Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Front With Nick Wiger

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

In an episode parodying the process of TV comedy writing, we welcome back WGA writer Nick Wiger (also from the podcasts Doughboys and Get Played)! Bart and Lisa get hired to secretly write Itchy & Scratchy in a plot referencing Tiny Toons/the blacklist, all while Abe does the iggy. Meanwhile, Homer goes back to high school for a short time before a Ned Flanders adventure. Listen now to learn all the big changes and deleted scenes in this classic show! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the winner of the Most Improved Odor Award. I'm one of your hosts, the boorishly-mannered, yelly Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Henry Gilbert, and I did the Iggy. and who was our special guest on the line that's me Nick Weiger aka Roger Myers the third in this week's episode is the front sorry sir we're not letting

vagrants sleep in the gym tonight but we will be putting some scraps by the back door no no it's you Simpson this episode originally aired on april 15th 1993 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby the branch davidian standoff in waco is nearing its end benny and june debuts in theaters and actress lisa bonet files for divorce from Lenny Kravitz. Oh, wow. It was that long ago. They had actually been separated for two years.

What of little Zoe and her future? I think she'll be just fine. She was good as Catwoman. I liked her as Catwoman. I heard she was good in that High Fidelity show. Oh, interesting. Which is funny, because Lisa bonet is in the high fidelity movie yeah daughter is in the dv show yeah that is interesting when lenny kravitz did

the simpsons 10 years later he said he was doing it for his daughter because she thought it would be cool he'd be on the simpsons so yeah wow the branch davidian waco standoff. I learned about it from SNL comedy. That's how I learned about the Waco, Texas standoff. Yeah, I remember it being a big news event. I actually don't remember what SNL's take on. I guess it was just weekend update jokes. Rob Schneider's making copies guy was at Branch Davidian for one week. I think it was the week before everybody died slash was killed. Question mark, conspiracy theory, but yeah, it was making copies, but he's in the

Waco compound. Man. Because I also remember, was that a Janet Reno thing? Was that who got blamed for that? That's who the right-wing militia groups ended up turning into a pariah afterwards, but then it's also like they were doing Janet Reno's dance party at the same sort of time. That was like an ongoing SNL thing.

And then at a certain point, Janet Reno showed up. But it's just the sort of thing of like, man, when you actually unpack what's happening in a news event and how dark and bleak things can get sometimes, it's kind of weird when there's light comedy accompanying it. Like not even like Gallo's comedy that's like, it's more just like treating it like a joke. This extremely, you know, violent massacre or a mass suicide, whatever it was. Yeah. Well, 30 years ago, we had SNL sketches to explain these events. Now we have prestige television

and you can watch Waco American Apocalypse on Netflix. Oh boy. Oh God. I'll learn so much from that. Benny and June, I'll see you on VHS like a year later, but only because of a certain music video, not because of like I was interested in the film itself. Even though he's not either of the title characters,

it was a big hit for Johnny Depp, being Sam is his character's name. Wait, he's not Benny or June? I saw that movie, and I remember I thought it was like, oh, yeah, he's Benny in Benny and June. He's not? Before I went to the Wikipedia page, I would have said Benny and June must refer to him and June in the movie. But no, Benny is her brother who's taking care of her and is worried about her ending up with Johnny Depp's character.

I guess Sam and June didn't test well. I saw Benny and June in theaters with my family. And I remember that was a big hit with the Weiger household. We all had a blast. It was definitely one of those Johnny Depp breakouts, right? Like I think definitely a few years after Nightmare, he'd been well established at this point, but one where he really kind of got to do his Johnny Depp thing.

I only recall that he did the chaplin bit where he's dancing with the forks and the dinner rolls using them as feet and I thought that was Johnny Depp's bit until much later in life I saw the Chaplin bit. The Simpsons also does it like Grandpa does it with the potatoes in the diner and I thought that was a reference to Benny and June. I didn't realize it was a reference to Chaplin. Me too. Yeah yeah when they did. When they did it on Simpsons, I was like, ah, yes, Benny June. And then blue haired lawyer shows up and says the estate of Charlie Chaplin is suing him. I was like, yeah, why would he do that? Which is maybe a joke. I don't know if that was after Benny and June, but was that a joke on how Benny and June just stole that bit or something? I don't know. I think so, though. Of course, the bigger hit,

it was a somewhat popular movie. Never got above, like, number four in the box office. But the hit song from it, I think we all remember that, don't we? When I Wake Up. It was that one, right? I'm Gonna Be, parentheses, 500 Miles by The Proclaimer. It was the song that they wouldn't give to Shrek. Right.

There's a very long montage in Shrek where they're walking, they keep walking, they walk to a new place, and they play the Proclaimer song like, I love you, or something like that. It's the perfect spot for that song, but they don't use it. We did a Shrek podcast three years ago. This is all I can remember from that podcast.

The thing about that song that I heard pretty recently is that that song was already two or three years old when that movie came out. And it turned it into like a huge hit. But it was like well after its release. Oh, yeah. I think to like Irish guys, it had been released like years earlier overseas. But it got to be a big surprise hit in America for those guys.

Yeah. And the music video taught us all what Scottish people look like. It's a crazy time in April, 31 years ago to the day that we're recording this podcast. And joining us once again is Nick Weiger from the Doughboys podcast. He was last with us for Homer Defined. Welcome back to the show, Nick. Oh my God, what a treat. Thanks so much for being here. Doing this show.

Love talking with the two of y'all. And what a fun episode for me to revisit. One I may have watched as it aired. I mean, I was certainly watching The Simpsons every week in this era as a kid. But there were definitely like some Sundays where I'd miss an episode as it first aired and catch it later as a repeater in syndication. But definitely one I've seen dozens repeater in syndication but definitely one i've seen dozens of times in syndication and on the dvds so it's fun to re-watch it a couple of times for this episode i mean i love this episode of season four i think this is when

people think about this season the big ones are like last exit to springfield and march versus the monorail right is there another one where people are like oh yeah that's the big season four episode i don't know if that's mr plow probably mr plow sure yeah those are all great episodes they're classic episodes of simpson i've always really really liked the front and was glad you asked me to talk about this one specifically i think i was a little down on this episode for a bit because the season four standard is so high sure then i recently saw this at simpsons trivia in in Vancouver, and then I did my research again, obviously, and I really realized how much of this episode I quote and remember.

I think the only downside for me is the Homer goes to college bit is done much better in Homer goes to college. Here it's just three scenes, but I'll forgive that. I can forgive that. Yeah, I agree. The B story has some good jokes but yes completely just a more fun version of it is the homer goes to college episode they're on such a high batting average at this point that is scoring a triple or a double with this episode every joke is a memorable like classic joke so even if i can go like ah they really wasted margin homer go to their high school reunion on a too light b plot. If I want to act like I'm a teacher, pretend I can knock it for that, but it's so funny. There's so many funny

scenes in this. Yeah. I can say that after I watch a bad episode of something or a bad movie, I do say, well, that was a rather lifeless outing. So things like that have stuck with me. Things like good old rock. Nothing beats that when I make the same mistake over and over. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So many amazing moments. And while Nick does this episode, you see it as a kid and now that later in your professional life, did this remind you of any of your own experiences and say writing spec scripts or submitting to be a staff writer? Well, it's interesting. I think this is, to Bob's point,

about Homer goes to college being a better version of the B story. The itchy and scratchy through line here, the A story, I think you could probably also say itchy and scratchy and poochy is a better version of the process of creating animation, right? I can kind of understand those episodes are going to be a little bit more memorable just for pulling that off a little bit more effectively and i always feel

like the thing from itchy and scratchy and poochie that always like resonated with me when i was writing in tv rooms was the moment when they're like trying to come up with a name and then the execs leave and then someone's like poochie okay with everyone yeah fine like everyone's like okay well we got some dumb shit we got to do we're not going to put any more effort into it than is what's absolutely required i do like you do run into a lot of harvard guys so and i know that i would imagine the bulk of the simpson staff at this point in time were specifically harvard alums maybe all of it i don't know so i do really like the harvard writer and him being such a little wiener and then the joke where he sings fair harvard and he throws the wadded up paper into his mouth

always hits for me. Now, yeah, the Harvard jokes are them mocking themselves in that case. But I wondered, because this episode is about a guy writing a script and getting on The Simpsons and then it's about them writing a script and getting on the show. So it sounds pretty rare that somebody writes a spec

for a TV show and then they just buy that script and make it an episode. It's not really the process at all, but it makes sense why they did it this way for the show. The Simpsons, and I imagine they still do this, but for many, many years, as two of you know, have outsourced a couple of scripts, one or two scripts per season to someone who's not on the staff. And when I've talked to people who have been a part of that process, who have been like the outside writer, what they typically said is like, oh yeah, like basically nothing I wrote actually made it into the final episode. It went to the Simpsons and their staff and their showrunner

just completely rewrote all of it, but it's just their process. So I think this would not ever be how it actually works where someone cold submit something and then, you know, word for word, scene for scene, it's getting animated as is. But you know, as far as the structure of this episode, and then also I will just say, I think a big part of why I like this episode so much is I love Grandpa Simpson so much. He's such a funny character character and i think this is like an all-time grandpa episode yes in this episode has a new writer freelance writer adam i lapidus and i did a little bio on him so now it's time to talk about adam i lapidus the writer for this episode i do want to save the inspiration for this episode and how he came to write it for our discussion with nick weiger so i'll just talk a bit about his career so before this adam had written two episodes

of who's the boss a single episode for charles in charge and it's a living so he had sitcom writing experience he had never been part of a staff he was just selling episodes to sitcoms so it's impressive he wasn't i got the feeling he was like a neophyte from listening to him on the commentary but he'd he'd had a little experience then okay yeah he'd been kicking around for five or six years uh and weirdly enough he transitioned from this into being a staff writer on full house and that was his first staff writing job the last two seasons so he definitely worked with carolyn omine oh yeah we we asked her a little about that he is she she didn't uh well i mean listen back to the interview but it didn't sound like she uh he talked about it all that much but it's funny he leaves simpsons and then she'll go on to be one of the more prolific

writers on the simpsons and yes throughout the late 90s he wrote episodes on adult shows like clay corn and i'm saying it like that because it has an exclamation point we remember ellen claghorn right yeah the she was such an electric presence on snl and then got got her own sitcom for a brief period one season uh also weird science and something called secret service guy that is a show i can find literally nothing about there's an imdb entry for it apparently Apparently it starred Michael McKeon and it was a comedy, but it's very hard to Google because when you look up Secret Service Guy, you get a bunch of things about actual Secret Service agents, even if you include plus sitcom plus Michael McKeon. It's a doomed search term and I can't find anything about it. Well, me and you only know Weird Science because it aired next to duck man on usa uh saturday nights yes i was a faithful weird science viewer you know what i uh that show is very hard to find these days but i remember it being a quality show with some light tna for the teenage boys who were watching yeah i remember

being actually funny not just not just a cheap skin show so uh after writing for the sitcom smart guy adam would fully become one with the disneyverse and play a major part in the following kid shows uh phil of the future the sweet life of zach and cody the sweet life on deck jesse bunked and team kaylee so he was really in the disney sphere producing all of these very very popular shows executive producing i think he might have created uh bunks but outside of phil of the future and the sweet life of zach and cody i don't know what any of these are but they're not for me and frankly i shouldn't know what the sweet life of zach and cody is what does that what does that say about me it should put you on a list i know well the only reason we would learn these names or these shows would be when some of these Disney kids go on to become actually famous or like famous outside of the Disneyverse and get like cast in a superhero movie or Dune or whatever.

The furthest I made it into any live action Disney show as an adult was watching a very little bit of Lizzie McGuire with a girlfriend at the time. To be fair, I was 19. But that's I think it's because she had a cartoon avatar that made it appealing to me. Right. But I say to you, sir, she is no Clarissa. I mean, I feel like Clarissa, well, yes, me and you did watch in our time

Clarissa Saved by the Bell, Welcome Freshman, Hey Dude. We did watch these things, so we're hardly above it. I would not put Clarissa in the same class as Hey Dude in Saved by the Bell. It was a quality show. It's like saying Pete and Pete is in that same class. No, that's not fair to you.

Saved by the Bell is the best of that junk, but it's total junk. And hey, I just watched Friend of the Show Pop Arena. Their video about Clarissa Explains It All on their Pop Arena channel on YouTube. And it made me re-appreciate the show, a show I have not seen in a very long time. Oh, yeah. That was a great video. Yeah. So where is Adam I. Lapidus now?

Well, apparently he's now an assistant professor of film and television at Boston University's College of Communication. In fact, a lot of the information about him that we'll be talking about in this podcast comes from an interview with him, a very recent interview. Yeah, I appreciate that his students did the work for us of interviewing him about how he got to write his Simpsons episode. And though here in this episode, he says he didn't do any of this Harvard stuff in his script, but it's funny. He goes on to be at the public college, not the Ivy public college not the ivy league college in the boston area what is this state school crap well yeah i mean uh it really shows that if you wrote one script for the simpsons around this time you could launch an entire

career off of it that's how esteemed the show was yeah no i had i had one guest i only went to his imdb page for one thing because bob handled all this great research here. But I did on the commentary said, oh, 11 years later, this is still getting me jobs, the Simpsons script. And my guess is that it was the episode of Tripping the Rift that he wrote in season one, Tripping the Rift in 04. I wish that door didn't open for him, but I mean, I'm sure it's still nice to have on your resume. I wrote a Simpsons freelance script, but I don't see it launching careers in the same way it did when the show was new and had still had a lot of hype behind it. Oh yeah. If you wrote a Simpsons episode in the classic era like that, that probably gets you jobs for the rest of your career. Like with him, like, I mean, for Tri tripping the rift i figured they hired him so they could put in a press release and we've got writers from this this the simpsons or just have on the dvd from the writers of the simpsons and put an asterisk next to writers and underneath it says writer though i uh since we watched for the retronauts

that abysmal game over show when i watched a few minutes of his episode of trip in the rift yesterday i was like this doesn't seem as bad to me after seeing game over i mean it's awful but it's not as bad yeah the bar is pretty low how does how does one watch tripping the rift in 2024 every episode's just on youtube. They just dumped them all on YouTube. Thank God no one cares. You know what? I remember that being a very funny online short back when there weren't really those happening, you know, just the original animation online. And then much, much later, they made it for TV.

