Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Great Money Caper With Stephen Sajdak

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

This week's season 12 episode is all about films and imitating them, so we're joined by returning favorite Stephen Sajdak, cohost of the great We Hate Movies podcast! As Homer and Bart become experts in grifting, they end up being conned themselves after imitating one trick too many. Somehow that leads to a crazy courtroom trial and an even wackier last 10 seconds of the story that have stuck with us all the way until this podcast, so listen now and be sure to clue in Willie! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a new podcast miniseries exclusively on patreon right now for five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get talk king of the hill season two part one that's right we're returning to king of the hill once again putting out 11 new episodes covering the first half of the show's second season. Again, that is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Be there or be not right. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where our magic word is abracablabra. I'm your host, the stupid, non-magical son, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and this has gone on just long enough.

And who do we have on the line? What the hell are you talking about? It's Steven Sadak. And today's episode is The Great Money Caper. Folks, this is not part of the act. Please help her. Today's episode aired on December 10th, 2000. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. world history oh my god oh boy bobby batman beyond return of the joker is released on dvd tv funhouse debuts for its very short run on comic central and the iconically terrible film dungeons and dragons is released into theaters now that batman return of the joker dvd was that the uncut version no it's the cut up version their response to uh you know after columbine they're like hey we don't want this to be as violent as we said the uh the original version of return of the joker was a pg-13 movie with actual like on-screen deaths and everything but they then hacked it to bits and released it that way and then i believe within 18, they released the uncut version that was the real version of it.

I think HBO Max is putting out a five-hour version of it in a couple of weeks on my schedule. I think that's how it's going to go. It's totally gray and it's awesome. Now the edited version is the rare one. You'd have to buy the original DVD because the uncut version is the only one you it's the you'd have to buy the original dvd because they didn't the uncut version is the only one you can get on blu-ray that's the only version that's on

hbo max you know at warner brothers 2000 that's a snapper case my friend oh yeah cardboard snapper case were you guys beyond boys or not so much oh yeah i enjoyed it bob didn't watch it but uh i i was a fan he did see this movie i did see this movie i was anti beyond just because uh i had just come off of the animated series and i only wanted more of that so i was pretty close-minded i i was i was somewhere in between i gave it a shot and i wound up watching a lot of it uh and liking it i actually wound up liking uh the return of the joker's you know probably it's much better than any of the aside from phantasm any of those other movies they put out i think yeah return of the joker thanks to the pg-13 nature they were able to ditch all of the

kids wb violence rules and it's the best animation they ever had like it's like it's a real budget it's it's and you have the return of the joker like you've got the joker at the most savage he ever got to be in the cartoon to that point like he tortures a child Right, I didn't want to talk about TV funhouse. That's a great comedy series It was wonder shows and before wonder shows and happened and it was popular It was a post South Park show But the people who made the show didn't want to make it anymore because it was too hard to make mostly because it was working With a lot of live animals who were shitting everywhere i don't think i ever saw the show i know i mean like i i now that you're talking about i'm like

i remember that it existed but i for whatever what reason was not on it even though i was definitely watching snl and loved uh tv funhouse at that point oh it's so it's such a great show because it's like the the bits that were too crazy for snl that robert smigel just got to go nuts with i mean it also like the cartoons are the funniest to me the puppet stuff's fine but it's like oh it's just like more triumph but it's like triumph's cousin or whatever it's these secondary characters but man the sketches they had the wonder man sketch is uh so funny it's such a like a cruel sketch he's trying to get his alias laid is that what the premise is yeah like yeah i love when he meets that guy and

he's like wonder man and he throws him into the sun or the um the behind the scenes story of pablo picasso and him saying i gotta break you down to cubes like uh and also bob's bob has the video on youtube of my favorite sketch they ever did yes i uploaded tingles the christmas tension the stop motion bits it seems very expensive to make yeah but boys it it looks far more quality than the thing they're parodying which is claymation in the slightest of senses what was the third news item oh it's uh the dungeon and dragons film which was has that been we hated movie it has been it has been uh it was a previous episode i think uh a very long time ago but it does exist it's an it's on the free feed you can check that out that's my podcast where we make fun of bad movies and speaking of our friends uh bob and henry will be joining us on we hate movies very shortly there's a lot of

moving pieces because and they've been like blowing us off for a long time it's a big it's just been such i mean like the deal we're very close to ink on paper it in a if it's not out now it'll be out in a few weeks we'll look forward to that uh we had very particular writers yeah yeah i'm famously known for my ego yeah uh but no we we're so excited to to be on it listeners look forward to that one in the we hate movies feed it's it's we're so excited uh welcome back steven say like your first one since beyond blunderdome back in june 2020 it is and it's been a long time it's felt like a long time and i love coming back here and this episode specifically and i don't know why like it's not like my long time and I love coming back here. And this episode specifically, and I don't know why,

it's not my favorite episode at all or anything like that, but I remember, I found myself really nostalgic this afternoon watching it because it was very much like an episode that came out when I was in high school. And I guess I had my high school group that we would just talk about The Simpsons being the world's biggest dorks and just kind of remembering when this episode came out. And just like certain lines, I'm like, oh my God god i said that a million times that week whatever that was you know what i mean this episode is kind of famously hated in this era i think mostly because of the ending and i was going into this episode thinking i probably won't like this but i walked away

thinking this is very very funny it is very uh cruel to the characters you love but i also think there's a lot of very funny jokes and i was laughing out loud a lot at the humor in this episode this has been a lot of interrogating me versus my teen self in watching these but i recall this run of episodes we're in now in season 12 especially like this ramps up to homer with homr the the nose crayon thing and i think these all like pissed me off each in a row as a teen that really did break the spell of my like nightly simpson watching but when i watch this now i do think i was maybe a little too angry as a teenager and was and was uh frustrated about other things yeah putting them on The Simpsons. I do hate that this hates continuity

or caring about characters. