers Sr. on camera was in the promotional video in Itchy and Scratchy Land. He loved almost all the people of the world.

Yeah, he's the Roy E. Disney of this empire. Not the Roy O. Disney. They should have done an episode where Roger Myers is ousted by like a Michael Eisner style executive. Maybe they did, I don't know. They could have Michael Eisner play him.

He would do all kinds of shit like that back then. He's just full of charisma. Have you seen him on those? Hi, Mickey. I'm here at Disney World and we're about to watch a bad movie. Oh, man. Watch the outtakes of him talking to fozzie's mom oh god it's the best they just can't get the line right it's so uh yeah i love uh frank oz as fozzie is saying like yeah can we get somebody else in here yeah this is a big hotel like they every time the banter

that fozzie and his mom have is different in every take because they're so good at it and he just can't get that one line down. It kills him every time. I love that. I also love that when Bart gives up on watching, when he starts marching in the parade, people in the audience are like, Bart, hey, Bart. Hey, Bart. Bart's a celebrity.

He saved the town many times. They should know who Bart is by now, everyone in Springfield. Which gets referenced in this episode. Here's another great flashback we get to the wrong side of the tracks exactly as it was seen at bart versus thanksgiving that once you cross the railroad into the wrong side of the tracks it then becomes junkie villain bumtown i call every bad neighborhood bumtown now because of this episode i'm sorry bums that's not That's not fair to homeless people. It's my favorite podcast, Bumtown. Bumtown.

But okay, so we have reached our guest, which this might be one of our most perilous ones ever. 101 years old. Yes, but let's play the anti-death jingle. Damn, Buzzards! I ain't dead yet! Didn't he have... Okay, so he had a second bar mitzvah, right?

Because in the Jewish religion, the bar mitzvah right because in the jewish religion uh you can you like the bar mitzvah is good for only so many years but you you'll usually die before that period ends but he didn't it's kirk douglas we're talking kirk douglas diana goodman is the one who laid this information on me so uh and she's and she's jewish so and at the time of this recording on may 2nd kirk douglas is still with us 101 years young. May he live another 101 years. He's going to outlive the Dalmatians. That's how old he is. Oh, my God.

He's got one more. Favorite Kirk Douglas stuff for me is Ace in the Hole. Amazing, amazing movie. Yeah. And Out of the Past with him and Robert Mitchum. Oh, my God. Yeah. Great.

I've seen that twice in theaters here. It's so good. That's one of the first. When I was a film student, I remember watching that, and I had not seen that many older movies here. It's so good. That's one of the first, when I was a film student, I remember watching that and I had not seen that many like older movies or that many black and white movies. And I remember that being like, wow, like that opened my eyes to like, man, movies were really good then.

And he's basically every, not the voice, but the idea of him is basically every like oppressive male figure in Ren and Stimpy is Kirk Douglas. He defined masculinity for many generations of men. And I think too, something I loved finding out about Kirk Douglas, that he was a big time lefty in the film industry back then. When people were getting blacklisted, he would employ them off the record. And he was a big liberal type dude back then. As a Jew who could pass, he got opportunities other Jews did not. I bet he smoked lots of weed and took LSD with Robert Mitchum.

I'd like to think so. Oh my god. Yeah. And he has now lived so long that his son is a very old man who almost died. From going down on his wife? Is that what happened? That's what he said. He got throat cancer from eating too much pussy. What a dick. But he was an Ant-Man

so we all love him again. Yeah, that's true. But I will say so, Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein could not direct him he would only do one take and this is actually he is good he's really good I think there's a story in Nancy Cartwright's book where she had to flub a line in order to get Kirk Douglas to do another read on purpose well if you're

Kirk Douglas and you barely want to be doing anything let alone some dumb cartoon only your grandkids have heard of he was 79 at this recording why would you do You barely want to be doing anything, let alone some dumb cartoon only your grandkids have heard of. He was 79 at this recording. Why would you do... If some cartoon boy was like, could you say that again, Kirk Douglas? You could improve this line. He'd be like, I am Kirk fucking Douglas.

I said it. It was said right. Are you Spartacus? Yeah. Well, a lot of people said they were Spartacus. Shut up. I will say, though, this was not their first choice. Their first choice was William Hickey who has an like uh an imitable voice and i have a clip from him from

the movie national lampoon's christmas vacation it's mostly some other character actor but he's in it once you hear his voice you'll know who he is because he is amazing he did a lot of tv work as a character actor but no one can be him he's's William Hickey. Grace! Grace! She passed away 30 years ago. They want you to say grace. The blessing! That's him.

I love how he just points it out. The blessing! We're having fried cat. God, yeah, his voice is amazing. He also did some voiceover work. He was Dr. Finkelstein in The Nightmare Before Christmas, but nobody talks like him. Well, I mean, he was near death when they wanted to cast him on the show. There's a reason.

He looked much older than he was. He was only like 70 when he died. And he was also the grandpa on Pete and Pete. Yeah, with like the haunted bowling ball that would tear them apart. Yeah, that's – oh, God, Pete and Pete's so good with like the haunted bowling ball that would tear them apart. Yeah, that's... Oh, God, Pete and Pete's so good. I totally forgot about that. I mean, it's hard to do...

As a second choice, Kirk Douglas is pretty great. But man, I mean, Kirk Douglas is great, but I can imagine like the cantankerous William Hickey as this character would be a much different performance. Yeah, there'd be a lot less masculinity to it as in this one. It'd be more of a whiny type guy, which would also fit for the story told here. But let's get to meet Chester J. Lampwick. Get out of bum town, you no talent bum.

Show some respect, man. That no talent created itchy and scratchy. He didn't create itchy. I did. Huh? He stole a character from me in 1928. When I complained, his thugs kicked me out of his office and dropped an anvil on me. Luckily, I was carrying an umbrella at the time. You invented Itchy? The Itchy and Scratchy Itchy? Sure. In fact, I invented the

whole concept of cartoon violence. Before I came along, all cartoon animals did was play the ukulele. I changed all that. Well, I'm not calling you a liar, but... But I can't think of a way to finish that sentence. So I'm a liar, am I? Itchy the Lucky Mouse in Manhattan Madness. That's the first Itchy cartoon ever made. And it was made by me chester j lampwick

chester j lampwick is the perfect oakley weinstein schwarzwelder era name like it is so perfect and so old-timey he is like a 1920s hobo complete with the broken stove stovepipe hat and the bindle like he is like the ultimate john schwarzwelder character yeah the magic hat that can hold anything yeah this is a great receptacle for john schwarzwelder character. Yeah, the magic hat that can hold anything. Yeah. This is a great receptacle for John Schwarzwelder's humor. This whole episode is just stuff that Schwarzwelder, like, have you read

any of his novels? Yes. I think I've read three of them and they're all this joke. He loves hobos, old-timey style hobos with bindles with polka dot handkerchiefs.

Old-timey detective. If you remember the Itching Scratchy the movie episode, that happy cat was the first cartoon, I think, or one of the earlier ones, when it was just a character walking down the street and whistling. That was it.

It's something that you'll get the impression of if you watch original old cartoons of like 80, 90, 100 years ago. It's just the activity of seeing animation was so amazing. You didn't need to do extra stuff. It was like, animation was so amazing you didn't need to do extra stuff yeah it's like wow movement you didn't need a narrative it was like you were going to watch a magic trick it's like look we made these characters move around that cat's on that fence i've seen that happen in my backyard bosco the talking kid is talking i hear words if you go back to like the even like the cartoons, which are pre-Mickey, they are just the most rudimentary,

look, a thing is moving kind of experience. A dinosaur is walking. That's what they were. Yeah, Gertie. And Chester J. Lampkwick is kind of, well, I think he's Ub. Is he Ub Iwerks, Matt? Is that your opinion?

He's kind of every Hollywood story put together, but yes, he's mainly Ub Iwerks. I think there's a little bit of maybe what we were learning around this time about jack kirby's life i think there's a little bit of that in there as well but it's a lot of stories in hollywood but yes he's mainly all by works who's famous for a lot of stuff he he came up with waltz they had their first animation jobs together in kansas city uh he birthplace of animation kansas city missouri yeah uh yeah uh waltz from of course we know marceline missouri and then he moved to kansas city missouri yeah uh yeah uh walt's from of course we know marceline missouri and they moved to kansas city to be a big time animator guy and they were partners

and they made a lot of stuff together uh including one of ub's creations which is oswald the lucky rabbit who's right here behind me uh they made folks hey oswald's hey uh they made cartoons together and then they made they went to universal because w was like, I'm going to go to California. That's where all the big stuff is. So he goes there, and then he brings Ub with him to California. That's where they make Oswald. The guy at Universal, his name was Charles Mintz, was a fucking asshole.

And so Walt's like, listen, Ub and I are doing a lot of hard work. Our animator's doing a lot of hard work. We should get some more money from you. And the guy's like, actually, I'm going to give you less money, and I hired all of your animators fuck yourself and oswald's mine so then they break off so again lesson won't learn from that is that he wanted to be the guy who said fuck you and i'll pay you less yeah that's exactly it so walt learns the lesson of i'm going to have complete control of my characters destroy copyright law to make sure that my character is

never owned by anyone else buy every other character that exists which continues to this day in the disney company so he and ub go and make some stuff and ub's big contribution they go and make the walt disney company uh basically invents mickey mouse up is the animator right yeah like he's walt didn't draw half as much as up yeah up invented play he animated Plane Crazy and then he was like, hey we need some sound in these cartoons. What if I figure out this way to sync sound? So then they make Steamboat Willie. Wow. Yeah, so Walt's contributions

to it are bigger than people will say that they are. But it was Ub's thing. Ub created Oswald he created, basically created Mickey Mouse but they co-created him. There's a story, I don't know how true this story is, but they co-created him and the there's a story i don't know how true this story is but they made a bunch of cartoons together including the skeleton dance which is like the most famous non-mickey old cartoon there's a there's a story that i'm

sure is not true but that they read at like a hollywood party together and there was a kid there and the kid went up to walt disney and was like mr walt disney can you draw me mickey mouse and walt's like yeah sure and he gets an afghan and he gives it to ub iworks oh god and i was like what the fuck like he gets very upset and then he storms off he's like you know what i'm out of here like i've been with you this whole time so he goes and starts his own company where he makes i think it's where he makes flip the frog which is his most famous thing uh on his own he you want to mention how racist his cartoons yeah i mean he also he was a born in 1901 by the way, he was a creator of his time, though that does not excuse...

You can find a lot of racist cartoons back then, but few are as bad as Little Black Sambo, which were the ones he did. When he was finally free, he's like, I'm going to do, finally, the story will be told of Little Black Sambo in animation. Much like Walt, he was trying to tell the story of these stories

that he heard as a kid, just like Walt was trying to do when he was like, no, these Uncle Remus stories are very important to me, and we should represent them the way they should be represented, which in 1960 or 1950 or whatever, when they made Song of the South, was like, you're still, just don't do it. Even though that movie, there's a great book called Who's Afraid of Song of the South, which is about the real story of Song of the South and the misconceptions about it and how it's like no it's racist it's

just not the racist you think it is and it's very boring too yeah it's pretty boring yeah i will say that he won in the end because he got to watch walt disney die not personally but he says he outlived walt disney by like six years which he did at the disney company so what so he came back to disney yeah he makes uh is animation or whatever it's called, and he makes all these fucking crazy cartoons in the late 40s into the 50s. Like ridiculous, like violent, crazy cartoons, just like the Fleishers and stuff were doing at the same time.

And then when the Hays Code starts in 1950, the Hays Commission, which are the guys who were like, no, movies have to be regulated. You can't have this, you can't have this. They put all these crazy rules that are like no nudity, no swearing. One of them is the rule I always like to reference is that everyone gets their comeuppance no matter what, which is why so many noirs from the 50s end with the main character dying because they did so much bad stuff they had to die.

Just like out of the past. That's right. That's right. There's so many MST3K movies that end with, like, the character has to get killed. They all have to be shot of the past. That's right. That's right. There's so many MST3K movies that end with like the character has to get killed. They all have to be shot at the end. Like this is a real bummer now seeing this. Like no redemption here. They just get shot in the gut.

And then the cops stand over them like what a shame. They made it even darker. They also like characters can only kiss for a certain amount of time. And you couldn't see like their lips touch. It was always like behind the shoulder or whatever. Like Hitchcock got around it in some clever ways. In Vertigo, that's why when you watch that kiss, you're like, what the fuck are they doing?

Because they keep like pulling apart and then mashing their faces together again. It's because he's getting around the length role where he's saying like, no, these are separate kisses. They couldn't even be in the same bed. Yeah. So then they shut him down. The Hayes Commission fucking closes his company.

So then he's unemployed for a long time. He doesn't go back to Walt. like yeah uh so then they shut him down the hayes commission fucking closes his company so then he's unemployed for a long time he doesn't go back to walt walt hears about this because he's so connected and he goes to up and is like hey listen i want you back i want you in my company we need you like walt realizes his mistakes and go because he realized i was a fucking asshole and so then tells him like i'm not going to be in animation i want to be in feature effects so he's the guy that finds out how to mix live action and 2d and mary poppins oh cool uh bed knobs and broomsticks like all like a lot of that multi-plane animation was also a big thing of his yeah right he basically invented when you go to the walt disney museum which is like a short train ride

from here and you go to that camera that's three stories tall that was a lie to him too as well uh so i like this story more than most walt disney stories because walt disney was a real bastard like he did a lot of real bad stuff and and made and he hurt a lot of people and but he generally was trying to help people just like he realized like i need this much money to do what i'm doing to make epcot so i need to destroy this union which like fucking sucks yeah that sucks so like you have to tell the bad stories with the good stories but people like to people want to erase all the good stories but they're there like he fucked up over big time but he brought him back into the company and made him a disney legend made events yeah and now you now name's all over the parks. He died in like 1971 or something. But like Oswald, when you go to Hollywood Studios, is a huge part.

And like Ub Iwerks' name is on there. You can see his name everywhere. One minor part of his biography that I just saw here, and it's not that important, but it is important for one reason, in that he worked on some of the earliest Porky Pig shorts, Ub Iwerks, when Porky was with Gabby Goat for a few shorts. And I will tell you that I haven't actually seen it, but I follow one of the storyboard artists on Twitter and that new Looney Tunes show.

What's it called? Is it just called the new Looney Tunes show? Well, there was the Looney Tunes show and now there's one that has like a weird name. Like sometimes it's called like Carrot Crazy or something like it's got a bunch of weird names, but it's fucking awesome. Whatever that is.

And I forget the name. It's not the Looney Tunes show. It's the one after that right right so it was like wabbit then the looney tune show and then this but they brought back gabby the goat after 80 years it was like this show was for animation dorks like have you watched any of that show i haven't because i don't know where to actually see it uh i think i think china like this go to china i think like uh south america they get it a lot more than we do like when you watch when i find the bootlegs that i do find they have like korean writing on them sometimes like it's weird because cartoon network is bad at licensing things i guess i like it's

it's good i like the clips i've seen of it because um it is not chuck jones's daffy it's like the pre-chuck jones daffy daffy i'm just so fucking sick of it because that was the Daffy for like 60 years. I love Chuck Jones but there's many flavors to the Looney Tunes and it's just like Chuck Jones and to a lesser extent Frizz Freeling kind of just defined all of them for a long time. Actually so we're getting deep into animation history but I just read something about Chuck Jones and Who Framed Roger Rabbit in that he wanted like greedy little miser Daffy to be the Daffy in Roger Rabbit, but the scene that he

made for them was boring. So they basically just were like, you go over there, old man. We'll think of a funny thing for these characters to do. One of the greatest scenes in cinema history. That is fucking amazing, especially when he calls him a racial slur. I'm kidding. That's not what he says. I don't know

how anyone could hear that. There's a sell for that on ebay and it's like three thousand dollars and everyone's mom like hover over the buy button toodaloo the daffy and donald scene is perfect it's it's better than the mickey bug scene because it's just so kinetic and powerful it is because it's a great cartoon in itself and the daffy needs to be crazy daaffy in that because he can't be, it can't be inflexible Daffy with inflexible Donald. You need crazy Daffy with angry Donald. It's so great. It pisses Donald off more. Yes.

Yeah. There's a very long history of anything that you know is a famous property or creation. Likely more than one person was involved in it despite who if you ever hear of the one person who's like this was created by this person oftentimes that's just who got fame or who got more of the credit for it stan lee is the ur example of that which uh also i hope stan lee is still with us right now and i hope just killed him henry i hope his life is is going better than it was uh he's getting robbed by all of his servants prediction he'll be dead by the time we get

to that episode he's in and like season 14 sure Stanley he Stanley was co-writer and co-create I will say co-creator of many of the biggest Marvel characters Jack Kirby did more than him and he and he deserves more credit for all the same with Steve Ditko

like in Gene Colan as well all these dudes don't that but stan lee number one was management and two is a much better self-promoter than any of those artists are so of course he gets in front he's another one of those guys that like he did so much bad shit for so long that when we found out about it we kind of over corrected where people want to act like he did nothing when it's like no stan lee was a creative genius he just also was a real dirtbag when he was yeah and then it's also like those are the early days of marvel he was younger like no fantastic four number one came out when he was 40 like he was a grown-ass man he's like 100 years old by the way folks we do have an animation podcast called what a cartoon that's why we're going insane over this because we love cartoons

and cartoon history so every monday what a Okay, so they watch the first Itchy cartoon. Itchy runs afoul of an Irishman. Look out, Itchy! He's Irish! Come on, Itchy! Kill him! Kill that guy! A chance for more, miss. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha i can't believe it that was itchy all right you did invent him when people see this you'll be rich and famous so yeah we've seen itching scratchy in almost every era but this is a very

observational like pre-steamboat willie pre-sound cartoon sort of cartoon and i have to wonder if in the original version of this episode did they just play this straight because the comments from bart and millhouse aren't necessarily that funny but i feel like they might have been added after the fact just be like let's get some sound in here, like some actual reactions. And they're kind of repeating the joke a little bit sometimes. Yeah, that's interesting. I do like Milhouse's unaddressed aggression,

just like in the Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming episode where he's like, kill that guy! I do love that. I also, anytime I fail to read on-screen dialogue long enough, I think of like a more missed... The cartoon is funny because when Itchy kills the Irishman, it's done in a fun way where he runs him through that old laundry mangle,

but he just cuts off the president's head. That's it. There's nothing clever about it. It's just like crude and ugly. Speaking of Kathy Griffin. Oh, right. Oh, my of Kathy Griffin. Oh, right. Well, my God. Is Itchy destroying free speech?

And it was such a great... Teddy Roosevelt's son could have seen that. I also just love how perfectly the limited animation was. Like, they under-animated it. Like, the steps when he's walking along the skyline, there's missing frames of animation that you know they had to give special instruction in korea like don't do this the right way don't fill in this

this has to be little like quickie frame jumpyness to it and when itchy sees the irishman the little dotted line comes out of his eye because they used to do that just like how do we convey a character looking and draw a line like you would do in a comic so a lot of the comic conventions are in these old cartoons which they would also do on Mission Hill yeah that's true and the Irishman is obviously a stand

in for all the disgusting racist stereotypes you see in most old cartoons this is where the ethnographer credit the reference earlier came that's one of the credits it's why you can't it's you know you can enjoy tom and jerry they're fun but uh pretty much every one of them you're gonna have to be like oh mammy mammy man when they replaced more more weird cartoon history uh when they re-aired that when i was like a teenager edited her voice where like all the all the noise drops out,

like everything drops out to just like new, Thomas, don't you chase that mouse. They briefly replaced her with an Irish woman's voice. And then they just in like the 80s, I think it was, and recolored the black skin to be white. Yes. And then I guess they were like, hey, even Irish, let's have a

milk toast white woman i think millhouse is in the scene because he's in the av club and he must be the guy who knows how to run those old projectors good observation feels like a missing scene there but the also teddy roosevelt he died at the start of 1919 so this was a very too soon kind of joke back then i i do like how chester is not at all involved in bart and who he is like that's the last time i try to impress a four-year-old later he calls him brad it's great he just doesn't care though i mean he's in his 90s and you know thumbs up to lampwick for surviving this long on the street as a bum yeah presumably being like his his style of being a bum is like from the 20s like he's been a bum for 70 years yeah yeah it's it's also great or it's a very correct observation that film like that was highly flammable oh yeah i mean is as a film

historian it's just so sad to see like oh it's gone it's just no one's ever gonna see we've lost a lot of movies and television show and things because we didn't have the cloud back then. Like old film is kept in salt mines. Yeah. Now it will always, you'll never run out of things. Everything that aired will have been seen.

It's all being saved. And that's nice. That's nice. The end of Inglourious Bastards will never happen again. But we'll never be able to kill Hitler again. No. The sad thing is if you've ever done anything embarrassing,

it will be preserved for all eternity. I am so happy I lived before a time when parents could film things and immediately share your most embarrassing thing on the internet. I meant recording bad videos for websites. Oh, that too. Yeah. But sometimes kids get to be awesome, like that kid that was

running around that pool party with that knife that's the greatest one like give him a skull give him a college scholarship fuck that yodel boy yeah or chewbacca mom well those people did it at places that could sell things like target or a chewbacca mask like that knife it should have been a branded knife and then shoot it again when he's 16 and he's got a Cutco knife. But yes, Bart has a way to fix things. That was a nice film I had once. Last time I tried to impress a four-year-old. Well, see ya, kid.

You can't just go back to the gutter. You created Itchy. You should be a millionaire. Eh, Roger Myers wouldn't give me a cent in the 20s. Why would he give me anything now? You asked Roger Myers Sr. for money. Roger Myers Jr. is in charge of the studio now. He's a good man.

Every Christmas, he goes down to the pound and rescues one cat and one mouse and gives them to a hungry family. Studio's closed until Tuesday. Animators have AA on Monday. Hmm. Well, you can stay at my house until then. My parents won't mind because they won't even know about it. Alright, the coast is clear.

There's a box you can sleep in. Thanks. Just move that cot out of the way. Okay. Do you know what radon is? No. Goodnight. I got that as a joke for the first time. My parents won't know because they won't find out about it. What's the line?

The parents won't mind because they won't even know about it. Yeah, I love the logic. My parents won't mind because I'm not going to tell them. Yeah, it's great. It's very Bartesque, as the French would say. Yeah, and in Schwarzweldery, too, just like in construction of, well, yeah, you're not going to care because you won't know. Everything will be fine if you want to know about radon there was a big radon scare like in the 80s because i guess it's just a natural radioactive element that can accumulate like in your basement and stuff like that maybe from the ground i don't

know where it comes from but uh people were getting a lot of radon detectors and stuff in this time period so it gives you a lung cancer yeah clearly good chester is doomed now i mean yeah he's not gonna live too long in that solid gold house he'll eventually get but uh also i i love the dig at animators that they're all addicts they all have to be entirely and and that the earlier joke reads like fortunately i had an umbrella to stop that safe it implies that animation reality works for animators, but only for, well, they are in a cartoon. Hmm. Oh,

you blow my mind here. They do find out about it first after Homer. Just, I just love Homer's wordless tossing of change. Not even, not even questioning. I just like, well,

I might as well. That's such a Schwarzweller joke. Yeah. And when they explore into the basement, I love Homer's like little kid armor. He's got a colander on his head. He didn't bring his famous gun with him. But the thing that Lisa says,

there's a lot of cursing coming from the basement and Dad's upstairs. And a strange smell. Once they find out what the plan is, they're like, oh, then fine. He can stay until they go. They visit Roger Myers Jr. I do love the joke, too. They're like, oh, Junior is great by giving pets to people who are hungry.

It's pretty great. When they find Chester, though, I love Homer. It's like, oh, it just barred in a mysterious stranger. They're so used to taking people in a poo and auto, and there's probably been a few more since then. Oh, many more people have lived in that basement since then. Has that Jewish ex-con been down there yet? Which way is Mecca? No, I'm just kidding. I'm Jewish. Oh, many more people have lived in that basement since then. Has that Jewish ex-con been down there yet? Which way is Mecca?

No, I'm just kidding. I'm Jewish. Oh, yeah. That was great. And that was Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton, that's right. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

But so, well, this we will play the death jingle for. Death stalks you at every turn. There it is. Death. So let's review. You two screwballs have just strolled in here fresh from the sewer and given me a bunch of bulldink about creating Itchy with no proof at all, and you expect me to give you...

How much? $800 billion. $800 billion. 800 billion dollars well that brought back a lot of memories uh i love the read on 800 billion dollars but also like how the cigar ash falls off like the cigar reacts to his reaction and the his little head nod and he says 800 billion dollars and this is the return of alex rocco who has now passed away 2015 is when he died this is his first though we've seen myers jr many times this is his first return since itchy and scratchy in march oh uh what about the no he was not even on the front that's right nope so hank azari played him on the front he played him in lady bouvier's lover when he's on that

infomercial about the cell and he played him him on Itchy and Scratchy Land. Here are two free tickets. That's better. So, yeah, they didn't get him back for three lines. But for this and Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie, Alex Rocco would come back. Oakley Weinstein clearly made it more of a priority to get him back. Like, on the other episodes, they seem like, look, this guy's hard to get. It's not in a budget.

Hank can just do it. It's fine. Yeah, I mean, honestly, the front is a huge mess. But, mess but man like he's a major character in that episode i really wish alex rocco i mean hank does a great job but alex rocco's voice is like william hickey he's he's only got that voice i think somebody just didn't bother to get mo green yeah and it's just too bad like this and this is alex rocco's second of only three ever appearances on the simpsons in my mind i imagined him as on more but not really it did not happen and he would return one more time in the itchy and scratchy and poochy show and uh i also love that he calls them screwballs which is what he calls marge the

screwballs have spoken look like looking at his character he does look like a very early simpsons character in that i don't think they would give him blue hair in this era like i think that was a very early simpsons choice like yeah he has blue hair blue hair rounded nose it's uh oh man breaking news at this hour donald sutherland has slipped in his hotel he's uh no we'll see if things are okay wait that episode's out right yes the episode is on the free feed yeah no okay, then we fucked up. Well, we'll see. Cross your fingers. He's still alive and well so far, but you never know where those falls. Featuring Tristan Cooper?

Yes. Oh, God, I hope he's okay. I love that guy. Anyway, and they're literally giving the bums rush when they're thrown out. That is the definition of a bum's rush, being tossed out. Yeah, we see Mo get trained in it later on. Oh, that's true. Or not trained, he competes in it. Yeah.

But he has the biggest bum. I wish it was called the dj jazzy jeff rush for you know my uncle phil ripped that off oh can i share a trivia fact about that sure uh he that's one thing they shot once and would use the same clip every time so when the scene ended that way he had to wear the same outfit from that episode so if you look he's always wearing that shirt it's it's so great i don't know i don't know how i feel like that might be one of those things that's a little true like maybe they reused it a lot but eventually changed it but in in my memory the trivia answer is that's always the same scene i feel like that character just eventually disappeared from the show uh i think he kind of did yeah i think he moved back to philly yeah but now they're

buddies and we have another passed away celebrity here too but we've he's on this so much we're not playing yeah he's gotten plenty of jingles in his life on the show all right gentlemen i'll take your case but i'm going to have to ask for a thousand dollar retainer a thousand dollars but your ads is no money down they got this all screwed up. So you don't work on a contingency basis? No. Money down. Oops.

Shouldn't have this Bar Association logo here either. I think about this joke, I think, every day. Just how beautiful the punctuation changes everything. And I try to replicate it. I try to make new jokes based off of this. And I can't. This has got to be the ultimate Lionel Hutz appearance, right? Just because of that joke. I think him

having to call David Crosby and better slow down. Actually, no, the ultimate Lionel Hutz joke to me is like, replace the word accident with repeatedly and the word dog would suck. But I do, I just love no money down.

Which still, it's like one of the most memed Simpsons, before Steam Tams, maybe the most memed thing. They talk in the commentary about it, they spent a whole day writing that. So great. It's a great joke about commas. Like, as somebody who edits or thinks about placement of commas and how things read, I just love that gag of like,

no, money down. it's his demanding of money down it's so great and it's still called i can't believe it's a law firm i wonder if they even just pulled the establishing shot out of an older episode to you probably yeah i would i would think so that that i can't believe it's not butter gag it's better every year it's fun here well i guess a lionel hutz would a shelf life would only last so long, so maybe they just walked up to the edge of that being a relevant joke. And I love when they come home, the animation of Homer hopefully picking up the bindle like,

hey, going to take your bindle back? No, no such luck, though. And Matt Groening really hates the joke that Homer would just pull $1,000 out of his wallet. Yeah, I got that on my notes, too. a very so first it's 750 dollars and then later on it's like a hundred thousand dollars something 183 000 he almost pulls that yeah but like he doesn't he doesn't have that much yeah he's just reaching into his wallet because he's an idiot he's not about to pull out that much money but like maybe 750 dollars that is a ridiculous amount of money

to have on your purse on any time. How does, how does a bark at the money for the cell in that episode? In both cases, he just asked for it. Homer just pulls it out without question. It's a funny joke, but I am also with Matt Grady on this.

I'm just like, these are jokes like many on these in this era of the Simpsons that chip away at the reality of the show that it honestly in seasons five and six also been flushed away and even in some in season four yeah david murkin does it he's the guy that fucks all reality on the simpsons i would say they don't care that homer has no money but still homer i prefer a homer who's too stupid to know what a 20 bill is rather than a homer that knows like well yeah i just have money here i i just if the plot needs money i have it in my magic wallet i like bart's explanation to pay for a lawyer for my bum

his bum he never calls him chester never calls him so it's it's one-sided chester doesn't remember his name isn't brad and then bart never refers to as anything but bum at least he's trying yeah it's It's true. It's like that kid's in a hall sketch with a businessman. We get a nice little dinner scene, which I can see why people don't want to work with Chester J. Lampwick because he's an asshole. Paint my chicken coop.

I thought I recognized you. I gave you a plate of corn muffins back in 1947 to paint my chicken coop and you never did it those corn muffins were lousy paint my chicken coat make me wait wait wait wait there's an easy way to get rid of Chester without the guilt of sending him back to the gutter. And all it will cost you is $1,000. God, the foley continues throughout that conversation and the table keeps thumping upwards. Like there's some shit going on under that table.

One of those men should be dead. The animation of him, of grandpa, the feeble old man just blasting over that table and then them just punching each other repeatedly like that and then Krusty, like jumping like the fighting animation is great and i also like more more like uh inhumanity towards this homeless person the b-u-m like you can't spell there she he's no one to any of them he's not a person he doesn't have a name it's like give the dog a b-a-t-h but i'm on grandpa's side if lampwick ate those corn muffins, the deal is done.

You paint that chicken coop. They were lousy. I don't care. Just like the blintzes. Then do a half-assed job as the American way is for your payment of poor. Sherry Bobbins taught us. Exactly. Man, corn muffins, those cost like a dime to make a whole bunch of those.

He got ripped off. And yet they're so good. They're really good, yeah. I'm really hungry. So then when it hits the news, I do love the sub-headline I've got legal fee from some family. Some family. So then we get straight into the blue-haired

lawyer. I love him in this. He's so like angry. Exhibit A. Steamboat Itchy. Dated 1928. The very first Itchy and Scratchy cartoon. And the credits clearly state, written, directed, and created by Roger Myers. Music by Roger Myers and George Gershwin. Produced by Roger Myers and Joseph P. Kennedy.

Copyright 1928 by Roger Myers. You will also notice Mr. Myers' name and copyright notice on the original drawings of the other members of the Itchy and Scratchy family. Brown-nosed bear, disgruntled goat, flatulent fox, rich uncle skeleton, and dinner dog. My client's film predates all of those things, Your Honor. Oh, yes! i've forgotten your famous film the one you destroyed before the trial and haven't been able to find another copy of oh yes that film yes you don't have a copy do you he's a very good lawyer he's not even sleazy again i love dinner dog sorry dinner dog rich uncle skeleton which is also a deep animation joke base because like so many skeletons skeletons were just the most fun thing to animate i guess back then which continues today

with like things like coco but like the skeleton dance was one of the biggest cartoons ever for some reason i also feel like dan is just shouting all of these lines there's something more powerful to this this scene of blue hair lawyer where he's just screaming everything holding his nose and screaming yeah to do such a nasal voice but be screaming about it because he's blue-haired lawyers had to see some bad lawsuits in his day but this is the most like frivolous one he's ever been and i'm just like why are we even doing it you have no evidence you have nothing the last time we saw him square off against hutz was in the boy who knew too much right yeah he's also innocent of not being guilty yeah so he's like Evidence. You have nothing. The last time we saw him square off against Hutz was in The Boy Who Knew Too Much, right? Yeah.

He's also innocent of not being guilty. Yeah, so he probably hates Lionel Hutz now. Like, stop doing this. Stop pulling me. Why? I represent Mr. Burns. Like, I should not be here. I feel like they are referencing the fact that these two men have a history, and he's

like, you're wasting my time. So much recognized history in this, and same with i guess roger myers ripped off george gershwin and joseph p kennedy as well yeah should we say who those are george gershwin is like one of the most famous american composers rhapsody in blue yeah and joe kennedy is jfk's father he was like a bootlegger rum runner for a bit for a fashion he was basically the great gatsby yeah i think gershwin was one of the first egOTs, the original EGOT. It was... I learned about that from the EGOT storyline on

30 Rock that when they started naming people like, so here's most of the people who have won EGOTs. George Gershwin, Marvin Hamlisch, and it was just naming composers. The point is that if you stick with music, you're more likely

to win an oscar emmy tony i really think egots only exist so nerds can have trivia i want to be an egot so you need to win an edgar award for mystery writing an emmy uh what about a b god you need to win a ben abrith award oh yes that too uh wait what's what grammy grammy that's right oscar tony honestly tony has to count too do we really i mean hang on beam tv god because you need an mtv movie award uh an ace award cable ace award i recently went to lucasfilm uh to see star wars and uh the one photo i took while in their building which they let you take photos of it's cool was their mtv movie award i took i took a photo of the popcorn bucket.

Those still are a thing, right? Yeah, those still will happen. They're giant commercials more so than ever. But the music video awards don't happen, right? No, they still happen to. Wow. Yeah, because that's where twerking happened a couple years ago. Oh, you're right. When Beetlejuice twerked with Miley Cyrus.

Yes, the MTV Movie Awards. It's showtime. The wraparound segments and the hostles used to work with miley cyrus yes the vam tv movie awards uh it's showtime the like wraparound segments and the host segment used to be like some of my favorite stuff every year and they're still on youtube and some of them are still pretty fun they wrote great sketches for it it's something i love like even now say when aziz ansari gets put in charge of one of those he hires like basically these writing staff for comedy bang bang yeah write me sketches you're funny oh actually guys i looked it up. George Gershwin, not an EGOT winner.

I was wrong. Rich Uncle Skeleton and Disgruntled Goat. One, it's great seeing old Disgruntled Goat before his 70s redo that we saw in previous films. I want merch of all these characters. I want t-shirts. Nina Matsumoto, if you're listening, please, we'll pay you to make us Rich Uncle Skeleton t-shirts.

When I went to Springfield at Universal, I thought I would be able to buy all this stuff, and they really, the merch is okay there, but it's not. By Universal standards, which has awful merch in general, the Simpsons stuff is better. An XXL Men in Black t-shirt. You don't get the Dennis Miller ratio t-shirts

at Universal Studios. And also, Clarabelle and Horace are basically the forgotten dinner dog type characters. Although they just redid them at Disneyland. They did, wow. They have brand new costumes. All right, wow.

Good for old Clarabelle and Horace. There's a Cartoons 101 video about the most obscure animation references in Disney World, and they get a little shout out in there. And I just love how limply Hutz asks for that copy, like, you have a copy? And then we get to hear from Krusty, which he had worked with him on those blintzes.

And then he's beating an old 90-year-old man in a courtroom. He's going to jail. I like him saying, I want those blintzes back. One of my favorite drawings in Simpsons history is the angry way, the disdainful way crusty looks back at the judge that reaction like there's no sound like it's it's it's such a weird placement just just they hang on him for just long enough that it's fucking hilarious and it's such an odd drawing like it's a weird angle for him the way he just turns back yeah like he doesn't even you think

they throw a little foley like a or an out it's like a grimace just like how dare you i paused that i paused that scene to type, nobody cares about your blintzes, but then I saw the Krusty expression. I'm like, wow, that's like an angle and an expression I've never seen on Krusty before. It's such a great drawing. It's so emotive.

So I wonder with all the legal stuff in this, if lawyers on staff, including Dan Graney, really helped inform this, especially this back and forth about objections and sustaining. Now, Mr. Lampwick, when Roger Myers stole your character. Objection. Sustained.

If I hear objection and sustain one more time today, I think I'm going to scream. Objection. Sustained. Roger Myers didn't create any of his characters. He stole them all. The only characters Myers could ever come up with were pathetic stick figures with the words

sarcastic horse and manic mailman printed on them. And they stank. So he started stealing other people's characters. That's a lie. Are you saying, under oath, Mr. Myers, that your father didn't steal any of the characters associated with your studio? Well, I don't think I am under oath, Mr. Myers, that your father didn't steal any of the characters associated with your studio.

Well, I don't think I am under oath, but yes, my father created them all. Except for Fletcher and Fox. That was based on a true story. But he did create Itchy. That's one thing I am sure of. Mr. Hutch, we've been in here for four hours. Do you have any evidence at all? Well, Your Honor, we've got plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence. I do love, your honor, we've got plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence. I do love that a lot. Yeah, I like,

even though he was only doing one take, Kirk Douglas really sells the anger in that scene. I really like it. He gives a fantastic voice performance in this episode.

I just love that. And they stink. And they stink. Oh, I want to see what sarcastic horse looks like. He's not part of the collection. Oh, I'm so fast.

Bill Oakley points out in the commentary that Principal Skinner's there, and he's like, why isn't he at work? Yeah, I did notice that before the commentary. I was like, wait, he's one of the few recognizable people in the audience outside of the Simpson family. What's he even there for? And I just love it. Those are kinds of evidence.

His hands out just like, eh. Being that they're inadmissible. And so they've hit the wall, of evidence is hands out just like being that they're inadmissible and so they've hit the wall and then fortunately Bart remembers the plot point and runs away because there's really no other way to move this story forward and Homer gives over $750

just hands it over and Hudson's new returning surprise witnesses include the large twins explaining our king size homer mccreary twins yeah that's right and john swartzwalder walks in too yeah it's weird he's wearing like bart's t-shirt and homer's pants yeah he's got some weird colors on him it's very it's it's very strange i'm sure that's observed from the way he really dresses because he's a weird

giant man i have to think that comic book guy is going to kill himself when he finds out that he sold that for $750. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. That was nothing. Hopefully, he never finds out because otherwise he would have had a heart attack. He's not going to get any part of that $80 billion. No way. Well, neither do the Simpsons either.

That's true. Bart has found the evidence. Look under the frame, Brad. Careful. Careful. It's there! To Roger Myers, keep drawing. Your moxie more than makes up for your lack of talent.

Your pal, Chester J. Lampwick, September 3, 1919. Okay, maybe my dad did steal Itchy, but so what? Animation is built on plagiarism. If it weren't for someone plagiarizing the Honeymooners, we wouldn't have the Flintstones. If someone hadn't ripped off Sergeant Bilko, there'd be no Top Cat. Huckaberry Hound, Chief Wiggum, Yogi Bear. Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robertson, Art Carney. Your Honor, you take away our right to steal ideas. Where are they going to come from?

Her? How about ghost mutt? The court rules in favor of Mr. Lampwick. Itchy and Scratchy Studios will pay a restitution of $800 billion. Though that amount will probably come down a bit on appeal. There's so much to unpack here. First of all, that thing is evidence. They probably didn't have to pay for it.

They could have even just sent the lawyers and the defendant to the store to open it. Bart just moved too fast. He wanted to shock everybody. He knew for dramatic purposes. I mean, Dan Graney was on the staff, but I don't think you can introduce surprise evidence. I think it has to be like a vetted first.

Yeah, that careful, careful. It's so painful to watch him tear it apart. And the foley is great. It's just all the shattering glass, all the shattering glass noises. But it's also like, it's one of those things that has accidentally entered my vocabulary

where like if I'm doing anything, like if I'm chopping vegetables or anything, I'm like careful, careful, like and miming, cutting myself or something. So then Marge says the ghost mutt thing. Ghost mutts. On the commentary, I believe it's Josh Weinstein says, he gets very animated and upset the way he does

where he's like, since then I have seen at least two incarnations of that exact idea. The bad idea we came up with. Well, I mean, ghost mutt is like the cousin of the groovy ghoulie as well yeah i i think to myers fucks it up so i love that the blue hair lawyer just slaps his face because yeah that's a great little touch in that scene like it's still just hearsay there's no proof that that is it until myers says okay so we stole it it's like you just admitted anyone could have written that

and i like that an animated show is throwing the history of animation under the bus like yes we just stole everything well it's pro plagiarism defense really is anti hannah barbara everything he names that isn't chief wiggum is a hannah barbara cartoon and that's also one of the like comic book stores don't like selling signed merchandise for that reason because they're like we can't prove that unless it has a certificate with it we can't prove this is jim lee's signature and it's like well who signed that certificate yeah yeah it's signatures are nice if you get them for yourself and you can remember i was there when stan lee signed this but somebody hands you a thing signed by stan lee even if you trust its validity it doesn't mean the same like it's not a memory that you were there

yeah and so this so i i have this ongoing theory that's i wanted to make a video about this for a while but i got to do a lot of research for it that after the grimy episode that's when the simpsons reality is entirely broken and nothing fucking matters like that's like their flashpoint that's like okay fuck it and now they can say chief wiggum ever g robinson like he says this is a cartoon he is a cartoon we are all in a cartoon because nothing matters anymore this show has gone on for so long we've had similar things of them pointing out is this the end of uh our series of events yeah yeah that was a great episode of our lives what's on fox tonight

something eyeballed no bad uh but But Hanna-Barbera, like, we talk it sometimes. There's one person who always gets mad that we make fun of Hanna-Barbera and I'm sorry, but I can't defend Hanna-Barbera. It's me.

It's also me. It's also Matthew J. I know the guy you're talking about. It's not me, but. No, I say, that's cool.

Have that opinion and you can have it, but I can't like Hanna-Barbera. I never liked it even as a kid who would watch anything. Yeah, I don't care that you guys

don't like Hanna-Barbera, but I am a big defender of Hanna-Barbera. I never liked it, even as a kid who would watch anything. Yeah, I don't care that you guys don't like Hanna-Barbera, but I am a big defender of Hanna-Barbera. I think Hanna and Barbera, they probably fucked people over just like Yesterday Lampwick. As businessmen, they must have. I appreciate their pre-TV work a lot. They were fantastic artists and animators.

But even their TV work, they fucked up animation, but not on purpose. They made animation cheaper yeah for themselves to make a million cartoons to sell them but like and then the rest of the world followed that that those those footsteps but they didn't destroy animation on purpose you'll appreciate hannah barbara a lot more when you watch filmmation cartoons or yeah below that you're like oh boy these okay fine give me more hannah barbara these were the high budget there

are like 20 more drawings i can look at and like a lot of their cartoons are very derivative uh which a leads to great things like what's new or not what's new scooby-doo that show wasn't as good but uh mystery inc where there's an episode where they go to a convention for teen mystery solvers and all those shows characters are together well yeah well that that kind of stuff i like it too but that was after pretty much the retirement of hannah barBarbera in the early 90s. That's when the kids who grew up with it and getting stoned watching shit could finally... The first time they ever got to do anything like that was Pup Named Scooby-Doo.

And even that barely got to be jokey about, no, Fred isn't just all-American boy. Freddy is annoying and people don't like him red herring but they they particularly scooby-doo like some of their shows are very good and were especially for the time very good they just made so much bullshit around that but like scooby-doo i think is it gets such a bad rap because of all the stuff that came after it like the 13 ghosts of scooby-doo or whatever dumb bullshit all the TV movies or whatever. But my bonkers theory is like, no, this is the counterculture show about a bunch of draft-dodging, pot-smoking, dumb teenagers

who decided to live in a van instead of going to college, and they drive around the country. To have a cartoon about that at that same time period, where things like Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy were coming out, I feel like they were going for a similar thing and i appreciate the way that they did it somehow there was a beatnik in 1969 yeah and and same with like making the flintstones like same thing like with these shows where they're like they were i mean they were doing the same thing the simpsons were they were like hey we can make these grown-up shows as a cartoon why not they were pioneers

but i'm glad someone like in the 80s was like let's spend money on this yes i don't let's get around to spending some money oh man i'm glad that like spielberg and nickelodeon and all those guys came i made a 30 minute documentary about this exactly like i love that that ended but i think they much like you know the other a lot of the other creators we've uh creators we've talked about in this episode i think they get kind of a bad rap where they fucked a lot of stuff up but out of them trying to make more cartoons. Yeah. Which I cannot chagrin anybody for. But American animation is definitely a bedrock.

A core of it is plagiarism. Like, you wouldn't, Bugs Bunny wouldn't say, of course, you know, this means war if he didn't steal it from Groucho Marx. Like, I remember watching in the, like, giant bucket of Looney Toney tunes you get on nickelodeon that were so wildly varying in quality there were multiple ones are like well this is jack benny but he's a mouse or this is the honeymoon in that case he's a mouse they were played by jack benny and the characters from that including mel blank the actors were there but in many cases it was just like no we like this radio character let's just remake him as an animal yeah or abed and costello except they're cats chasing after tweety bird i feel like with how litigious companies are and how much they care about ip this could not happen like what

if cartoon network made the big bang theory but with animals and it was just that show there was not it was not a take on it was just like what if they were all animals instead of people like they would be sued out of existence that's what's not fun about today that's why like even when you go back to 2002 or whatever when like jla avengers happened that crossover especially at that size is not going to happen again the characters in the movies aren't going to cross over roger rabbit's never going to happen again i mean that one barely got to happen it was like grandfathered in of you've been working on this for five years so we're not going to stop it but this is it look never we can't afford marv wolfman anymore like we can't afford the guys that are making this anymore so we're gonna let them do

it on their own time well speaking of money uh the the check is cut and chester j lampwick is satisfied bites it it's at least one billion dollars i hope you're happy, kid. The studio's bankrupt. You just killed Itchy and Scratchy. We killed Itchy and Scratchy? Good riddance. Want to go celebrate?

I feel like liver and onions. Mmm. Okay, so my grand theory about all of this i put together in my head after watching this episode is that in any in any sitcom including the simpsons the court trial would be the end of the third act or it would be settled in the end of the third act the episode would end this episode now is about the existential dilemma of sitcom characters that are in an episode with a bad structure it's just like they're the episode ended the episode ends in act two and in act three they don't know what to do they're like what do we do now like

this episode's over but we still have an act to kill and that's why this episode wraps up the way it is I really think that's what they were going for because again this story is over and after this Bart and Lisa have nothing to do with anything that follows but they're just like I guess we kill eight minutes doing whatever maybe we and later they try to

like no this is the end of a third act we'll we'll save something yeah like when yeah you're right well bart the revelation bart has is an end of episode revelation not end of act two revelation this also is very similar to the end of act one in bart the fake of bart realizing he accidentally destroyed a thing he loves in a very similar way of him just like slouching at the crowd after he killed it. And in a way like Chester Lampwick is kind of the villain after this. Just like

the kind of like passive villain where it's like he's just this rich asshole now. And the liver and onions is trying to be the new dud of Simpsons shitposting. I just love the sound of the licking of lips. I think we talked about it, but I forget where we talked about it,

but the greatest one is from Homer vs. the 18th Amendment in which the women on the duff float are firing liver and onions out of the cannon instead of beer, and everyone who's catching it in their mouths have the Chester J. Lampwick mouth. So Lampwick pays them back the $1,000 and the $750 and a couple of bucks for their troubles. I think he's still trapped in 1920 where that'll buy you a steak dinner

with all the trimmings. Well, but Homer's happy for it. Homer should ask for a million dollars. He's like, hey, look, a couple of bucks. And then he talks about his hobo dreams of richness, which I just love. This episode's running long, so I won't play it, but John Mulaney has a whole stand-up bit about how Donald Trump in 2007

was what a homeless person dreamed of being rich. Like, I'm going to put my name on everything. I'll have solid gold hair. You've seen his solid gold interior of his house before, like the disgusting photos of his family i saw john mulaney do that bit live uh right when donald trump was considering running for president and john mulaney was saying run it'll be hilarious like many comedians said at the time yep golden age for jokes yeah so uh then we find out how fucked the whole world is now crusty just looking head on a camera is like no more itchy and scratchy guys uh but uh we'll try to make learning fun and just his

his promise of toy commercials is yeah great one to play a toy commercial after this just don't worry uh and then we get into one of the most well wait hang on i do want to mention so they they play a schoolhouse rock parody with the i believe the real guy and it is jack sheldon still alive at 86 we didn't kill him yeah but they uh they don't like it and lisa calls it one of those campy 70s throwbacks that appeals to gen xers which the simpsons parodying that then and now is that is i think hilarious where like the creator came out and is upset that they can't make jokes about indian people anymore because people are just pretending to be offended. You live too long, you see yourself become the villain real hard.

I mean, they're shitting on themselves intentionally, but to just say like, oh, do you think we're lame for being Gen Xers making a Schoolhouse Rock reference? We think so too, so there. And originally, the idea was Schwarzwälder pitched that it would be a Simpsons parody that they were watching and didn't like.

It just was too meta for them, though. It's amazing. Too meta for Oakley and Weinstein. So, I like this. I don't know if I'm fully aware of the satirical intent, because I think it's a bit fuzzy. I think the joke is that it's a right-wing version of the very fluffy and hippie and liberal Schoolhouse Rock,

but I don't quite get the satirical intent beyond that. I mean, the satirical, yeah, I mean the satirical yeah i i think they lose it a little bit it's but yeah the the schoolhouse rock shorts which premiered in the 1970s and the main songwriter and performer of them bob duro just passed away actually and one of my favorites is three is a magic number that but they're so hippie, especially like Three is a Magic Number, so hippie dippy. And like, isn't math nice? It's kind of, I guess that's why the amendment to be like, I'm just a bill is very plain and just about like, I'm a bill.

This is how a bill becomes a law. Isn't this fun? Yeah. But I feel like in terms of politics, the right wing of America, they don't want the Constitution changed or amended in any way. So it's very weird to see this right wing perspective where this amendment wants to be in the Constitution

or the Bill of Rights or whatever. Well, they've kind of dropped it because they're not going to get it. But flag burning was way, it's a major thing for Republicans into the 2000s. They're like, I'm going to create create like they kept creating laws of like this will make it illegal to burn a flag well it's found unconstitutional okay what about this law nope found unconstitutional i think it was maybe even

like a decade or 15 years ago that the last the last real attempt to do that was done in on a major scale and it still didn't work and for it to work they would have to change the constitution and they there have been submitted amendments for it but amendments almost never pass it's it's kind of almost impossible especially with how split things are now you would need honestly more than 60 more than two-thirds because i uh of one party being in both houses of congress which you know if the Democrats keep fucking up, maybe that will happen and the GOP will get it. But at this point, they still don't have that big a majority,

not in both houses. I can tell you what the last amendment was, and it's so boring. It's the 27th amendment passed in 1992. Wow. It delays laws affecting congressional salary from taking effect until after the next election of representatives.

So, wow. So they can't give themselves raises. Take that, that libs and the last one before that was 1971 prohibits the denial of right of u.s citizens 18 years older to vote on account of age ah that lowered the voting age that's that's a good one but yeah the the flag burning thing it's something i talked with friends or somebody younger than me when I work with them they told me like oh man you can't even burn a flag I was like no no you can I think people it's this just oppressive idea of like no you're not allowed to burn a flag like I'm not saying you wouldn't get some nasty looks at you if you burn the American flag you certainly would but there is no law

against it like there was there was just recently an awesome story of a dude who the cops arrested him for burning a flag on his lawn and then he sued the cops and got money for them infringing and the first thing that he did to celebrate it he posted a photo of him on facebook burning another that owns i love it look you can i i completely am cool with people who are just like i wouldn't burn a flag it's disgusting or it's our country or whatever but it it is freedom of expression i know alt-right dudes are now saying that freedom of speech only applies to nazis being able to say things but it also applies to flag burning so you know yeah i bought this force awakens dvd with my own money i can burn that too i can if i bought flag, I can burn it. I also love that the flag burner is drawn to be

Abby Hoffman. That's pretty good. Well, itching scratchy are gone, but here's a cartoon that tries to make learning fun. Ha ha ha ha. Ugh. Sorry about this, kids, but stay tuned. We got some real good toy commercials coming right up.

I swear. Hey! Who left all this garbage on the steps of Congress? I'm not garbage. I'm an amendment to be. Yes, an amendment to be. And I'm hoping that they'll ratify me. There's a lot of flag burners who have got too much freedom. I want to make it legal for policemen to beat them Cause there's limits to our liberties At least I hope and pray that there are

Cause those liberal freaks go too far Why can't we just make a law against flag burning? Because that law would be unconstitutional But if we change the constitution Then we could make all sorts of crazy laws against flag burning. Because that law would be unconstitutional. But if we change the Constitution... Then we could make all sorts of crazy laws. Now you're catching on. What the hell is this?

It's one of those can-be-70s throwbacks that appeals to Generation Xers. We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks a little. What if people say you're not good enough to be in the Constitution? Then I'll crush all opposition to me. And I'll make Ted Kennedy pay. If he fights back, I'll say that he's gay. Good news, amendment. They ratified ya.

You're in the U.S. Constitution. Oh, yeah. Doors open, boys. I like freedom rhymes with beat them. That's so good. Yes, freedom rhymes with beat them. And they really did get Jack Shelton, who, and honestly, he did so many of the Schoolhouse Rocks parodies. He was on Family Guy.

He was on Johnny Bravo more than once. He is a resident of my old haunt of Jacksonville, Florida as well. I like that they make him say because those liberal freaks go too far. And that he will call Teddy Kennedy gay. It's the most artless and just like blunt line of that song. It's those liberal freaks. I'll crush all opposition to me. This feels like an un-Schwarzwalder thing because he's a little more right wing.

Yeah. I wonder if that's why they did it too as a parody of swartz welder's libertarian values so once the song is over bard and lisa are inspired to do violence just out of anger because they don't want to learn things they want to watch violent cartoons yeah it causes lisa to punch bard and i love her like satisfied yeah i forgot about that that's how the scene changes. So they head over to Alex Rocco to see how they can get Itchy and Scratchy to return. You've got to make more Itchy and Scratchy cartoons. The judge says it's okay as long as

you pay Mr. Lampric royalties. Royalties? I don't have the money to produce the cartoons. I lost everything. I can't even keep my dad's head in the freaking cryogenic center anymore. You're comfortable in there,

daddy? Look, if money's the only problem, I know a guy who has lots of it. Shoeshine, sir? Comb your hair for you? Sir? Sir? Sir? Sir? Okay. Catch you on the way back oh hi kids hi chester listen would you pay to make more edgy and scratchy cartoons you'll get more royalties i don't need any more money i'm not greedy as long as i've got my health and my millions of dollars and my gold house and my

rocket car i don't need anything else yes but not interested i love that roger myers jr has like a little office set up at the worst western where he's made a desk out of boxes but he's still wearing like the wife beater like tank top shirt he knows that he's supposed to have a desk especially for the scene to work so many times it's been bart and or lisa on the other side of his desk asking him to do something so he has to have a desk that's right i wonder if he made them pause to be like guys i'm setting up a desk here we can't just talk when i'm sitting in bed and the one thing i really like too that i noticed this time is that um originally uh the many times i've seen this before i thought

roger myers jr was like kicking the thing his dad's head was in or kicking like the dresser it was on top of but no the head is moving on its own it's just gurgling yeah is it alive is it just settling or melting i hope it's not alive uh so there's there's still no proof that disney did cryogenically freeze himself or not right they no i looked this up on snopes his ashes are in forest lawn i think i mean isn't that what the disney family would tell you neck down they are maybe There's a bit of him in every churro. For a long time, they would say he's under Epcot. Also,

because Epcot's all about science. I mean, it was. Now it's about Gardens of the Galaxy and Frozen. No, I mean, he was, officially he was cremated.

So there was no body to put on ice. But that's what I said. That's what the Disney family would want you to believe. He was chopped up into the ink. And I, Rocco is so good they're like comfortable daddy yeah a lot of father issues going on between the myers boys there and then meanwhile that like their plan for chester's like pay for your own itchy and scratchy cartoons so then you'll get paid a royalty by yourself to make them that is good logic uh so the rocket car is based on something only kids from the 70s would understand it's based on the blue flame the blue flame is a real life rocket car that set the land

speed record in 1970 at 622 miles per hour land speed record is that the car from the beginning of killer seven uh maybe but it looks just like Chester's car, but that record was beaten twice in the future. I think the highest land speed record for a car was like 700 something miles per hour. But it was a rocket car. Was anyone in that car? They'd be killed. You can drive that car in Simpsons Hidden Run

and you can go to that gold house. That's one of the first things I looked for in that amazing game was the solid gold house. Also, the continuity of it that it still is that Kent Brockman lives in the rich guy neighborhood just because he still is a lottery winner. And I like that he's still turning his nose up at the billionaire vagrants. Yeah, it's such a great gag that he can't drop his vagrant tendencies no matter how rich he is.

I do like that added, like, comb your hair. That's never an option. Who would ever let a homeless man comb their hair? So they tried their last-ditch effort was to ask for the money for a licensing fee from Homer, which the $183,000 amount is so specific that I wonder if it was some licensing fee on The Simpsons. Like Beatles song or something. Or the syndication rights for every episode. It would probably be.

I mean, at this point, I think The Simpsons was like a million dollar an episode show. Oh, way more than that. Yeah. So like $183,000 to fund a series of cartoons, that doesn't seem like a lot of money, even for 1996. Well, I always read that to be just to pay the royalty fee, just to get past that. But then you need money to hire animators and everybody like that. Maybe it's for that, too. I think, though, this also establishes that from this point on in the series, Chester J. Lampwick, on top of being a billionaire from just the court settlement, he gets a royalty every time they make anything new with itchy and scratchy in that world so he's

he's getting he's getting pretty rich for the last few remaining years of his life hey hey uh kirk's still around so that's right all the liver and onions he can eat though every day uh so although the 75th anniversary he's at least 90 when bart meets him like he could have been an animation wunderkeen and had been like 14 when he animated that in 1919 i want to think he was maybe like 20 and he's like 95 now uh but so this is when it gets the madness truly begins bart and lisa are doing the thing they always do in an episode which is try to find the way to fix it. And Marge just extra hang a lantern on it, lets him know how they're the main characters of a cartoon.

I give up. There's nothing we can do. Yeah, I agree. You want to start on trying to get Apu out of jail? Okay. Wait, kids, you can't give up on Etchy and Scratchy. You're always so good at these things. What, together you've reunited Krusty with his father,

gotten Principal Skinner's job back, and helped Dr. Riviera perform open-heart surgery on your father. You've even foiled Sideshow Bob on five separate occasions. And he's an evil genius. You're right, Mom. I'm sure if we put our minds to it, we can solve this one, too. Bard, look at this. So I think it's Bard who says, I'm sure if we could put our minds to it. Is that Bard who said that?

Yeah. And after that, he slides the book to Lisa and then nods. That's his role in this entire thing. I'll shove this book towards Lisa, and she'll do it. But they're pouring over just like fact after fact all these books they borrowed from the library just to do any research and they've just hit a wall where they're like we have to it's our job to figure out the fix to put everything back to normal because they also know that like things have to go back to normal by the end of this episode again they're they're fictional characters

in an existential dilemma like no like we need we need to be the ones who figure this out and the show should have ended with act two but now we're just stuck doing it like in limbo sort of and the way marge lists all those things that lets you know like if you were to remember if the characters in this were to remember all the things they accomplished that would be the most interesting life any human has ever lived i was uh one of the first spec scripts i tried to write was for the simpsons which they say don't write a specter for the simpsons even though that's how uh childish can't be you know got his job on 30 rock uh my the plot i wanted to do was where the simpsons go on vacation for like a weekend and when they come

back the town isn't ruins because no one was there to solve all the problems so i love it i may write that someday i like that but this ending so i feel like it's completely earned but i also feel like it's very murkiny and how it is like no fuck you yeah none of this mattered but i like the idea that's in some alternate universe there was a half hour episode about lester and eliza and then they were like oh these two idiots fucked it up we'll solve the case so there's like in another world where these characters are in a family and that's their show. So these worlds are colliding.

They found an answer and I would love to know what that copyright answer is. That's another great screw you moment. Just like, we're not going to tell you how they did it. Screw copyright law. But a difference,

well, actually that's a difference between a Merkin episode and an Oakley Weinstein one because for example, in Two Dozen and One Greyhounds, they're like how did you get here before us there'll be time for the answers later yeah and there's never an answer in this case they could have just said lester and eliza save the day somehow anyway itchy and

scratchy is back but the manic mailman answer is an answer like it is it is an earned rebel resolution what a perfect plan now roger myers hotel is just so when no one could think of a plan to resurrect itchy and scratchy a young boy a wonderful irrepressible young boy took it on his own to solve the problem he discovered that the postal services mr zip was just a ripoff of my father's stick figure character manic mailman so the government gave me a huge cash settlement and itchy and scratchy studios is back in business thanks to you lester Zip, once a famous post office mascot I'll tell you why Because at a certain point, the post office was like

There's too many addresses You assholes need to start using zip codes Because in the past, you didn't even need to write a zip code on a letter So they just sent a state and it went there Yeah, hopefully a city too You need zip codes to tell what buckets to put mail into Pretty much But like in, I believe, maybe the 60s or 70s

Mr. Zip was like the marketing campaign like hey guys you need to start using zip codes Mr. Zip will be there to inform you but in an old building I worked in in Youngstown, Ohio it was like built in 1910. This was Youngstown, Ohio a very dead and shitty town and I worked in the basement of a bank doing nothing. So during the day no one trained me

and I was being paid to do nothing so I was like I'm going to explore this old building. It was sort of like urban exploration But on every floor there was A pneumatic tube system with Mr. Zip things All over it so you could tell the last Year anyone used any of those floors In that building and I just Remembered Manic Mailman when I saw that

Mr. Mr. Zip yeah He was created in 62 From the then new zip codes And apparently was retired in 1986. Wow. Though they put him on a stamp in 2013 to celebrate 50 years of zip codes. I think that's when I think I saw that and was like, that's a real thing. At some point in my life, I saw him and knew him as this Simpsons joke and was like, oh, that was a real character.

I wonder if they had to pay the post office or something to do that when I saw this I was just like I'll take your word for it because this is probably real but only until I like had the internet and then worked in that building like oh Mr. Zip is real and I love Alex Rocco's huge cash settlement he's so excited and this feels like a very

Schwarzwelder-y thing that the fix is ripping off the government for billions of dollars. The poor post office needs more funding. It's hard enough on them. So Lester and Eliza, they appear, they are, I think it's great that Wes Archer directed this because

he is a shorts original. So he draws Lester, they draw Lester and Eliza in the same style as Bart and Lisa in the shorts with wild hair that you'd only see from one angle because you can't turn characters like that because their hair's too crazy and same with like more bulbous noses and slightly off-center eyes breaking specifically the Simpsons drawing rules and so let's hear from Lester and Eliza. This is a great vindication for anybody who was ever taking a bath,

went to get the paper, fell down, and had the door slam behind them and the doorknob break off. And I'd like to thank Lester for reuniting me with my estranged wife. I never even heard about that. I don't understand it. We're always the ones who solve these problems. I guess you don't need it now, but we had a plan too. Hey, great. Listen, write it down and mail it to last week when I might have cared. I've got cartoons to make, kids.