And then I think around the same time, they made that Spaceballs cartoon, which we'll never cover. Oh, God, no, no. We'll have covered every... We'll have done three episodes about Drawn together before we cover that space balls cartoon yes and hey thankfully i want to put this out there i think it's already happened by the time this goes live our friends the gayest episode ever have covered drawn together so you could stop asking stop it god yes thank you for taking that gay bullet for us uh drew England. Yeah, and that is the story of Adam I. Lapidus.

But we have some preamble stuff, and Henry did some of the work because this episode is named after the movie The Front, and it borrows one plot element, but Henry, you did watch the entire film for this podcast? I was working on it anyway, and it's on Prime Video, so I was like, all right, I hadn't seen it in forever. It's a good movie, except for that nervous fella who's always on screen.

Old Woodsy Allen. Yes, yeah. I would say it's a fine movie about the blacklist of the House Un-American Affairs Committee thing. It's a good movie about that. Zero Mostel is amazing in it. He's great. But yes, I would not blame anybody for not wanting to see a movie that has Woody Allen doing his Woody Allen things. And it's annoying to see.

I get it. I get it. He's a bad guy. But if you can get over that, it is a good movie. I'm looking at the IMDb right now. I've not seen this movie. And I always assumed this was like a Woody Allen movie. It's like an ant.

It's a Woody Allen movie that Woody Allen didn't direct, where he's just the star of it. Martin Ritt directed. not seen this movie and always assumed this was like a woody allen movie it's like an ant it's a woody allen movie that woody allen didn't direct where he's just the star of it martin writt directed point of it is that the director and writer were blacklisted so it's them pulling from their own experiences and it's called the front because woody allen's character is a front for selling tv scripts for three blacklisted communist writers. And it does try to be somewhat apolitical for a movie. This was the same, in a way, worse movie. That Jim Carrey movie. Oh, The Majestic.

The Majestic, thank you. He has amnesia. You find out the history that he had. But in both those cases, the main character has to say up front, I'm apolitical. They have to make sure the audience knows you're not going to feel bad for an actual communist, like, or a socialist. Yeah. It's a fine movie.

It's a lot like Scenes from a Mall, which gets referenced in this episode, too, where Woody Allen is just an actor in it. Screams from a mall. That's the Agent Scatchy, yeah. Yes. And the story of how this episode came into being is pretty incredible. And I definitely want to know what Nick thinks of this as someone who has written for television. So Adam Ilapidus, he's a struggling writer, very few credits. And he just happens to know friends of James L. Brooks and husband of Julie Kavner, Dave Davis.

So he tells his idea to Dave Davis. Dave pitches his idea for him to James L. Brooks. James L. Brooks likes the idea so much, he wants to buy the idea and have Adam write it. And apparently Adam also knew Al Jean from the famous Gary Shandling basketball games in which many comedy writers were injured horribly. Those games were still ongoing,

and I knew people would play in them up close until Shandling passed away. That was a thing that went on for like 40 years or something. It's insane. Yeah. Weiger, you need to start up a podcaster's basketball game and be the Gary Shanling of podcasters. We're even more frail than television comedy writers. I'm sorry.

You can't do it. The whole bunch of torn ACLs. So much osteoporosis. Yeah. So the premise of this episode is based on the circumstances behind the writing of the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, Buster and Babs Go Hawaiian. So the story is this. Three 13-year-old girls submit an unsolicited 120-page Tiny Toon script to Amblin Entertainment. I'm sorry, 120 pages?

I believe also handwritten. Or not even photocopied. They submit it to Amblin. Executive likes it. They pass it to Amblin. Executive likes it. They pass it to Steven Spielberg. He really likes it. He invites these girls down to the studio so they can help the team adapt it into a full episode. And there's an entire Entertainment Weekly article about this from the time.

And I wanted to note he also paid them what he normally paid people for a Tiny Toon script, which was between $3,000 to $3,500 in 1999 money, and that is around $6,000 today. And for animation fans out there, this is a good-looking episode because it was animated by TMS. So imagine you're 13, you write a script, it gets aired, Steven Spielberg helps you make it, and then TMS animates it. My life would have peaked there.

I'd have dropped out of school and be like, I'm a Hollywood writer now, mom. No more of this. Dropping out at seventh grade. And yeah, that was the idea. Like, oh, what if Bart and Lisa did this? And these events happened in 1991, so not too far before this episode aired. It's helpful to know Dave Davis as well.

They joke that the I stands for I know Dave Davis. That trick won't work anymore i'm sorry r.i.p dave davis yes so i watched this henry sent me a link and i watched this episode of tiny tunes which i had not seen perhaps you'll get into it but like this is obviously at least the episode that i watched is not like their script just put up on the screen. It's like a meta kind of, you know, analysis of what it means to have an outsider be entrusted with your show, you know? It kind of, as you mentioned, it is really awesomely animated. It jumps in between a bunch of different aesthetics.

But that's the end result. That's what happened. They submitted this 120-page handwritten script, and then it turned into that episode. There isn't, like, one that was, like like the actual story that they crafted the girls were in the room they were pitching jokes it sounded super collaborative and they're in the episode the three girls are actually in the episode and i saw this when i was nine and there are so many jokes in the episode like what did a 13 year old write this when i was nine a 13 year old was basically an adult to me so i was like what are you saying about me i'm nine it's how i learned the term plot hole because

they're arguing of like how did we even get here and then pebs is like there's a plot hole big enough for a mac truck to drive through like that's how i learned that term right yeah there's a really funny part in the entertainment weekly article where steven spielberg is telling the girls now water is very hard to animate and expensive so you want to get the characters out of the water as soon as possible so one of the girl pitches a joke where buster says hey bab stop looking at the water it's very expensive the episode's funny too because it is very inside like the front in that the characters first all complain to steven spielberg of, we have to do this story.

Buster and Babs go, why? And this is stupid. Like children. Yes, right, right, right. Yeah. And also they're making fun of Steven Spielberg for being a gamer, which was seen as silly for a man his age to be playing video games. I bet he was 38 at that time.

He was so hands on with the creation of this. This is like the only time he voiced himself in that whole era of warner brothers cartoons usually it's like frank welker who does a pretty good steven spielberg it's also funny the video game he's playing is like face invaders except it's arachnophobia it's spraying spiders extremely inside amblin jokes in the episode lapidus says he saw the story about it on 2020. They did a whole like filming of the girls at the writer's room and all that too. And one last preamble thing is that Lapidus writes his outline.

He then goes in with the writers to work on the episode and, you know, work out the plot and everything. And he does remember specific things like the thing about Abe saying that he spent 40 years as a night watchman at a cranberry silo. He said Conan O'Brien pitched that. And that does sound like a perfect Conan O'Brien joke. Yeah. And because he had a crush on Brooke Shields when he was a kid in high school, he basically cast her on the show to meet her. And apparently she was very nice. And also, it wasn't just for creepy reasons.

He thought she would be funny and she was. Yeah, she's great. I have a table draft as well for this that's dated August 20th, 1992. So, you know, seven, eight months before it aired. And there's a few interesting little things I'll bring up. But the big thing I want to say is that the third act for the Abe story is entirely different. I was so confused reading it. The acceptance speech happens in act two. It closes act two. And the second act is Bart and Lisa refuse to help grandpa

write anymore because he doesn't thank them on stage. And then when he is the sole writer for the show, he writes a script where the grandpas of itchy and scratchy complain to itchy and scratchy that they're whiny and entitled and should visit them more and he gets fired but bart and lisa learned the lesson that they should treat abe nicer in the future i can see why they changed it because it's a funnier out it's like a comedic peak for him to give that speech at the end and also like the award show feels like such finality to that whole arc. That's interesting though. Yeah, I'm not surprised

there are a lot of changes, Henry, because I noticed this is the norm for season four, but there's a ton of ADR and there aren't a lot of deleted scenes on the season four DVDs, but I think this episode contains the most and they're all hidden. Oh, wow.

Yeah, it's crazy. There's eight deleted scenes on this. And then on top of that there's about 10 more pages in the table draft normally when i find the table drafts which very nice people on internet archive have been uploading a whole lot of these the table drafts i would say are like 80 of what you see on the show but this is more like 60 and i believe in their process then was if they were going to take it to the table read that most of the rewriting had already happened from the first draft that Lapidus would have turned in. So, yeah, they did a lot.

Was this also like once they start carving stuff out and restructuring and rewriting the back end of the episode? Was this one that fell a little under for the runtime? Because it feels like there are things that padded out like you know most notably the landers short at the end but then also things like reusing the animation of throwing the nameplate at the harvard writer in a different scene it's just like oh this feels like they're just doing an extra beat of the same joke just to add a few seconds here yeah the showrunner at the time aljean or one of the showrunners said they used every trick in the book to get this to the proper episode length so we have full opening we

have the circus couch gag we have the flanders thing at the end we have a lot of adr reused animation we see a lot of clips of the itchy and scratchy cartoon oh yeah the episode the same clips they show the same chunks of the same episode that they wrote in different contexts and then it feels like they hold on like they ran and Stimpy gag, like they hold on that a little bit too long. The clip not done yet. And then obviously another thing is like it's like a meta joke about, you know, animation workflow, but then also about like being lazy and being able to conserve resources. But it in and of itself is like kind of stretching things out in this episode the one where they're talking about reusing the same backgrounds over and over again i think this

was a mix of things they were always running short but with so many deleted scenes on the dvd and at least two of them i think were sensor note ones that normally those get cut before they get to the screening but there's one specifically they call out on the commentary as like oh yeah sensor took that one away from us but there's a second one where i'm like that probably was the sensor cutting that too so they lost a lot of time on it as well but i think it was by the time they got to color they're like that's when they needed the 30 more seconds that the flanders sequence is and they play the theme song twice just to get a little, like, 10 more seconds out of it. I love the Flanders bit.

I think it's such a funny tag. I like that he has his little theme song. I remember seeing this one in syndication and always being tickled when that came up. But this episode, yeah, begins with after, as Bob mentioned, the time-filling opening. Nick, I did wonder, too, when it comes to filling time, have you ever on any of the shows you've worked on been told, we are 30 seconds short or we need a little bit more here? Oh, for sure. I worked on this Fox sketch show that was a pretty big failure. There was one episode where we were a little short on pages prior to the taping. So there were how long was that and the ad was like 13 minutes so we

were like nine minutes under where we needed to be and it was just like oh shit we got to figure something out so yeah it's the same sort of thing just like a bunch of padding that gets thrown in there it's like okay well i guess re-air this video bit from another episode we'll do a little photo montage at the end credits that will make like an extra sort of long credits of like, here's all the stuff that you saw. Here's all the bits from the episode. You know, oh, there's a longer version of the opening.

It's all that sort of shit. Then I think on a first viewing, most people probably don't even clock, right? When I would watch one, it was not until I was an adult that I had any sense of the differing lengths of the openings being because they were trying to hit a specific run time or not you know i was just like oh yeah this is a long one well that's when you listen to the commentaries enough they reveal the magic trick that's when you know yeah the simpsons will be right back.

Homer's the hit of his high school reunion. The award for the alumnus who's gained the most weight, Homer Simpson. On another episode of The Simpsons, next. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care

we hope you guys did the iggy this week for our big podcast on the front and a huge thank you to our guest this week nick weiger of the dough. So awesome to have on Nick whenever we can, especially for all of his insights into television comedy writing like we had in this one. If you guys don't know yet about the Doughboys, you got to check out their awesome podcast as well as Nick's other podcast, Get Played, a great exploration of video games. Check all of those out wherever you find podcasts. And thanks again to Nick Weiger for doing our show.

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ever that's six and a half hours long without a moment spared you got to check it all out for yourself you are missing out on so many things you need to head over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons today and check it all out. So after a quick opening where Krusty is ashamed of his Jewish heritage and doesn't want to talk about his mother's recipe for matzah brie. I did not know what that was until looking it up for this. And what is that? I had it. Really?

There's Cantor's Deli in Los Angeles, which is like a famous Jewish deli. I went with a couple of Jewish friends. Same thing. I was like looking at this menu. I'm like, what is that? And I think they were kind of trying to talk me out of it because I think it's maybe if you don't have the palate for it it's a weird experience but i remember enjoying it you might

have the official description here yes matzah fried with eggs it is commonly eaten as breakfast food during the jewish holiday of passover it can be prepared either sweet or savory so basically it looks like you break up a bunch of matzah and then fry it in a pan with eggs and you can break it up or keep it together in like kind of a pancake form and then fry it in a pan with eggs and you can break it up or keep it together in like kind of a pancake form yeah i remember it being kind of fragmented it kind of reminded me of what's the mexican dish where you like pieces of tortilla mixed in with eggs right chilaquiles it was kind of like a chilaquiles but yeah you can get it i got it savory but yeah you can get it with like sugar mixed in which sounds like an interesting experience well this chef he looks like paul

prudhomme he's even got the fat guy hat but i don't think he's a parody of anyone specifically because there were no tv chefs that specialized in jewish cuisine at this time so just designed to look like paul prudhomme i guess it's the jewish paul prudhomme it also it's one of those like oh crusty show is just like it's the Today Show when they want it to be. It's the Tonight Show when they want it to be. It's the place for all their talk show humor. I mean, I love that about Krusty. And it's just like he has an animal act on.

Like it's the Tonight Show, you know. I like that it's just kind of a catch-all for all that sort of stuff. It's similar to, the cranberry silo is one element but like because grandpa has such like a loose grip on reality because like specifics from his life can shift so often right like he just kind of like has every kind of old person experience and just like his personal history will change from episode to episode but you just kind of like go along with it because oh yeah this is this guy who's like maybe a little senile and is kind of a fabulist. Yeah, this episode does imply that he was old enough to try to shoot Teddy Roosevelt in 1912.

Yes. But it's also like you can both believe it, but you're also like, oh, wait, he's also completely full of shit. So anything he says could also just be some. That's also funny that he's lying in that way or believes it as abe will say in another episode a little from column a a little from column b so then bart and lisa talk about shame of their own upbringing as homer walks in with a plunger on his head and wonderfully specific names of Lois Sanborn and Steve Bennett. Perfect Simpsons names. Then itchy and scratchy plays and Bart and Lisa are not feeling it in our first clip here.

Ow! Hee hee hee! Ow! Hee hee hee! Ow! Hee hee hee! This is a rather lifeless outing. Don't worry, they're building to something.

Ow! Hee hee hee! Kids! Say no to drugs! I could pull a better cartoon out of my head. Hey, whoa! Wasn't that great, kids? That's as bad as the tasteless, itchy, and sambo cartoons of the late 30s. The writers should be ashamed of themselves. Cartoons have writers? Eh, sort of.

Oh, yeah. Well, you and I could write a better cartoon than that. Write a cartoon ourselves? Bart, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Probably not. Lie in the snow and count to 60. And this has a lot of stop balloons and dream sequences yeah right this is before you could just cut to a dream sequence you actually needed the character's head in the corner and bart's expression in the corner of this dream sequence

is very funny yeah he's kind of like zoning out yeah i had a question because this itchy and scratchy cartoon is called dazed and confused and I didn't realize that was a phrase before the movie because the movie did not release until September of 1993. Wow. So I guess people were just using that phrase before the movie. I thought the movie coined it. Yeah. I didn't look up the dates on that. I just assumed it's a reference to the movie.

Holy crap. Wow. Now I'm wondering what the etymology of dazed and confused is. Yeah. At least it does fit. That's why I thought it was a reference to the movie, too, because it ends with say no to drugs. And I thought it implies that they are stoned for the episode. That's the message.

Though that's an improvement from what's in the script. In the table draft, it just ends with Scratchy says stop. And then Itchy says, OK. Then it ends i like the say no to drugs thing because it was very observational in that you could really cover up any bad writing by saying well it was actually a story about you know aids or cancer or drugs they did that so often in kids programming yeah this had some sort of message to it i looked it up and there was a song dazed and confused if you have any listeners older than us, I think that maybe some of them are kind of like,

God, how did you not know this? Because I guess this was a pretty big hit for the Yardbirds back in the 60s. Dazed and Confused was written by Jake Holmes, and that's what led to the phrase being in usage. Okay. Maybe it's on the soundtrack. Apparently it's about being in love. Oh. Yeah, apparently the song is about being in love, itchy and scratchy not high in this cartoon and if you see on the title card it says

written by milt feinberg and high levine or levine those two characters in the original script they keep coming up as bart and lisa's nemesis of like hack writers they want to replace they're the writers for the other nominated shows in the awards later. But this is all that's left of their names from the original script is this title card here. I also love the drawing of Krusty Smoking and then realizing he's on camera like, hey, hey. Yeah. Also, Lisa bringing up the Itchy and Sambo cartoons. Surely a reference to the very racist Sambo cartoons that Iwerks did after leaving the Walt Disney company in the 30s, though I think it's just a broader joke about the many banned cartoons

full of ugly stereotypes from the 30s and 40s that people in the know in cartoons would do about in the 90s. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I always think it was like the Looney Tunes, like World War II propaganda, you know, shorts. There was a lot of that stuff. I think there's just like an unfortunate lineage of a lot of these classic characters who were involved in some problematic storylines in the past. We were the last generation that could get to be shown Tokyo Jokio cartoons.

Yes. They sort of have a joke about this, too, with the Ku Klux Klan character, the itchy and scratchy. Oh, yeah, right. Uncle Ant disgruntled goat apparently the censors did not like bart holding the machine gun at the santa claus but they were able to get away with it but they lost a couple other fights later yeah i think it's so funny i love the specificity of him robbing santa claus at gunpoint i did wonder about that because like looking on it a little bit more closely this time, I was like, is it like a Tommy gun? Was that part of the compromise, where they were able to get it drawn

as more of an old-time weapon? I don't know. You know, I'm conflating this probably just with the rule that we always heard about on the Batman cartoon. But the Batman cartoon thing was, they had Tommy guns because, you know, little Sally and Jimmy can't find that in their dad's drawer or closet and imitate it. But if it was a revolver, they might find that around the house and be like, I'm like Bart and shoot somebody.

But it ends up for Batman. The animated series ends up being this incredible stylistic choice that everything's got this kind of, you know, art deco aesthetic. And it's kind of like from a different time. That is really interesting. That's the genesis of it. I do want to credit the animation team for actually drawing all eight reindeers.

Those times when Santa's sleigh is rendered, they're like, let's make it four. Yes, right. Or maybe three. But I'm counting, and it's all eight. That's great. Man, they didn't have to. I'm impressed with that.

Though also a dream sequence that goes on like a couple extra beats. Like they're really spending some time with Santa lying in the snow with those reindeer taking off into the sky. I love Bart's Merry Christmas, suckers. It makes his dream more cruel than it even seems at first. Bart is happy that he just stole Christmas from everybody. Not that he just got a bunch of stuff, but that no one else will get it either. We cut to Marge reading the mail and this is kind of follow-up

or a duplicate joke from season three's i married marge where she's reading all of their letters and it ends with we break thumbs right the way kevin says some guys are coming is really funny yeah it's good but this is where marge sees that homer did not get an invitation to the high school reunion which i have to say then how was he nominated for all those awards later if he wasn't invited to it? A little flaw there. Maybe the nominations took place that night. Oh, okay. Yeah, that could make sense.

Or it was just- Bad planning. Yeah, or maybe one was student run and one was officially from the school, but that's interesting. Homer reveals first that he ate all the fancy soaps Marge bought, and then he says that he never graduated high school. And I love that Marge is like, wait, maybe it does explain why he ate all the soaps. It's the kind of thing of like anytime Homer is just a dog, it's always like my favorite sort of Simpsons joke.

There's another one, too, where Homer's talking about like, Marge, we had an agreement. You stop doing this. I wish you could remember the first end of it. And I'll stop eating your lipstick. And he turns around and he rubs lipstick off of his teeth. Anytime he's just, like, eating something he's not supposed to, it's so funny. The school thing lines up with canon because in The Way We Was, Homer admits to missing school for three weeks just to avoid Marge before the dance. Yeah, this is a really good like sequel

to the way we was though again i have to say homer did a good job of hiding it from marge because they were dating before the graduation but somehow she didn't notice that homer didn't go to graduation with her but maybe he did tell her i'm making it up in the summer and then he just never did right and henry i need to consult you because there's so much adr in this script yes this entire pig latin scene is just pure adr do you know what's happening in the original script well that was a tough one because the table draft actually this entire scene is kind of transposed because it's homer who gets the mail and reads off the stuff and then it's march who says wait why didn't you get the invitation so this

back and forth none of that happens actually they don't even have the remedial science thing in there it's just homer says no i kept that a secret from you and he mentions eating the soap then march just says well you can just go as my date so they don't even interrogate why he didn't pass no he does go to science class later in the episode so that does come up though the entire pig latin thing not there and it does look very very fake in 80 yard though they're doing pig latin like two minutes next to each other like crusty did that at the start and now homer's doing it yes right it feels like a callback but it's like too early for it to be a callback so yeah then we cut to bart and lisa they're basically doing a mini writer's room in their

a bedroom and not the kind that the wga marched against nick does this remind you of the pitching process pacing around playing with rubber bands what it reminds me of i work solo but there are some creative partnerships that are like this where there's like a writing pair and there's one person who's on the typewriter one person who's on the laptop and another person who's just kind of like spitballing and i do feel like it's interesting and maybe like i don't know if the writers are trying to make any sort of point about anything here but how lisa like the straight a student obviously she'd be the one on the typewriter but also she's the one whose ideas Bart is just one upping.

Right. And ultimately, like what the story and the jokes of this episode come from, Bart kind of saying like, nah, too obvious. He has both the setting and then the whole plot. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it is about one type of brain and the other type of brain. I wonder those teams where it's decided when they're like probably 22, who's the person typing and who's the one who doesn't have to type. And that they're doing that for like 20 years. And still they're just stuck in those like, nope, I'm the one who types.

That's how it's always been. I always heard, and I never witnessed this firsthand, but I always heard about, I worked at a McCain-Wilferol's company and that when they were writing together, everyone assumed McKay would be the one on the laptop, but it was actually Wilferol. He was the one doing the writing, and McKay was kind of just spitballing stuff, which was interesting. To do a little further name-dropping to no particular

end, I worked on a thing with Sacha Baron Cohen once in a writer's room, and I was amazed that he was the one on the laptop. He was personally writing everything up. So it depends on the individual in terms of how hands-on they want to be. Yeah, I would have never thought that, though maybe that's why McKay and Farrell broke up is that he was tired of typing. He couldn't boost his words per minute. Well, it's also like when Lisa and Bart, what they do the rock, paper, scissor fight about

is about crediting, like whose name gets first. Again, that's the other thing that just people are so precious about or so like fired up about. And ultimately anyone who's like reading the credits, no one gives a shit except for the people who actually wrote it. No one reads Bart and Lisa Simpson views that differently than Lisa and Bart Simpson. But to the people actually creating the thing, it's like super important in a more tangible

sense. How you're credited does affect how you're compensated so it turns into a bit of a turf war at times and they're reading a book this is their first internal self-reference here of john swartzwell wrote the book on how to get a rich by writing cartoons very funny they talk about how back then they thought online in simpsons fandom that like john swartzzwelder was a front and that adam i lapidus was a front and a fake name for uncredited writers and i mean schwartzwelder it's funny because he's never on a commentary except for one they tricked him onto it once

but until he did that new yorker interview i think most people figured he couldn't be a real guy yeah that was a fascinating read. Oh, it's great. I think once he started publishing 30 novels, people might have assumed he was real. I mean, it took until that New Yorker article for me to believe that the Twitter account with his name on it is really him too. I do like how Bart says, too cliche,

barbecue sauce, and then he's like, and the rest writes itself. And somehow that turns into Elvis shooting the TV. Yeah. says uh too cliche uh barbecue sauce and then he's like and the rest writes itself and somehow that turns into elvis shooting the tv yeah you know i finally looked into this this elvis tv thing and i have some unsubstantiated facts from the book elvis's voice of an angel written by a close friend i believe one of his singers and she said quote the story is totally true, but it wasn't a violent act in any way, rather an ongoing joke he had with the guys. Elvis had an actual TV graveyard

in the backyard at Graceland. It would often pull out a.357 Magnum from his collection of guns and blast at TV sets. It was a joke that ended with the punchline, take it to the graveyard. So Elvis just liked shooting things with guns. TVs happened to be in the way of his guns sometimes.

We're lucky no one was hurt. So yes, that is the story of Elvis shooting at TVs. I found one of the stories was because Robert Goulet was on the TV. Because he's like, you didn't think Robert Goulet was a good singer? And then Goulet was like, but we were friends. And I also saw that the late Priscilla Presley would later say in life, it's funny to laugh at. But she she said that was actually pretty terrifying for her that he would randomly shoot televisions.

Can imagine. Jesus. Well, and, you know, in the 2022 Elvis movie, him shooting TVs happens in the movie. But it's part of his like growing paranoia during his Las Vegas phase. Yes. Right. Super fucked up on his pills. And he just like, who's out there? Who's out there? And he opens the door and just shoots three different TVs in his Las Vegas suite. Yeah, I saw the Goulet thing.

It was the fact existed that no, Elvis just like shooting things. It didn't matter that it was Robert Goulet. Elvis needed to live long enough to play video games. I think it's a real shame he died when he did. Right. That's true. If he had just lived a few more years like seven eight more years he could have played duck hunt he could have just

shot a tv and relaxed you need a super scope that's what he needed that scene by the way isn't in the table draft so i couldn't confirm it but they did say on the commentary that when they wrote it in the script later in another draft they made sure to say it is southern singer to make it not officially elvis because then the elvis estate could be upset about that right there's another really great joke in the table draft that i wish they'd kept in it which is now we know is very internal simpsons gag they write that script in like a minute like it instantly they write it so fast but then they try to decide what the comedy name for the episode is and bart and lisa stay up all night before they settle on little barbershop of ours that's funny so it's a great joke about how simpsons writers stay up all night on the

stupidest like names like probably lois sanborn oh for sure yeah and instead of the around the world in 80 days bit bart proposes that's also very adr the original line is bart says well okay we'll do a compromise we'll do my first name and your last name they submit that's good but this is when lisa figures out the perfect way to decide uh this show ain't no good. Finished. Now all we have to do is put our names on it. Fine. Put my name first. No way!

All right. Then to decide it, I propose a race around the world. Meet me at Leicester Square at noon tomorrow. The queen herself shall drop the checkered flag. Look, there's only one reasonable way to settle this. Rock, paper, scissors. Poor, predictable Bart always takes rock.

Good old rock. Nothing beats that. Rock, paper, don't! I love that. It's the way Bart says. Good old rock. Nothing beats that. Yeah, I use it every day to describe my own actions,

whether I'm ordering the same thing at a restaurant or making the same mistake. Definitely a season with just so many great jokes. That's one of the ones that stuck with me. Nothing beats Rock. There's another thing where I like when Homer's a dog. I also like when Bart is as dumb as Homer because he is his father's son.

And yeah, he's like a bad boy, but he's also like, he's fucking dumb. It's just so great. Rock is such a funny thing. Yeah, rocks are strong and tough. Nothing could beat it. My husband had informed me because he is more into the fighting game community,

like Street Fighter and Tekken and all that. He told me that that is a huge meme in the fighting game community because so much of it is learning what counters what. But if somebody doesn't learn a counter, they basically will do like, good old Hadouken, nothing beats that.

That's the joke in the community. That's really funny. Bart then loses. They submit their script and we cut to the itchy and scratchy animation studio. And it's not in the table read either. No Alex Rocco returning.

This is Hank Azaria. He'll return two more times to play Roger Myers Jr. until Alex Rocco comes back in The Day the Violence Died in the Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie show. So I don't know why they didn't get him. I don't know what he was doing or too expensive maybe by the end of the season. It's a fine replacement, but I just miss Alex Roc rocco i never clocked that it wasn't alex rocco i'm learning that right now he's such a perfect voice it's sad he's not there but yeah

we've charted this before i looked at this again today like so bob you're the one who alerted me before that alex rocco was deep in the gracie films family around then because he was on the Gracie Films sitcom Sibs around this time. That's correct. Yeah. Freshly canceled Sibs. Yeah. So the timeline is Sibs get canceled three months before the script date. So he's probably like, you know, not around, so they can't ask him to do it. Then I forgot after this, Sam Simon quits The Simpsons because he has all of these problems with Macraining. He leaves The Simpsons, still gets to get his credit on it and gets his developer credit and money for the rest of his life. He leaves to make The George Carlin Show, and that debuts about seven months after this in January of 1994.