So again, these sitcom characters are having an existential dilemma. They're like, no, we solve these problems. I didn't even know about that problem. We should have been the ones to solve Krusty's problem. What is happening here? They are just disrupted in their lives. Like, what? Yeah.

What the hell? And then Apu's outfit to me tells me that it implies that he's been left naked the entire time since he was arrested. I love his very complicated story of the many things that happened that fucked him over. I like that joke could be read as either he did go through like a Charlie Chaplin-esque series of mistakes, or that's just the lie he said while trying to expose himself. Oh, man, he's problematic for so many reasons. Oh, no. So the last dumb cartoon thing I will drop in this episode is that when I was a kid, I had an album on tape called Mickey Unwrapped, which I'll you guys the cover boy which is real 1994 making a gang sign mickey's

making gang signs and he's sagging his jeans around he's also wearing the red shorts still wow uh and it was a series of uh rap parodies sung by the disney characters and one of them is called you can't botch this uh spelled u for the word you just the letter u referencing you can't touch this and it was about the disney characters uh making mistakes and goofy's mistake is he goes out to get the paper in his robe and he gets locked out his front door so it's so they beat you too at simpson sorry apu oh dang it's a two-year difference uh do you guys want to hear it because i can i can play it right now absolutely i don't know as well i don't remember how far in goofy comes in but he's in there.

We can find him. Can't watch this. Can't watch this. Can't watch this. I went outside in my underwear. The door blew shut. I was stuck out there. The wall came up on us full of kids. You know what they said? Can't watch this. okay man like all of their predicaments are like, I got wet. Oh, no. Water is definitely their enemy.

I got soaked with a hose. And I wonder who this estranged Rife was for Krusty, though. I'm guessing he soon got divorced because it's established in many episodes later, he's married many women, including the kit. He has two illegitimate children, including Drew Barrymore and a baby that looks like him. Yeah, those are the only two. Although, hey, that could be anyone's butt.

And so, yeah, it's disturbing. It's almost Invasion of the Body Snatchers-y as well. So then they cut to one last 18 Scratchy cartoon. Just so you know, it's a Roadrunner parody. He has Acme shoes on, even. Scratchy does. I do like the existence of

a mouse god that he like just kills scratchy goes right to hell just stops a big monty python foot stop he sends him straight to hell and they break their rule of like we're gonna show god's face when he's uh when he's a mouse we'll do that and they get lester and eliza very special thanks at the end yes it's beautiful and so uh we get to our unsettling ending. You kids must be so happy. Your cute little cartoon friends are back on the air. Yes, well, technically everything worked out all right, but... But?

Well, I wasn't the one who solved the problem, and neither was Lisa. Yeah. There's something unsettling about that. act two like for bart and lisa their episode is over in act two and they don't know what to do and the entire act three is pointing out like you are not the protagonist of reality other characters can solve things but they're not used to that they're used to being in a world in which their family is the root of everything that happens in springfield they learn they're not the center of the universe and it's disturbing to them or they've learned that a new character has come on their show to replace them as the star it's very much like the evil doppelganger thing, too. But I feel like other episodes in the future would do this sort of ending, but they would not earn it.

They'd just be like, the last five seconds, like, I don't know. Like, they would just, and that would be the joke. Like, you don't get an ending. That's the joke. But with this, they rob you of an ending, but they work very hard to rob you of an ending. But then they do something interesting with the characters by not giving them an ending. So I feel like in this case, this is like the one time they did it right,

this kind of ending. I agree. I like the, they have to talk it out so much that it makes the non-ending work. I guess the difference is that you can tell the effort expended by the people making it is the same as if they did give you a regular ending as opposed to, well, this is no ending.

And I can tell you guys kind of wanted to call it a day early. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how you guys when you first saw this, what you thought. But I was like, oh, my God, that's so amazing. I didn't know you could do that on a TV show. Like, I thought it was like it was mind blowing for me as like a 14 year old. I don't know if you were like, I wanted to see Bart and Lisa win. Yeah, when I saw it, I got the reference to it,

but I think it took a couple of reviewings for it really to hit me of like, oh, this is an entire parody of just the idea of an episode of The Simpsons. I was more impressed with it every time I watched it, just how gutsy it was. And when I first started watching this again last night, I totally forgot about that third act because it just like disconnected from everything. But then I'm like, oh, right, this is the non-ending episode. It's not speaking about anything. It's just about these two characters lost in this world now. Yeah.

With nothing to do. I never really thought about that i i definitely didn't think about it in the sense of your theory that it's about the horrible limbo of being a television character who doesn't age and much live must live in this formulaic existence uh so that actually brought it up like a couple uh like as one i do love this episode because the animation history references to it and it is a very funny episode but i do feel like that last act even though it has that it needs a little bit more it needs a little bit something for me there's a little little kick in it it is definitely padded out by almost two minutes of schoolhouse rock parody yeah it's pretty much unrelated to anything but i i still have a ton of fun with that schoolhouse rock yeah

kirk douglas is amazing in it he makes he makes this whole episode live forever kirk totally great how dare you outlive william hickey sir and your own son probably yes probably so yes please hang in there kirk douglas for the few weeks and you're dead already i did it i'm sorry everybody but thanks for listening to talking simpsons uh i'll tell you more about where you can find us in a second let's talk about matthew j it's the first episode of talking simpsons where else can we find you matt hey i make uh we're talking about all this cartoon. I make a whole show on YouTube about that called Cartoons 101 at youtube.com slash cartoons101. You can also support it on Patreon

at patreon.com slash cartoons101 where you get an exclusive podcast where I talk about cartoons like Neon Genesis Evangelion on our show, Conversation Genesis Evangelion, that I do with a ton of people, my dumb internet nerd dork friends about anime, like you guys. Hey, wait a minute. I may be dumb internet nerd dork friends about anime, like you guys.

Hey, wait a minute. I may be dumb and a dork, but... Tristan Cooper, David Bednar, Alex Fraioli, Don from Anime Nostalgia Podcast, Grant from Blade Licking Thieves, two of the hosts of the One Piece podcast or he may have just been on it or about to be on it. Yeah, it's a fun show.

And I also interview creators of shows and cartoons that I like. Like I'm gonna to evan dorgan at some point i talked to scott gerdner creator of moonbeam city i talked to bill oakley right uh showrunner of this episode he tells me all about his show mission hill our friend yeah you're a friend of this show bill oakley which had nothing to do with me getting him on the show because it's we're talking about mission hill not even the simpsons i may be talking to Dana Snyder, who answered me right before we started recording this episode. And that's all at Cartoons 101,

both on Patreon and on YouTube. I'm a patron, everybody. I support this product. I appreciate it. Thank you. And I'm a patron of this show. And tell me all about this show's Patreon. I can tell you all about that.

Thank you, Matthew. So this show and all of our products and networks and shows and whatnot are supported by the Talking Simpsons Patreon. If you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, you can give any amount you want. You can give us a dollar if you appreciate us, but if you give $5, you get a ton of stuff. I'll tell you a little

bit about that. You get every episode of Talking Simpsons a week ahead of time and ad-free. And then you get also every episode of What a Cartoon, our other animation podcast that we get ahead of time and ad-free. There's also the entire, for the $5 level, you get also every episode of What a Cartoon, our other animation podcast that we get ahead of time and ad-free. There's also the entire, for the $5 level, you get the entire run of Talking Critic, all of Talking Futurama, interviews with Simpsons directors, the entire first season of Talking Simpsons. What am I missing, Henry?

There's even more on top of that for $5 patrons. Season wrap-ups where at the end of every season we talk about the news and events that happened during the production season. We've done it for 2, 3, 4, five, six, and certainly soon seven. We also do the deleted scenes that are on the DVDs for seasons five and six, and we do some audio commentary for that. But if you support at the $10 level, you'll get access to a monthly exclusive video that includes the videos of the deleted scenes from the seasons five and six, as well as Bob and me giving commentary to those classic shorts that we talked about a little bit earlier here, where we went through all of the shorts. So if you've never seen the original Simpsons shorts on Tracy Ullman, which I doubt you have, at least not all of them, check them out with our viewing of them at the $10 plus level.

That's right. And I think as of this recording, a recent week on Patreon for $5 patrons, we had a new exclusive piece of content every day for six days in a row. Jesus. So that's not going to be every week, but that just shows you for five bucks, you get all that and everything we've done

for almost an entire year. Hundreds of podcasts at this point. Well, over a hundred of podcasts at this point, including also, I didn't even mention those interviews, not just the bill oakley one we've done but dan graney a writer on this season david silverman the supervising director of this season and another simpsons legend and so many more folks plus some even some live shows that bob and me have done oh yeah three live shows are on there as well hopefully we'll do more more soon. But as for me, by the way, patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. As for me, I'm Bob Mackie.

Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo and talk to me and say hi. Henry, how about you? At H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. Thank you for listening, folks. We'll see you next week for A Fish Called Selma. See you then. Wow. Infotainment.