And Alex Rocco is a regular on that show. Wow. Okay. I did watch both seasons of that, and I totally forgot Alex Rocco was on it. And I feel like someday we should do Sibs and the George Carlin show, I think. It's funny, though. George Carlin, here's a quote from his autobiography about making that show. The biggest problem, though, is that Sam Simon was a fucking horrible person to be around.

Very, very funny, extremely bright and brilliant, but an unhappy person who treated other people poorly i was incredibly happy when the show was canceled said george wow of all the people i would think would be like a huge a-hole from the simpsons maybe they just kind of all were but from the simpsons top brass i would not think it was sam simon sam simon seemed like a nice guy at his later years but he definitely had said in some of his late in life interviews and he's been dead i think for over 10 years now i think he did say like oh yeah i'm not a nice person when i make a tv show i think that's another reason he retired i think he said i guess there was also probably like that was a honest up until distressingly recently that was just like the expectation of like you're a showrunner you're the person in charge you're gonna be just like the expectation of like, you're a showrunner, you're the person in charge, you're going to be just like a monster to be around, complete demagogue.

Well, they don't teach you to be a great writer doesn't necessarily mean you're a good manager, as we've learned. Yeah, for sure. But also probably what you learn in the industry is like, oh, the most powerful people are the people who are, you know, despots who are just like absolutely like my way or the highway. I use, you know, verbal abuse and even further to try to get their own way. Just to sort of like, you know, bludgeon everyone into submission. Not excusing it. I mean, that's a bummer. They're the type of people who say throw paper or even name plates at people as they're walking out the door. For sure.

Yeah. No, definitely. And now's the time finally in the simpsons where the writers can start appearing on the show before it was just directors but we have nearly every writer who's currently on the staff within this episode yeah they start with john vd so on the commentary definitely al jean is saying it was not their idea to be the writers in the show like to literally have their own character designs and be put in the show. Labidus says the Harvard stuff wasn't his idea.

And the Harvard stuff isn't that table draft, but it doesn't say John Vitti, draw him or whatever. That's not in the stage directions. And same with the writers that appear later. They're all great designs. If you know what these guys looked like in 1992, they're fantastic. And also bring up that John Vitti is not the type who would just sing Fair Harvard if asked to or talk with a very fancy accent. That's not how he is.

And Doris Grau is basically playing herself as Roxy, his assistant. But yeah, he fires him. I do love the line, you should have majored in not getting fired. Yeah, great. And also, you sir have the boorish manners of a yelly another great scene great it gets to myers the unsolicited script this obviously should not happen right like there's this entire legal reasons for unsolicited scripts not landing on somebody's desk yeah there would definitely be layers of gatekeepers that would prevent this

from happening and they'd probably just get a form letter but you know whatever works for the episode this is where there's another big deleted scene that i think was a sensor note if i had to guess you saw it too bob i think i might have missed this was on the disc correct yeah yeah yeah i think i might have missed this one basically in a sequel to if you remember an itchy and scratchy and marge roger myers sends a letter to marge that tells her to go fuck yourself and the horse you rode in on and that's the joke but i don't say this where and so myers says i'll dictate the rejection letter myself and it ends with lisa reading and she says i know that word but what's Shinola? Oh, yeah. Which would imply that like basically he said, yeah, that I would bet shit for Shinola. That's why the censors cut that joke.

In the table draft, they come upon it being Abe because Bart's like, oh, it's because he's the oldest person we know. They want somebody older. Let's get the oldest person we know. Oh, and they cut a joke where first they ask Homer what Abe's name is. And Homer doesn't know he's like it's uh Willie or Tim or something like that and this next scene when we go to see Abe I feel like this definitely feels like the hallmark of a new writer because they're trying to see like what has Abe done what are his running jokes and Abe was introduced to the audience as a guy who wrote

cranky letters to magazines and newspapers and television stations. He's back to doing that old bit that had kind of been discontinued at this point. And I wondered if, so they do it twice in the episode, I do think it was supposed to be that his big speech at the awards speech is supposed to have the feel of his crank letters, but it doesn't totally work that way the way how he ends with for shame it's like oh is that why they set up the crank letters because his speech at the end is going to be a crank letter but i think you're right bob it's just a new writer resuming an old running gag sure yeah and we covered season one again recently

and there's a lot of scenes of characters writing letters and to us it seemed like they realized this is not interesting to watch a character slowly writing a letter and reading it to themselves yeah i wonder if there was any element of y'all will know the animation side better but like i just know that lip sync is like the most labor intensive element oftentimes and so like when you can do something with vo but then again a lot of times i feel like when you see this i don't know if it's always the case like i feel like the character would sometimes be speaking aloud while they're writing something oh yeah yeah oh yeah we just saw that in the duffless episode when lisa's writing in her notebook about the the test she's running on bart you see the text she is writing as she

does it in voiceover too yeah i do think to the sickos in modern bride magazine is a funny is a funny out there. And then also, like, you know, when they come in and talk to Grandpa, I mean, as far as a show that doesn't have like a lot of carry over from episode to episode. From that standpoint, getting Grandpa's name and establishing that and that's just carrying over from here on out is kind of seismic lore by simpson standards this got set up in the season two old money episode and they did it because they wanted his name to be close to the woman he starts dating b so it's a simmons and abe simpson oh so it is already established in that episode okay which was unintentionally another grating family reference because Groening's grandfather was Abraham I believe right and then I think it's

the name of one of Matt Groening's kids now too yeah he left the room saying name the grandpa I don't want to name after a family member they named it he came back in and it turned out to be a family member it's very funny I do love the saying whenever I'm confused I just check my underwear it holds the answers to all life's important

questions and the way I love the way it's saying, whenever I'm confused, I just check my underwear. It holds the answers to all life's important questions. And I love the way it's animated, that he pulls it out of his back pocket. It zips off of him. And the cadence of how Dan Castellaneta delivers, I don't know. That has stuck with me forever. It's so great. It's such a good delivery. And it's also just such a funny bit.

I also always like how Bart and Lisa are just standing there slack-jawed as they're watching their grandfather take off his underwear without removing his pants yeah great bit this is when roger myers is very hands-on he's reading spec scripts himself late into the night it does become day when john vd enters the room again because they need more time so what they cut there instead and this is funnier basically when he gets on the intercom and he says Roxy call Abe Simpson she says do it yourself and then he's like what and then she's like I still got those pictures of you I don't got to do nothing I kind of prefer him just saying shut up just like they resume it and he doesn't even have a funny comeback to the harvard guy just goes like shut up he's asking for his mug right so the natural

the natural expectation would be either throws the mug and hits him in the face or it looks like he's going to grab the mug and then grabs the nameplate anyway and throws that at it like that there would be some sort of reference to it but absolutely not at all it's completely disconnected i'm just like, shut up. And the exact same bit of animation with completely different lighting. And this is when they get in contact with Abe. What? Sir, you locked my office and I wanted to get my Harvard mug.

Shut up. Oh. Roxy, get me Abraham Simpson. Phone call, Simpson. Beth? Is this the Abraham Simpson who wrote the itchy and scratchy episode? Itchy and what? Oh, you must be some kind of crazy person. I'm sorry, but we have a substantial check here for a Mr. Abraham Simpson.

That's right. I did the Iggy. Another quote I filed away as a response to a question I don't understand. It's a perfect answer to say, that's right, I did the Iggy. Also, yeah, Doris Grau as Roxy

basically, she was script supervisor at the time on simpsons oh wow probably months away from being cast as a regular voice actor on the critic at this point just an amazing amazing voice i did not realize that connection i mean it probably is something i should have known the i did the iggy it's the flanders and itchy and scratchy and poochy is that's the best episode of impy and chimpy I ever saw the other one right yes right I think people getting it slightly wrong I love that one though the one in that episode I often say I think I was saying this to my husband as we were watching this episode last week I said like quiet you're missing the jokes. Yeah. I've used that one a lot.

Nick, is this how fast you get? This seems to be in a matter of days. I'm sure it's this quick for freelance writing to be paid that quickly, right? Yeah, I know. It's obviously, as everyone knows, completely opposite. And so, I mean, just to talk about that, there was a show I worked on where the writer's room was in 2019. The show ended up airing during the pandemic in 2021 this was a disney plus show and there was money that i and all of the writers were owed that we did not receive until the conclusion of the 2023 wga strike

so they were sitting on that money for you know four years since the work was completed and two years since it aired and so we received two checks of a not insignificant amount of money that everyone could use at that point and the second check for a smaller amount was the amount of interest they owed us on the principle because they were just sitting on it for that long there's all sorts of that shit. There's all sorts of like every accounting trick they can pull to try to take from paying you in a timely fashion.

Holy cow, man. That's it, Henry. Cancel the trip to Disney. You cannot support them. When they're stabbing your friend in the back. Well, Nick, I paid you with laughs from watching that show because it was a very funny show.

This was Earth to Net on Disney+. That was a fun show to work on. You saw it when you could see it. Now I think it's in the Disney vault for all time. I didn't want to rub that in, yes. You technically can't watch it now, legally. Now, I actually wanted to circle back to the amount those kids got for writing a Tiny Toons episode, Nick, about $6,000 today. Yeah.

How does that stack up to modern TV rates? guess that those would be freelance rates for them that was more than i would get in the 2010s for you know the freelancing i would do writing cartoon network episodes so i mean like as far as a one episode payment non-staff i mean would have loved to have six thousand dollars for some of those adjusted for inflation that's another thing too of because simpsons is wga but a lot of animated shows and certainly like a cartoon like itchy and scratchy is akin to something like you know chip and dale rescue rangers or uh gi joe This is like daytime Saturday morning animation, which usually falls under a different union. It's all very, very boring stuff. And that falls under IATSE slash the Animation Guild for the writing side. And those rates are famously like a quarter of what WGA rates are.

So you're usually not making very good money. And like just going back to the strike real quick, there was an older writer on the picket line I would talk to who it was his fifth strike. He'd been in the WGA, I think, since 1979. But most of the work that he did in the 80s was in daytime animation and just talked about like how little he was paid for all of that work. How many episodes of like DuckTales or whatever that he personally wrote and then was paid in the hundreds of dollars for them. I think it's notoriously among Hollywood jobs, it's one of the less cushy is writing for animation.

When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care maybe tiny tunes was wga just because of the spielberg involvement and the the level of prestige involved at this point it was a fox i think broadcast show

maybe very well may have been yeah i some of those shows are and a lot of times just falls towards whatever leverage you know the showrunner has or the ep has to make it that way because the companies never the studios never want to have something be union at all i would definitely think spielberg is paying his writers better than deke was yeah their stuff yeah or saban entertainment oh yes yeah yes around this same time i was just looking this up recently because x-men 97 just premiered when we're recording this i wanted to double check this quote because i was like boy this quote just sounds so cruel it can't be real but then i pulled

it up it was real one of the writers for the original x-men 92 show said that haim saban said to his face i'm cutting your rate by a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars a script because we're a hot show now and if you want to work on it, you'll take that. Wow. Yeah. Nice guy that I have. What a monster. Yeah. We come back from the break, and this is when Homer is looking over his yearbook,

and he has so many memories. Ah, my high school yearbook. You handsome devil. I can't believe I ate the whole thing. Activities, none. Sports, none. Honors, none. So many memories. Time to go to the reunion. It'll be great to see the old gang again. Patsy, Ralph Mouth, the Fonz. That was happy days. No, they weren't all happy days. Like the time Pinky Tuscadero crashed her motorcycle. Or the night I lost all my money to those card sharks

and my dad Tom Bosley had to get it back. One little tiny element of that I love is that Homer narrates his life experience like it's a TV guide entry, especially with my dad, Tom Bosley. Had to get it back. That's right. That's great.

It's great. And, Bobby, you're talking about stuff that stuck with you from this episode. And, like, this is one of those, which is the activities none, sports none, honors none. Like, that's just another thing that I normally incorporate as a reference, like, into my own life, but life. But a thing I think about often. It's just such a funny idea of completely coasting through high school. And not having anything. And just after he says none, none, none. That's what he does.

So many memories. So many memories. I think I have also filed away so many memories. After recalling something dull that happened. Or something I'd rather forget about. It's like homer was not the first person to say that but this use of it really stuck with me yeah and most of my high school memories are watching the simpsons so homer conflating happy days with his high school it

totally makes sense to me sure yeah this is funnier than in the table draft in the table draft when homer is corrected and says it's happy days he doesn't recount two episodes he misremembers he instead says oh you're right i had no friends which that's okay but i like it better that he just doubles down and just remembers two separate episodes of march can only like go i guess you realize homer has lost his mind it's better to make him insane than pathetic it It's funnier. Definitely. 100%. Totally agree. And then also you just get into like, oh, but yeah, you had friends. So we've seen your high school friends and flashbacks.

The episodes he remembers are season ones, Give the Band a Hand, which that's the one with the card sharks. And then the other one, I think Homer is conflating it. Pinky Tuscadero never had an episode where she crashed her bike. In fact, she's barely in the show. But I think he's thinking of the one where Richie crashed his bike. Yeah, I think so too. I tried looking up the Pinky Tuscadero episode and I got nothing.

No, I mean, I did look up Richie Almost Dies, the season five episode. And I think they only did it because Henry Winkler wanted to have a scene where he prays to God to save Richie. And it's his big crying monologue. It's like his awards attempt. Oh, interesting. Probably if I was a Happy Days watcher, I'd have wanted to skip it in reruns because it's a very special episode. Yeah, sure. Where also probably Ron Howard wanted to take the week off and just lay in bed for most of the episode.

Do you think that that's the kind of thing of like pre-internet you couldn't just look up the details do you think that's the writer getting it wrong or do you think they're making the joke of homer is misremembering it i think he correctly remembers one so i have to assume it's the writer misremembering because right we're little jerks with the internet we can correct these people and they do get things wrong sometimes there's a misremembering of an old commercial or a reference or the title of something. Though here they remember an old commercial correctly, don't they, Bob? Yes.

Which commercial is that? I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Thing. Oh, yes. Sorry. Yes, I totally went past that. A reference to a very iconic 1972, I alka-seltzer commercial yeah i have the clip for all of us who were not alive in the 70s i can't believe i ate that whole thing you ate it i can't believe i ate that whole thing no ralph i ate it i can't believe I ate that whole thing. Take two Alka-Seltzer.

Alka-Seltzer neutralizes all the acid your stomach has churned out. For your upset stomach and headache, take Alka-Seltzer and feel better fast. Did you drink your Alka-Seltzer? The whole thing. Hey. So I've definitely seen that ad, and maybe I'm misremembering it myself, but I remember that still airing in the 80s. Or maybe they just did more campaigns with the same catchphrase.

But I remember that being an enduring thing. Yeah, I think they did update it with not a new actor, but new commercials where he eats different things and the slogan persists. Apparently it was so big in the 70s that like people just put it on buttons or on t-shirts. It was one of the many fun catchphrases of the early 70s people would just say. Though, have you guys ever said that on Doughboys, Nick? Has that come up on this? No, we've never done it. I can't believe I ate that whole thing.

I'm trying to think of commercial phrases. I mean, certainly where's the beef has come up in the wendy's conversation the coors light twins and the twins which was like a weird thing of like they had this campaign of like things that dudes like right and it was like burritos at 4 a.m and it always ended with the twins and it was these two models and bikinis or whatever for whatever reason that phrase the twins like bled into the larger culture probably because i just watched the final season of curb your enthusiasm but a running gag and that is the i need cash now jingle commercial they sing that a lot in the season like oh yeah the structure settlement and i need cash now that that commercial again it's just homer homer has no high school memories and his photo is great too he does look like he was really fucked

when they took the photo bad like teenage mustache too and i really appreciate their commitment to keeping them as 1974 because that actually then makes this reunion be done a year early because this airs in 93, but for it to be the 20th reunion, it should be 94. But they're just kind of waving it off, though. At the end of the episode, they make the numbers count, as we all know. It's horrifying. We'll get to it. Yeah, the return of Dondalinger, the return of Artie Ziff.

We have fake Roger Myers Jr. and fake Artie Ziff in this episode. So two frauds. So that I definitely clocked. I was like, that's not Lovitz, even though he has the Lovitz like jealous. You know, that's like such like a thing that is sort of his delivery. But is that also Azaria? That's Dan Castellaneta. Oh, OK.

And he does a great Lovitz. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. They were working with Lovitz a lot at this point to make the critic, but he wasn't around for this. Though it could just be they really were trying to make this a less expensive episode. So no guest stars in this whole episode. And yeah, I also, it's funny. They go from Homer misremembering happy days and then what's on the banner for the reunion? Hey, sit on it.

Another catchphrase from happy days. Yes. I also like the Dondalinger lingers still the principal and he is nice enough to let the unhoused sometimes sleep in the gym and he'll leave out scraps for them right which homer already has been eating soaps in this episode and now he's mistaken for a vagrant oh also other references to the way we was the tight shot of their butts and then them saying do the hustle that's from the way we was and the larry davis experience the band is also from that 70s episode yeah wow their dance is laid out exactly the same as when they take the study break and margin homer dance

to it that's right we meet the class clown which is funny mike reese says that he learned later that hank azaria was this type of class clown growing up he's basically playing himself in it and though I love that the class clown has not updated his comedy in 20 years it's all the bits he did in school in the 70s yeah it's really heavy with a lot of 70s references and this is the sort of thing and I'm sure you know we're all in the same boat of like these were not any references that I knew as a kid this was all stuff I was picking up from the simpsons it's i guess the equivalent is like when bart is reading mad magazine is like they're really sticking it to that spiro agnew guy he must work there or something that's how i was reacting to all these like happy days and whatever like 70s specific yeah it was around this time that i inherited

my parents cheech and chong cassette tapes and I knew nothing about drugs had no interest in them at the time but I thought it was all fucking hilarious just because it was like oh it's funny on these people this one guy's really stupid yes right Dave's not here man yeah Dave's not here I've never heard that bit in reality I only know the Simpsons referencing it also there was another cut joke that I think would have been funny the theme of playing when they entered the room was tubular bells from the exorcist which is the exorcist oh wow maybe that was a little too smart or too expensive script blew their budget on do the hustle but here's where there's the non-canonical return of Artie Ziff. Oh, my God.

It's my old boyfriend, Artie Ziff. Hello, Marge. Have you heard? I'm stinking rich. Jealous? I'll bet you'd trade it all for one night with my wife. I would. Homer. Homer. it all for one night with my wife i would yes eight years later they'll make that into the episode half decent proposal and i had actually never seen this movie i listened to a recent we

hate movies episode about it it turns out once they get past the sleeping with robert redford thing the movie has to kill a lot of time and that's not interesting at all and also the we hate movies guys pointed out another big flaw is that robert redford didn't want to be a bad guy in the movies like he's too nice he's not a creep he's a guy who doesn't need to pay women to have sex and he's like the nicest billionaire in the world yeah it's like really only the premise was interesting about that and then the execution it's like kind of like a sliding doors or a bucket list where it's like okay you get the log lines like oh that sounds like something but then you know actually laying it out as a film it's like all right this is i don't need all this

stuff it ends with like him giving all the money away or something right yes like he's just like all the money he got from being cuckolded he he was like, I don't want that after all. It's dirty money. Yeah, he gives it away at a zoo that was important to him and Demi Moore. And that's why he... I'm just going to steal the jokes our We Hate Movies guys said. But it's just like, how about you keep that money? You earned it. It is your money. How about you buy your house back?

When you mentioned bucket list, it also is like nobody thinks of the film Bucket List starring, I want to say, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. That's correct. That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. But I do think the idea of an indecent proposal, like people, or at least for a time, knew what that meant, you know. I didn't intend to have all this cuckoldry talk on here with one of the Doughboys. Consistent theme on the Doughboys show.

I apologize. Very off-brand. They then cut to the awards beginning and Homer. I also love how Homer constantly whispers to Marge the obvious reference like she doesn't get it. Like it's so funny. God, he's such a fucking dipshit. Like him laughing so hard that Dave's not here, man. And then like Homer's not here, man.

And then, yeah, him explaining everything to Marge. It's like, this is exactly the fucking dipshit you don't want to be with, be like, you know, in a comedy theater or watching a comedy movie with. I love it. Though I guess in a way, my job is to whisper Ed Sullivan to people to explain references. That's the whole podcast. This is very observational because at this time in The Simpsons history, not every character around their age went to high school with Homer and Marge. So just Barney is there. Lenny isn't there. Carl isn't there.

Moe isn't there. At a certain point in history, they decided like, oh, they all grew up together, even as children. This was a joke on the Venture Brothers, but this happened in like most long running fiction where it's just like, oh, actually, every character knew each other when they were kids. It's a thing that happened in Marvel Comics. But Adventure Brothers, they call it super crazy no-way school. Like, oh, everybody went to high school together, huh? Actually, since you mentioned Barney Bob, this table draft finally revealed an extra layer to the Barney joke. So Barney is in a tux and he's very dressed up and he's asked, where's your cummerbund? But the guy he's asking isn't drawn to look like a classmate.

He actually is supposed to be Barney's boss. And it's because of a lost joke. Oh, that's not on the deleted scenes either. I don't know if they animated, but basically they show up and they say, oh, Barney, you really dressed up for this. And he's like, oh, yeah, I love it. Oh, got to get back to work. And he's a waiter. They're handing out hors d'oeuvres. OK that's why he's dressed like that that's his boss telling

him what happened to your cummerbund and why they're dressed the same barney has already lost his cummerbund in the toilet so it's not a classmate dressing him down it's his boss the joke does play kind of odd in a vacuum because they're dressed the same way. And it seems like he's asserting some sort of status. That context is illuminating. It's still funny to hear it fell in the toilet and he just like left it there, I guess. But yes, Homer is winning all the joke awards, which he has no shame about. He loves that he's gained the most weight and lost the most hair and he's gone nowhere.

He's happy. It's not easy staying in this rut. I love that line. And then the reveal that Dondalinger has been going through their permanent records just for the fun of it. And that's how he learned Homer did not graduate and reveals it to everyone. It's really weird. In the script, he says it. He doesn't say Cal Howard Cosell. He does say Howard Cosell. It's in the script. I'm very confused by that unless it's were they worried about likeness rights again here. If he said Howard C like a stink pun does no no then he just goes into dynamite which the act out on is very good i love how he gets away from the microphone to scream it too yeah then this is where there's another big deleted scene too yes because this

entire speech homer gives at the table is pure adr and i don't know if you have the original clip or anything henry but he tells marge i'm going to be just like that woman who fell off the mountain in that movie. I think it was called Don't Fall Off the Mountain. And then he proposes, I am going to learn to ski. And so that is the original scene. It's referencing the movie The Other Side of the Mountain, which is one of those 70s movies that once everyone knew about, like butterflies are free, but now nobody does. And maybe no one knew in 1993. But it's about a true story of a skier who

falls off a mountain and recovers and it's very inspirational so popular they made the other side of the mountain part two but they changed that into homer's night school speech don't fall off the mountain is good they get back to that type of joke with the bus that couldn't slow down which is a funnier joke yeah very good joke his don't fall off the mountain speech was fun but yeah they snipped it all i feels like with that kind of cutting it's like but you guys needed time you cut down this speech to like be five ten second shorter so then homer says he's gonna get his diploma to get back his most improved odor award then nick i thought you might think it's funny that as soon as abe goes in there he's given a

staff position like immediately after. That's probably not also very normal in the world of writing. I don't know. I mean, you definitely sometimes will get hired onto something that's ongoing. So that's not the biggest speed bump for me. And also just seeing him interact with all these, you know, very highly educated like blowhards is really entertaining. So, yeah. Here is Abe meeting his fellow writers.

You're a comedy writer? My God, you're so old. I want my check. You're a writer, all right. All right, here you go, Simpson. I want another one. You're a funny guy. How would you like a staff job?

I'll start you at $800 a week. My chest hurts. All right, leeches, I want you to see what a good writer looks like. His name is Abraham Simpson, and he's got something you couldn't get at your fancy schools. Life experience. Actually, you know, I wrote my thesis on life experience. And quiet! Abe, tell him about your amazing life. I spent 40 years as a night watchman at a Cranberry Silo. Wow! So we'll talk about the writing room, but left to right we have John Swartzwelder, George Meyer, Jeff Martin, Al Jean. Al Jean's the guy who says he wrote his thesis on life experience.

Sam Simon and Mike Reese. And I believe Mike Reese says he didn't realize how fat he was until he saw himself on The Simpsons. He has lost a lot of weight since this era. But we heard from showrunners, you gain a lot of weight from writing on The Simpsons at this time because all you could do is snack in the very gross writing room that we ask every Simpsons writer about. And we hear new disgusting stories every time. Yeah, no, the disgusting writer's room here, I feel like not too increased or it's not a big hyperbole from what the reality was of their gross writer's room. And no, I saw this recently. Josh Weinstein recently pointed it out on Twitter that they had unlimited Butterfinger

BBs. Like they just had a giant crate. Wow. And he pointed it out in a classic picture of Conan and all the other writers sitting around on the table. He put an arrow to it like that's the Butterfinger BB's tub right there. You'd eat all you wanted all day long. I think in terms of writer's room history, I think we've learned that for David Merkin's year, seasons five and six, the writer's room was his office. So they got to write in a different room. Some writers had their own offices as well. But then I think they moved back to this writer's room afterwards i think bill told us that they deloused the old writer's room to then resume it

on their seasons after merkin left yeah the writers they said it was not their pitch to be drawn into it but i feel like they had to approve it but they did say they felt a little bad for swartzwater being drawn with uh like they said in the character model there was an arrow that pointed to his stomach that had the word gut on it but i think it wasn't intentionally mean right but i think it was to let the colors know like this is a strip of flesh so color this it's not a belt it's not part of his shirt it's not like a stripe on the shirt so maybe they could have put skin to be a little more sensitive yeah but i also do love the guy saying like oh yeah i wrote my thesis on live experience a perfect harvard smart guy line to say very funny yeah there is something because you know the cliche is that the camera adds 10 pounds and i've definitely experienced like feeling like

seeing myself on video or in a photograph from being like oh man I'm heavier than I expected it must be like a different level for it to be someone else drawing you and then you're like oh my god that's how this other person sees me that's what they think I look like so yeah I can understand being self-conscious about those characterizations yeah I had a moment where I was just reading at a bar and I guess someone was drawing me because they were just practicing sketching people in public and they left the drawing behind and the bartender gave it to me and i thought this is me who is this monster yeah no yeah nina does great drawings of us yes very flattering i'll say yeah and accurate accurate there you go accurate oh yes. Oh, yes. Very accurate.

So then they cut to Krusty talking about the then new nicotine patches, relatively new, and him feverishly licking his elbow. Like, that is so well drawn. It makes, like, physical sense. I love it. It's really well done. This is when they broadcast the cartoon, which looks exactly like how Bart and Lisa imagined it though Bart and Lisa can't even see it because they accidentally changed the channel and missed the entire thing which I don't know Nick have you ever had trouble finding your stuff

to be able to watch it or yeah most of your stuff has been in the streaming age lately so you just would pull it up on Hulu or Disney Plus sometimes yeah Yeah, you know what it more is? Is like every time I've worked for a show that aired on one of these streaming services, we've all tried to do the same thing. I've been like, hey, can we talk to Hulu and see if we can get a free Hulu code? And the answer every single time has been no. Like no free Hulu, no free Amazon Prime, no free Netflix, no free Disney Plus.

Doesn't matter what you do for them. They just have a blanket policy of no one gets it for free. I can make Mike Mitchell my avatar in Prime Video, but he probably didn't get a subscription. He 100% did not get free Amazon Prime to watch his own movie. Or free Netflix to watch his own TV show. No, that's just how it's done. I guess it probably comes from some sort of tech company ethos. Probably just how they're used to doing things.

We don't give away anything for free. But then again, you always hear these stories about Disney not giving people park passes or whatever. This is when they watch it they see the credits roll the credits are longer than the cartoon was and i love the they fought a bit theme that's great if you're looking for crazy credits well the assistants are actually aljean and mike reese's real assistants and then the animation credits are just literally taken from simpsons credits there's nothing funny in there. They are like four pages of the credits that are at the end of this episode. Yeah, Dee Capelli was Al, Gene, and Mike Reese's,

and Jacqueline Adkins is one of the six listed assistant to the producers. And you know what? That's the same job title that one Michael Mitchell had from seasons 19 through 23 of the Simpsons. Wow. There you go. And as we said before, our guests, you've been drawn into the show yourself, just like the writers on the show. Michael Mitchell had from seasons 19 through 23. Wow. And as we said before, our guests, you've been drawn into the show yourself, just like the writers on the show. That's true. Yeah. And that was the big thing for me in terms of how I was drawn is like they drew me with

like a beard and which I sometimes have, but I'm mostly kind of clean shaven. So it was just like, that's how I'm kind of immortalized in Simpsons form. And then the only thing my parents said upon seeing it was, they that's how i'm kind of immortalized in simpsons form and then the only thing my parents said upon saying it was they really gave you a beard there well yeah i guess so so the post credits they have the vanity card the production card of itchy and scratchy at the typewriter and this is where that happens right the extended credits. What is that a reference to? Was that like Siskel and Ebert's? What was that? The Stephen J. Connell production logo.

Yeah. Oh, that's what it was. If you go onto YouTube, you can see a montage of how it evolved over the years. But it's him typing, throwing the paper behind him, and then that forms the logo. And that logo was all over his productions from the 70s to the 80s to the early 90s. Productions like 21 Jump Street and The Rockford Files. And The A-Team, right? That's the big one I remember. A-Team, yes.

You know, title vanity cards, they just aren't the same these days. It's just like a quick little thing, or like Chuck Lorre had his own joke that he'd just write a big screed or whatever on each one, but you don't get long expensive ones that much anymore no they want something that they can just blaze through as quickly as possible the blumhouse one is like a short film oh yeah that's true on movies they last oh man it's like okay we got legendary and syncope man it's gonna take forever now i will praise family guy there's a very funny family guy bit

in which peter's watching a movie and he keeps thinking the movie is starting but really it's gonna take forever now i will praise family guy there's a very funny family guy bit in which peter's watching a movie and he keeps thinking the movie is starting but really it's a new production logo yeah so very well observed that when i just saw a late night with the devil which was in theaters recently that was like one where they had like you know i guess eight different financiers so there's so many cards and enough cards were happening where the audience started to think it was a joke and you started to get laughter from it and especially for a show for a movie that's presented as like about television production but it wasn't at all so it actually was a little bit disorienting up top we talked about it too when we did the podcast for an event of evangelion which I just saw in theaters it literally has 10 title

cards at the start of the movie my buddy matt apodaca from get played my video game podcast he's also saw you end of evangelion in theaters and said like yeah there was also like a combination of knowing laughter from the fans and then nervous like what is going on laughter from people who are new to it when they just were presented with so many cards at the top of that movie listen to our five hour end of evangelion podcast if you want to know which each of those production companies was. Wow. Yeah. It took five hours to explain just that.

No. Then Homer comes into the room and he tells them that he did not graduate high school. Backrating notes, he runs across the room to strangle Bart, which is a new level of parental abuse. Yes. The clip show we covered a week ago, that ends with him strangling Bart for like 40 seconds straight. It's a very long strangling.

Wow. This strangling is interrupted by a doorbell. Hello, son. I was on my way home from work and thought I'd drop by. Oh, you have a job? They pay me $800 a week to tell a cat and mouse what to do. I see. Dad, can we talk to Grandpa alone for a minute?

All right. But if he starts to wig out, try to lure him into the cellar. I will say, if you want to reply to something idiotic or racist on Twitter or X, don't in general, but also don't post the gif of Jerry Seinfeld getting up and leaving in a huff. Post this instead. The dropping off of the nuthouse. It's not posted very often, carrying someone to the nuthouse and leaving them. Yeah, that should be a gif in high rotation as Homer retreating into the hedges.

I love how Dan sings, la, la, la, la, la. Like, that's so funny. So funny. I'm sure we've all experienced this, but I just visited my mom and some of her friends recently. And, of course. In the nuthouse? No, I was the one i think they were envisioning at the nut house as i explained what my job is and i have to then follow it up

with like no really let me explain that i make money off of this this is my real job and i because you have to have the patreon page ready on your phone yes i definitely feel like they give the way homer looks with like one eye partially closed. Like, I see. I feel like I got that look explaining my job to my mom's friends. Speaking of memes, this joke is just the sure grandma, let's get you to bed meme because he's telling the truth. He's just saying it in a sort of way where Homer's like, oh, I see you've lost your mind. You're right. But also in Homer's imagination, just the idea that the building would be labeled nut house is just like the thing that tickles me the most here and then his father's in

a wheelbarrow so he's doing his yes yeah bart and lisa confess to them there's a good little moment that's on the deleted scenes too where abe says oh that's why they were being so nice to me and Richie and Kathy. Then the joke in the script table draft is, do you know why you were getting money for absolutely nothing? He says, don't you dare touch my social security, which is also a good joke, but making it about Democrats giving handouts. Well, that shows you how things were then. If only that were true. Yeah, I want free money.

Democrats give it. Waiting for the money I was promised. i'm never getting it but as they explain it to abe he then falls asleep and has a dream where he's the queen of the old west so he has this dream the next episode is whacking day where he tells the story to bart how he infiltrated a cabaret show that hitler was at dressed as a woman oh yeah and then in cape fear he misses his pills and has become a woman in that so they were really into a becomes a woman jokes in the show right was a runner for the time did that continue really into season six and beyond or was that really just like a short because i remember it being like oh yeah he's done that a

few times or at least had the daydream about it. I can't think of one post season four. I can't either. And, hey, you know, speaking of happy days, they were also really into these Love American style heart iris outs. This is what closed every segment of the last Treehouse of Horror in this season. It's so great. You can both marry me, which I'm wondering if that's taking paint your Your Wagon, which is the plot point of Paint Your Wagon. Yeah. The song that Simpson sings is not actually in Paint Your Wagon.

Gonna paint a wagon. That's not actually. But go to commercial break. When it comes back, this is where there's another deleted scene. We see Bart and Lisa at the typewriter, but before it, they cut a scene where Abe is standing up pitching out an entire show like then we'll do this something with some pizzazz then Bart and Lisa say quiet and then he says I'll just sit here and play with my teeth and then Lisa says play quietly

then they get back to typing this is where they are invited to take a tour of it which Abe turns down because it has one stair we get a tour of it's a parody of the disney studios i've gotten to take this tour once actually for money it wasn't like a friend invited me to it i got paid to do a tour of the original buena vista studios with all the art deco signage and everything wow it still looks pretty cool they even have a joke there where they basically make it look like pluto has peed on a fire hydrant that's by like pluto boulevard or whatever it's uh one of the in jokes at the disney studios this is where they cut a couple things lapidus in that interview from 2023

brings up that they had any animated background or the repeating backgrounds gag which is good but then they said they had another joke where they were seeing the foreign language dubs for itchy and scratchy and it was just the joke was oh this character screams now it's a german guy screaming instead of an american guy screaming and then the french scratchy just talks like jerry lewis so the french love jerry lewis joke and then there's a deleted scene i wish they'd have kept in and it was only because it got cut matt graining says because they lost this censor battle but the deleted scene is they go to basically a life drawing class with a cat and a mouse in the middle of the room they're surrounded by artists and it is caricatures of the main directors for this season just like the writers and i feel really bad the directors didn't get their visual cameo

that the writers got in the broadcast version yeah right we had seen the caricatures of wes archer david silverman rich moore and jim reardon before but one of the directors is also carlos baeza he's there yeah and i think the guy with the glasses could be brad bird if it's not brad bird it's either jeff lynch or mark kirkland, we know what Mark Kirkland looks like, and he's a handsome, regular-looking guy who doesn't wear glasses. So my guess is, yeah, that it's either Brad Bird or Jeffrey Lynch. That's my guess, too. I feel bad for Kirkland. He gets left out of that shot, too.

The joke ends with a cat having a piece of dynamite shoved in its mouth and then exploding offscreen. The censors did not like that, so the scene got cut. I can understand that i mean i think the cartoon violence of itchy and scratchy turning into within the simpsons reality actual animal cruelty is yeah it's probably a bridge too far and i think this is no coincidence but this was also the spring of beavis and butthead this was the launch of Beavis and Butthead. This was the launch of Beavis and Butthead, which had happened just a month before. So maybe they were a little more skittish about animal abuse. That's a good point.

Frog baseball. Man, yeah, I bet you're right. You know, my parents, we've heard this from many guests, of like their parents told them they couldn't watch Simpsons because it would be a bad influence. We didn't hear that, me and Bob, but I heard it for Beavis and Butthead for sure. Like my parents did not want me watching beavis and butthead in his first couple years oh my mom thought it was funny i'm sorry yeah i did watch beavis and butthead without much of an issue though simpsons one i know is my wife natalie her parents did not let her watch the

simpsons because they were like those are bad kids those are misbehaving kids you don't need to see this you know whatever it's a bad cartoon but did permit her to watch The Simpsons because they were like, those are bad kids. Those are misbehaving kids. You don't need to see this. You know, whatever. It's a bad cartoon. But did permit her to watch Married with Children, which is way worse. Oh, yeah. So much worse.

Yeah. To make my mom sound cooler, I should say, about a year or so later, she realized Beavis and Butthead was OK and let us watch it at first. But also, we recently learned Married with Children had a lot of Harvard writers. That's right i did wow that makes sense that was probably like most tv shows of the era these harvard guys they took over everything man yeah they also have a good cut joke in the table draft of the switchboard is lighting up that one of the cartoons is successful

and then roger myers goes no it does that all the time and he like hits it and he's like see it's malfunctioning call a guy they should have kept that then in the table draft when homer goes to the learning annex apu is going to and there's some jokes that apu is his classmates and it's actually a good joke or concept that they pretty much bring back in the much apu about nothing episode with his citizenship apu reveals that he's going to school to regain his credentials because he was a neurosurgeon in India, and he can't be that in America. So he's trying to get back his degree in America.

Yeah, it seemed like there was a lot more to this B-plot because in Act 3, it's just three very brief scenes that are not bad, but I feel like, feel like again next year they are really elevated with that episode of homer going back to college yeah homer goes to college mine's so much more out of this i'm not even gonna detail them all because i can see why they cut them they're just not that funny basically homer then does a bunch of high school experiments like instead of dissecting a frog he dissects a watermelon and then another, he makes a battery with like a lemon. So it's just, they're okay.

I can see why they cut it. And they only kept in the burning of the donut. The Dondalinger has a teacher who's mourning a dead wife. Homer erasing the words dead wife is another of my favorite jokes in the whole show. Really funny. Yeah, that's the best one. Yeah. Good.

He thought it would be important and the note he made was just dead wife and then he erases it god it's good also just the tone deafness of just like after he says that just asking will this be on the exam just he goes oh so then we visit crusty again he is covered in nicotine patches gets one put on the remaining space on his butt and this is when we then see the news cartoon they made his title parody of scenes from them all another film where woody allen is an actor with bet middler i remember just seeing that on tv randomly as a kid i believe it was a big box office flop. Previous Talking Simpsons guest Nathan Rabin wrote about it for his flop book.

So the scenes from them all was not a very successful movie. That's the first time I remember reading a critic's pan review. Oh, really? If I recall Rabin mocking it, he was like, why do you cast Woody Allen

as like an LA cool guy walking around a Los Angeles mall with Bette Midler the whole time? Why do you cast him as this? But Scratchy being skinned on the escalator like an la cool guy walking around a los angeles mall with bett middler the whole time why why do you cast him right but scratchy being skinned on the escalator might be one of the grossest things they ever did in an itchy and scratchy cartoon it's revolting i do think as far as the arc of this episode uh you know him like he gets flayed and then he buys his own fur coat back and then he gets bludgeoned to death by the fur protesters. It's like I don't know how many itchy and scratchy shorts have humans depicted, but that it's an interesting thing that they don't look like Simpsons human beings.

Anyway, that larger thing I was going to say, this is like I think one of my favorite itchy and scratchy shorts. I think it's just so funny. Probably as a kid gave me a slight fear of escalators. I take escalators. I wasn't not taking them. But I was always slightly worried at that last step of like, oh, God, what if my shoelace got caught or something? Right. The way his skin gets off his body and just every line and sinew of his muscle is yes fine rich moore says that they don't have a hard and

fast rule of like what do humans and itchy and scratchy look like because here and this is also in the cartoons they show later they have you know caucasian skin tone it doesn't follow the yellow is white right that the simpsons do the way he's beaten to death also is a good ending i and then and also that abe simpson is getting so way he's beaten to death also is a good ending. And also that Abe Simpson is getting so famous it's being introduced as an episode written by him. All the kids cheer.

It's like when they know it's a Chuck Jones cartoon or something. We were all cheering when we saw John Schwarzwalder's name on the screen as 12-year-olds. Though also too,

I can see, this comes up a little later, but I can see why I say animator first animators in America would not have liked these jokes about how the only person you know who did a cartoon is the writer and the animators are like a race. Thanks to deleting that scene. There's no mention of who actually draws itchy and scratchy in this episode. It's just right. Yeah, for sure.

And, you know, if you're working on a boarded show, which I've done some writing for, it's like kind of like that way I think of a script is like kind of fire and forget. Like, okay, here's a script. Go for it. A lot of what you've written will change in the storyboarding process and taking it to the finished animation where, you know, it's really like you're not the chief narrative authorial sort of voice on this particular thing. And then you just have to kind of understand your role when you're working on that sort of show i think the writers have a much heavier hand with the simpsons and with a lot of prime time animation you can ascribe a lot more credit to them but it is funny that they're just kind of like a race for the process i was seeing this during the wga strike last year and also with the talks currently as time we're recording this happening

with ayazi but like how storyboarders who work very hard like remember seeing several storyboarders i follow on twitter saying like storyboarding is writing you're rewriting for sure but it's just it's on the simpsons 2 storyboarder is the storyboarders of this episode are buried in the credits like you have to search for it. You got to pause real fast to see that name. At least not a lot of kids animation, especially for a lot of the shows that we know folks that work on it. Border is right there next to writer. It's like writer and storyboarder.

Yes, right, right. That's the kind of show I'm talking about. And that's the kind of place where you might see that sort of workflow. But yeah, it's semi-arbitrary,bitrary where the attribution goes and is omitted. Homer keeps going to school and learns a sad lesson about donuts while Abe also gets a shock. Now I'm going to burn this donut to show you how many calories it has. No! The bright blue flame indicates this was a particularly sweet doughnut.

This is not happening. This is not happening. Dear Mr. President, there are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot. Good news, Abe. Who are you? Now, now, you've been nominated for an award you're so good i fired the other writers from now on the fate of the entire company rests on that delightful coconut of yours oh no we're all doomed i'm a complete fraud i'm sorry i didn't catch any of that and now i gotta

go yeah so many things i found away like the good old rock i did the yiggy so many memories please eliminate three is something i always think of when there are too many of something yeah it's good and also i am not a crackpot a perfect way to end a rant on twitter for sure the thing i like

is when they're burning the donut and homers like this is not happening there's just like the one guy who consoles him like pats him on the back. I like that it's a random guy, though, you know, on current Simpsons, that would be, you know, like Cletus or. Right. Sure. Really, it would be a named character instead of just a guy. Yeah, it's fun that it's just a guy who's just like a stranger to Homer. Like, hey, it's it's okay it's all right and I also think it's a good parody of writing these types of scenes where they kept having these scenes where Roger Myers is like oh you're funny you're funny as Abe tells him the truth and

that this time he tells him a truth that he can't be like oh you jokester and say he's like oh what was that now I have to go and he just leaves so he can't get it. Nowadays, firing the entire writers is pretty normal at the end of a season. Sure. Sadly. Abe is put in charge. And this doesn't really lead to anything. I will say in the original table draft, it actually does lead to something. That when he's the sole writer, that's how he's able to get on the script where it ends with him telling people to

be nicer to their seniors and that's when Myers when he fires him says it'll ruin me but you're fired I don't care no messages on my show though him being the soul writer has nothing to do with the rest of this plot Homer then takes his final exam and I do also like this little bit here of him talking to his brain I also think about this one from time to time. Oh, yeah. All right, here are your exams. 50 questions, true or false? True. Homer, I was just describing the test.

True. Look, Homer, just take the test and you'll do fine. False. All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you. But let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer. It's a deal.

You gotta make deals with your brain sometimes. Actually, I was thinking about Abe being made the only writer. Maybe that's so when they win the award, eight writers don't have to go to the stage with him. It's just him. Because I think at a certain point in time, The Simpsons had a record number of producers, and now

Gene would joke that counts against them when it's time to decide who wins the Emmy. Right. Because they'd have to make 20 trophies for everybody. The Emmys are losing money at that point. Speaking of the Emmys, this episode has two award show bits in it. They are so mad that they lost to Will Vinton that year at the Emmys and they didn't even get nominated the next year that Murphy Brown won in comedy writing. And these are just called the cartoon awards? Oh yeah annual cartoon awards. Yes yeah they're not the Annie's or anything or the WGA awards which the Simpsons were four of the nominees and just one as well at the time that's right for a good episode a funny episode yeah it good. But they were four of the five nominees. That's kind of a little much, I'd say. I don't know.

The statuette here looks like an Emmy. Yes. Like, I guess it's supposed to be, like, a generic. Yeah. I wonder if it was originally the Emmys and they just, like, sort of altered it. I will say, first off, I've written for some award shows. And I didn't know this until I worked on them. Because, you know, I was, like, monologue jokes and like sketches and like bits and stuff

that would be in the pre-taped video stuff that would be in the show. The patter, which is what happens between like Krusty and Brooke Shields, that sort of stuff where like presenters are going to say their own thing. There are patter specialists who that's all they do. And so for like one of the shows, the writer's room was all in LA,

except the patter team was completely separate and they were in New York. And so for like one of the shows, the writer's room was all in L.A., except the patter team was completely separate and they were in New York. And so the bulk of I think what people think of as award show writing, which is, again, maybe you'll play the clip. It's really, really funny how it's satirized here. But the but there are people who just like do exactly that. I thought that was going to be part of my job. Man, you didn't get to have a matching of like, we've got these two celebrities, Nick. What you got? Exactly.

Let's get Jackie Chan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar out here together or whatever it always is. Let's get some sort of odd couple, make a joke about how different they are. It's just interesting that that was such a specialized trade. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care how much of that work is or was done by bruce valanche

good question i didn't work with valanche directly i've never met the man there were i can't remember the names of the people who worked on the independent spirit awards but that was like a i think a team of two and then they'd done that show for like many many years interesting man before they go to the award show they visit abe and there they'd done that show for many, many years. Interesting, man. Before they go to the award show, they visit Abe, and there's two jokes that I completely missed. One, because I didn't know what an escort service was as a kid, so that joke's really funny. Right. Another is Harvard history nerd comedy as well.

They love presidential history, these Harvard writers. Like I said earlier, this episode implies that Abe was behind the 1912 attempted assassination of teddy roosevelt when i looked into that guy now i realized that must have been what popularized the idea of like pleading insanity or you know reason of insanity that then gets you the man who did it robert shrank he died in that mental institution it's not like he did like five years and left like he was there for 30 years and then died there. Wow. It's what made Teddy Roosevelt look like a big, tough bull moose because he got shot in the chest.

It did not pierce his lungs, and he gave a speech after being shot and then got treated for it. Abe thinks he shot him. He'd have been like 10 years old when he shot him in 1912. But yes, also I'm saying that's an onion in the ointment because I guess he had plans for that escort service that the insurance wouldn't cover him for that night. Like you said, Bob, a lap of this rope,

Brooke Shields in the episode to meet her. Nick, did you ever write something in with a celebrity just to meet a celebrity or just to like go somewhere? No, I mean, I never was like, hey, let's write this with this person in mind, this will happen. But I will say that I worked on this adult swim show, NTSF SDSUV, that was Paul Scheer's show. It was like a satire of both procedurals and then action movies. And it was a lot of fun to work on. And that was one where we had an episode where it was like, it was basically

an Austin Powers sort of premise, but it was more of a Mad Men thing where there was an FBI agent who was frozen in the 50s or the 60s. I can't remember the era, but he was very much locked into a Mad Men persona, and then he was unfrozen. And one of us just was like, what if we got Robert Forster? And kind of laughing. I was like, all right, let's make the ask.

And then he said yes and did it and was great and was super nice. So I got to meet like Robert Forster and like watch him act on set so I think sometimes that stuff just does kind of happen where you know you'll reach out to someone for a guest spot and shockingly they'll just be down to do it because they like to work or they have a free point in their schedule and just want to get a little bit of money and this is before she would really transition to comedy with suddenly susan a show that i watched sure i remember very little about it our friends on the podcast gayest episode ever covered an episode of suddenly susan and i forgot that many of the jokes about her character were about how fat and tall she was when we're talking about brook shields henry is

tilting his head to the side like a dog by the way so we're talking about brooke shields one of the most beautiful human beings ever and the host of the podcast are we supposed to believe that she is an ugly woman or is that the joke because so many of the jokes are like wow how'd you fit into that dress today fatty you know those kind of things and she looked like brooke shields during the filming of suddenly susan that is insane that's wild the only thing i remember from our gayest episode ever, pals, covering it, was that I had completely forgot about the cast member who passed away during the filming while on a fun weekend that turned tragic with Andy Dick. I had completely forgot about that.

Oh, wow. Look into it, folks. But yeah, you're right, Bob. Brooke Shields is about to transition into comedy right after this appearance. And she's great in it, but she's just like totally playing it straight. And like she's the person who's just blazing ahead with the copy in this bit. And what's funny is that she's not really reacting to Krusty's breakdown. Perhaps the only time Brooke Shields has said the words Ren and Stimpy. I think.

You know, on some award shows where one person's working hard and then the other, she's like how Anne Hathaway was trying hard while James Franco was like doing a jack-off motion while presenting the Oscars. Right. Anne Hathaway just did an interview where she was talking about how like everybody turned on her after that when she worked hard at that oscars it was james franco who didn't give a shit right but yes why don't we hear from one brooke shields and a blue-haired goon well here we are the star of the blue lagoon and me the blue-haired goon what the that? That's terrible. Cartoons have the power to make us laugh and to make us cry. Wouldn't you agree, Krusty? First of all, my hair is green, not blue. I got nothing to work with here. Nothing. Well, at least I can take off this girdle. Oh, yeah. The nominees for Best Writing in a Cartoon Series are...

Strongdar, Master of A-Com, The Wedding Episode. Action Figure Man, The How to Buy Action Figure Man Episode. Please, Mommy, I want it. Please. Ren and Stimpy, season premiere. Clip not done yet. So, yes, brief bit of history. We've covered Ren and Stimpy a few times on our other podcast, What a Cartoon.

At this point in time of the writing, it was like August of 1992, Ren and Stimpy had been on TV for a year, produced six episodes, and the show's creator was about to get fired. Yeah. Bob did great histories when we covered it on what a cartoon and our friend thad kamarowski wrote the book on it but yeah i mean what was happening at this time was they got renewed for a ton of episodes and john crickfaloozy on top of being like a criminal asshole was also a megalomaniac who just held up

all production endlessly for no good reason other than just being a jerk drunk on his own power so nothing got finished every deadline was missed the executives were actually like too nice to him and i'll never say that about network executives but these ones were and eventually they had to fire him and then he gets in the press and he's got friends in the animation press who make it look like oh this poor genius like that's what i thought too i felt so lied to when i learned that later right well especially he was like as a kid because he was like the voice of ren too right yeah and then was it billy west who took over yeah billy west did take over for ren that was

the thing i remember is like and i remember the written snippies after that point i was like these aren't good anymore because they're missing that auteur creator, like that's what the issue was. But yeah, some of these guys get out of control. I'm just always amazed. There was a more recent show I heard about where they apparently had a writer's room for like an ungodly amount of time, like nine months, and came out of it with zero scripts. And I'm just like, how are you so, isn't this what you want to do? And you're like given the opportunity to like make something to like create your own thing and you get put in that position and then you're just like, I don't want to work. I don't want to do it. Like, it's one thing if it's like

you're working on your own thing, you're like, and you're trying to be a self-starter and you just can't get motivated. But if it's like, hey, here you go, have this TV show, have this opportunity to make what you want to make, and then you don't follow up on that, I'm always baffled by that. And I'm someone who doesn't like to work. I'm someone who I'd characterize myself as lazy. But in that position, I feel like I'd be like, yeah, okay, let's try to make this thing. I don't know. I don't get it. Going back to Suddenly Susan real quick,

I feel like I'm confident that this is something that that the two of you know but this is news to me on suddenly susan a show i've probably watched like 30 episodes of and have zero memory of it eric idol was a recurring character named ian maxtone graham yes and named after the simpsons producer i believe that was when suddenly susan was put on hiatus for retooling that's right and then eric idol showed up as the new boss well because i think judd nelson was getting whacked out on wowie sauce at the time on that show so they needed to replace him i think we have covered that before though i forgot that fact about it that he was yeah and i think it took place in new york and ian maxton graham was a new york get about SNL or Letterman writer.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and also the Simpsons box, Ren and Stimpy, like three episodes ago,

Ren and Stimpy were guests. Like they just animated a Ren and Stimpy scene on the show. So then this punchback seems needlessly mean to people who just worked with you. But then they say it was because john k was in interviews talking shit about the simpsons saying it was good in spite of its writers and obviously writers don't like to hear that sure now henry before we move on here action figure man when you saw this joke were you like why is the mom not wanting to buy the toy this seems very odd to me i did see myself reflected in that as a kid like oh i do that to my mom and ask for a toy.

Well, my mom probably did. When they cut away, you don't see the mom go like, okay, which is probably what my mom did many a time with my too many action figures I had as a kid. I mean, that joke, when I saw it as a 10-year-old, did make me realize like, oh, those were toy commercials. I didn't just like He-Man as a story. It was a commercial to make me buy He-Man toys. But then your response was, more toys, please. That commentary was instantly pushed out of my brain by seeing a new Spider-Man toy on a shelf somewhere, probably.

Well, and also another deep reference there, Strong Dar, master of ACOM, that is a joke about how the overseas animation studio in Seoul, Korea for this episode of many Simpsons episodes is ACOM. It's a joke about their animation studio. Also, you can tell that the sparkles are added to her dress in post. Those are post-production sparkles. Those are video sparkles. Repeat, video sparkles.

So then they show the scene from the little barbershop of horrors. In the reaction shot, this is the only time they drew Groening into the episode. He's laughing along with Jeff Martin, John Vitti, George Meyer, and John Schwarzwald are all drawn into the shot. You get this complicated dolly zoom shot of Abe reacting to the filth on the screen. It's amazing. Oh, yeah. It's like out of Jaws, right? It's like the Jaws shot or something.

Good fellas. A lot of directors have used that one. It's to express that Abe is in shock when he finally sees the cartoon he's been writing. And so I do feel like I don't care that this doesn't work as a great plot, but it's like Abe sees this was a show he's working for and it's gross and bad. And he thinks cartoon violence is bad and he's going to read them the riot act. But are we supposed to side with him or not here? That's what I'm confused by.

Hmm. I don't think they stick with it long enough for me to even think about it. Well, here, let's listen to his speech real quick and see if, are we supposed to be on Abe's side or not? And the winner is... Itchy and Scratchy, Abraham Simpson Rice. And the winner is... Itchy and Scratchy, Abraham Simpson Rice. All right, Grandpa! Woo!

That was the first time I ever saw Itchy and Scratchy, and I didn't like it one bit. It was disgusting and violent. I think all you people are despicable. For shame! He's right. We've been wasting our lives. The hell with cartoons. I'm going to do what I've always dreamed of. I'm going to write that sitcom about the sassy robot.

Here, kids. I guess you deserve this. Let's go. I guess nobody likes the truth Huh Grandpa? Nope I'll never watch an award show again Unless that delightful Billy Crystal's Involved So that was Al Jean and Mike Reese in the audience They did not write a sitcom about a sassy robot

They did write a sitcom about a sassy angel Matt Groening admits during the commentary I wrote the sitcom about the sassy robot That joke is great that they want to quit basically this is as aljean and mike reese are about to leave the simpsons and to say like i'm gonna write what i always dreamed of which you know the gag is like the great american novel or they're gonna write something high class but instead he pitches what sounds like one of the corniest pitches you can, a sassy robot. Yeah, so lowbrow.

I just like Henry to go back to your question. I'm not sure if you're supposed to side with Grandpa because he is just being such a crank and that's the whole, you know. But I do think the idea of someone going up on an award show, accepting the award and then saying it was the first time they'd ever seen it and then trashing it is just like so funny and then just everyone's immediate reaction to like start throwing vegetables at him just how quickly it all heightens it's all great i i guess narratively clearly the the function is just like it's a way to sever this get grandpa out of the writer's room and then that just is kind of like wrapped up but yeah i don't know where you're supposed to land the thing that confused me is that lisa says nobody likes the truth huh grandpa and lisa is usually treated as the moral center of the show so if she says it right you're supposed to agree with it but it's like but they wrote it

yeah they wrote it and they like itchy and scratchy yeah yeah that's why i was very confused by it it's like wait the important thing is the kids bring home the awards, and I want to think they put their Emmy-style awards on the shelf next to Homer's Mr. Burns Emmy-style award he got in season three. Which, that was the episode Nick was on, right? That's right. Yeah, Homer Defined. Wow, wow. It's also, I guess, Bart and Lisa made like $8,000 or whatever from this, too,

as the third of the money. But that's what just confused me of like, again, if we're talking about the rules of storytelling or whatever from this too as the money but that's what just confused me of like again if we're talking about the rules of storytelling or whatever i suppose it should be revealed that grandpa's a fraud at some point but that's not what wraps this up either that he didn't write it like that doesn't matter at all to this plot i don't know if we covered it but there is a deleted scene where he's fired backstage by roger myers right he goes i don't need your money can i have five cents for the trolley that's funny that also does wrap it up more by having him fired i guess on screen but i think you can get through implication that like okay obviously he's not gonna be working for the show anymore when they're walking out of the

auditorium just for efficiency's sake i guess maybe if one reading when lisa's like nobody likes the truth is more just like you're speaking your truth and you know you're saying what you really think and no one wants to hear your actual opinion uh you know your only value is like kind of as a mouthpiece for the show or whatever i don't know the next week in variety there's going to be 500 people signed a letter decrying grandpa's speech at this awards again i wish i could compare it to the table draft but this isn't even in it abe accepts the award and doesn't thank bart and lisa and then that leads to them quitting in the next act so this is a completely different ending here yeah

and then they wrap up homer very quickly of just coming home to show march that he passed and then we flash forward to now i'm so happy that we got to this this year yeah i did a comical look at my fitbit watch referring that statement by the way well it played well on the zen cat every time it comes up every time the chiron appears on the screen to say what year it is like and it makes sense it is their 50th high school reunion which would make homer and march 68 in this scene wow but yes we flash forward to the far off year of 2024 march i passed that's wonderful homie at our next high school reunion i'll have nothing to be ashamed of. Hello, Dunderlinger.

Simpson, is that a plunger stuck on your head? No! I'm going to savor this 2024 while I can because it's going to be just like how Back to the Future is less fun now that we're past 2015. Or how Lisa's wedding happened 15 years ago, almost. Oh, man, that's weird to think about. Season four is also Itchy and Scratchy, the movie, right? So that's another one where the tag is flash forward to an old Homer and Bart is Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

But yeah, they went to that well a couple of times this year. I think we're told, what, 40 years later for that? Yeah, that one. So we're still 10 years away from that. Oh, wow. Okay. But they have to do a 2024 because it's the 50th high school reunion. So from 74, it's what makes sense.

Man, every time I watch it, even when I know it's coming, it's a sledgehammer each time. Slow decay of time is crushing but this is not the end of the episode because they had 30 more seconds to fill and it's an amazing story they tell on the commentary of how it happened basically it was Gene and Reese and Sam Simon who wrote it late and they took inspiration from comic books of all things what was it the one page archie comics like the little one-off page long stories it's very funny because it ends up like if you've read some archie comics you may notice that like they'll also end up with ah crap we have a page left we are paid short so they write a one page gag or even a half page they'll just do a half page gag they're like oh

we'll do it like that and it'll just be a little scene with ned flanders like how you're reading archie comic and then it's a half page junkhead comic richmore says they even designed the logo of the adventures of ned flanders to be written like the archie comics logo and there either was or currently is a twitter account that just posts this every saturday i just see it retweeted and i watch it every time, so I didn't need to take any notes on this scene. The Twitter account still around. It's NoChurchToday. Oh, great. That's a good bit. They do it every Saturday and they

show the full scene over and over again. But here's the entirety of the adventures of Ned Flanders. Hens love roosters. Geese love ganders. Everyone else loves Ned Flanders. Not me., everyone else loves Ned Flanders. Not me. Everyone who counts loves Ned Flanders.

Knock that off, you two. It's time for church. We're not going to church today. What? You give me one good reason. It's Saturday. Okie dokie do. You give me one good reason. It's Saturday. Oh, can he don't can he do? Hens love roosters. Geese love ganders. Everyone else loves mid-flangers.

And I believe this gave Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein the idea for 22 short films about Springfield, which would happen in about three years, I think. Yeah, three years. Again, speaking of time collapsing in on itself, that felt like a very long time to me of like wow before they finally did 22 short films but it's like three years later that they do it in their show and it's just like oh that's nothing now three years is how long i wait between some seasons of tv shows now it's how long you wait for simpsons action figures to show up once you order them that's right so like going from like season one simpsons to like here's season four Simpsons with a lot of people like this show is at its peak. An argument I semi agree with to like season seven Simpsons.

Like these are like Pokemon evolutions in terms of like how different the show feels. Right. And I don't know. It feels like a completely different generation, a completely different iteration of the show. Yeah, it is only separated by three years, which is weird to think about. Maybe it was a good idea to have a new showrunner every two to four years. I'm just saying. It's funny, too, because Bill and Josh, they loved it.

They loved this scene. But apparently internally it was a divisive scene. Mike Reese, in his book, the only thing he says about this in his memoirs is that Mike Reese said his own father called him the day after this aired and said, What the hell was that? His dad hated this Smith-Flyder scene. Was it because it was disconnected to the show? Was it because it was his own thing? Or was it specifically the church comment? I think it was just that it was confusing that this is just an extra scene in your episode.

It confused people. I think that was it. Me as a kid watching Garfield and friends going into U.S. Acres, I'm just used to that. Like, you know, Animaniacs going into Pinky and the Brain. I was like, oh yeah, just a different cartoon. Like, it's like completely took it in stride.

It's interesting that it was kind of jarring that some of the audience. Maybe people were confused that it's such a corny joke. It intentionally corny so maybe they're like oh the simpsons is better than this they didn't know they're going for that maybe right i love that it's the nicest softest comedy that ned would love that it's just only because ned is mistaken of what day it is at church and his kids are praying they're just praying at home on a saturday and also that homer interrupts the theme song to pull it up and yeah it's a perfect 32 seconds the exact amount that they'd be like we're a half minute short okay we can fill that time i would love that if every episode when they were like 30 seconds short or when they knew that the shows

were going to be hacked down for syndication that if they just always had 30 second short, or when they knew that the shows were going to be hacked down for syndication, that if they just always had 30 second cartoon short in each one, that could be cut out for syndication. Now, here's a question for you, because I do really like this bit, but I forget what episode it's in. And so every time, even on this rewatch, I watched it a couple of times for this episode, but the first time I watched it, I was like, oh, yeah, right. This is the one where this happens at the end. Maybe y'all have seen this episode enough where it's just burning your brain. But like for me, I always forget. Yeah, I tend to forget which one it's in.

Like a lot of season four jokes and plots are so disconnected from the source of the episode that the main thing going on that I forget. Oh, this is the B plot where this happens. This is the B plot where this happens. But I always forget which episode this is on. The end of season four, and that's all I remember. It's not to the degree that it is with like, say, Family Guy, where those jokes, if you remember a good Family Guy cutaway joke, I almost could never tell you what episode it was in. I'll just remember, yeah, it was a funny cutaway. But it's because Family Guy lends itself more to in the social media age of just people posting scenes completely removed from the episode context.

My YouTube algorithm, when I look at YouTube, I get so many Family Guy clips now. And I will just watch them because it'll be like, whatever, an episode I haven't even seen. And I'm just watching like a 45 second standalone sketch, basically. So I'll watch them a lot. And so I get fed a lot of them it's amazing how many of those yeah just play in complete isolation i have no idea what episode the peter copter is from you know i just know that bit nope no me neither yeah same here same here they were inventing vines and tiktoks before we knew it it's true yeah now i know the peter

copter from fortnight right right it's his flying entrance thing which well hey we're talking to another professional game a podcaster but i do wonder why the simpsons futurama has been in fortnight the simpsons not yet i do wonder if it's that they don't want to show the simpsons even homer shooting guns at people i really wonder what the licensing holdup could be. There's a kart racing game for mobile and all the Fox gang is in it except for the Simpsons. It's like even King of the Hill is in that game and Solar Opposites is in that game and American Dad. I wonder if the Simpsons license is maybe just like they're that much more restrictive or it's that much more expensive. I do wonder. I actually played that game a little bit. I played it on my Apple TV with a PS4

controller and it's a decently playable kart racer.'s what i've heard and it's the first new king of the hill content in i don't know over a decade i guess that's really funny wow but also sadly for a decade and it continues the only simpsons video game content is tapped out and it is a money printing machine that's why they never stopped doing. But it'd be nice to have one other Simpsons video game thing. Yeah, maybe a proper game, not just like, you know, a predatory app. I mean, Tapped Out is now so old. I was once paid to write about it for a video game website. Wow.

That's how old it is. Video game websites existed. Is it over 10 years old believe it's from 2012 oh my god i wonder if that thing you were paid to write is even viewable anymore no it isn't absolutely not are you kidding me yeah i knew that before i asked i did this episode i think lapidus's script was probably all right. I'm sure he wrote a good one, but you have so many great writers, especially Conan O'Brien and Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein on the show. The punch upon this is incredible.

The plot, as I pick it apart and be like, boy, they wasted Homer going back to high school. They wasted, it's kind of unclear what the point of Abe's speech is supposed to be that ends it. When we talk about it, who really cares? Because it's full of amazing jokes and great lines the whole time. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it makes just enough narrative sense. It has so many good jokes.

Yeah, I thought the plot was a little weak always, but this time I really appreciate the jokes. And again, like I said earlier on the show, just realizing how many of these phrases I'd filed away in my brain and say every day and confuse people. If this episode was bad, I would not have remembered any of those things. And the other thing is we get two, like, you know, A or S tier itchy and scratchy shorts, which I always love a good itchy and scratchy. So we get two out of this one. We get the funny, you know,

like some of the itchy and scratchy jokes, like the extended credits, like the really shitty episode. And then we also just get to see him play in different styles of animation, you know, particularly with the award show sequence. So all that stuff is fun. Yeah, I really do have a soft spot for this episode.

Real credit to Rich Moore and his team animating on this. I feel bad that their craft is obscured in this episode that is only about writing for animation, not the actual like drawing of it. By the way, all the context y'all gave me for like how this episode came to be is kind of fascinating when it's about like the plot of this episode is about submitting a script and that getting turned into a cartoon and that turning into a job that turned into your profession but then like that was like what lapidus was attempting

with this script and that the inspiration from it came from that happening on another show. Like every element of it is just like it's just kind of surprising that that was what the genesis of this idea was that did just come up in the room. If the script was more realistic, Lisa would have known an executive who knew Roger Myers Jr. could pitch the story for her her cutting out the middleman entirely i do wonder if in his outline submission the lapidus what he wrote in there and then they offer a a staff job like he then winks hard to aljean like we're leaving we have no saying who gets hired next bill and josh were the last hires of their time i think wow and con Conan O'Brien, he's just signed a four-year deal, and I'm sure he'll be there for a long time after season four. Yes, he will.

But thank you for joining us once again, Nick. Please tell us more about the Doughboys and the Get Played podcast. Yeah, you know, hey, I got Doughboys, a podcast about chain restaurants, me and Mike Mitchell, and then I got Get Played, a podcast about video games, and that's me, Heather Ann Campbell, and Matt Apodaca. You can both listen to those wherever you listen to things this was a lot of fun always a true joy to come on this podcast and nerd out about the Simpsons so thank you so much for having me I had so much fun doing the show thank you for nearly three hours of your time yes yeah Nick

thank you what else am I gonna be doing no we really appreciate it too and being able to ask you all of our nerdy questions about the writer's room since we had you on last you were a big wheel at the wga factories it's always interesting to ask questions about that stuff too yeah everything has to be done in shorthand when you're dramatizing it because the actual process is so tedious and laborious. So I think they did a good job of representing an abbreviated version of it. But also, I think more so than that, just sort of like the attitudes of people behind the scenes, like, you know, and that's so often reflected through Krusty the Clown, just people being jaded or not giving a shit or being the complete wrong fit for whatever

they're working on yeah i think they do a good job of all that but thank you again nick so much of course thanks so much nick weiger for being on the show we always love when he comes on but as for us if you want to support what we do and get a ton of bonus podcasts on top of that head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up for five bucks a month and when you do you'll get to access everything behind that five dollar paywall we've done for seven complete years. That includes full-length episodes about shows like Futurama, King of the Hill, Batman the Animated Series, The Critic, and Mission Hill. And that five bucks a month also gets you regular episodes of both Talking of the Hill and Talking Futurama every month.

And as of this recording date date there's over 150 episodes so if you like hearing us talk about cartoons you will love everything waiting for you for just five bucks at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there's a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you get all the five dollar stuff of course but then you also get one very very big podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob's talking about our what a cartoon movie podcast where we cover an animated feature film crazy in depth just like we do an episode of the simpsons last month he signed up can hear us talk about the first futurama movie bender's big score it's our first time covering a graining related

property in our what a cartoon movie the month before that 90s kids would love hearing us talk about tmnt the teenage mutant ninja turtles 1990 live action film as part of our live action month and we are approaching our sixth year full of doing what a cartoon movie over 60 episodes at your fingertips i'd say at least 200 hours of great content us covering things for four or five or even six hours long including our longest podcast ever six and a half hours about who framed roger abbott you got to check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo

and my other podcast is retro knots Knots. It's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retro knots and sign up there for two full length bonus episodes every month. And Henry, how about you? You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. It's the same on Blue Sky and I'm Talking Henry on Instagram. And if you're following me and Bob and all of those social places, you should know at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, and even on YouTube is an easy way to stay in the loop when we release new podcasts, when we have live shows, when stuff happens on the Patreon.

Follow at TalkSimpsonsPod and all those places. And of course, head over to the official website, TalkingSimpsons.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 14's The Bart of War. And we'll see you then. They fought and bit, they fought and fought and bit B-b-b-bit, bit, bit It was the Itchy and Scratchy Show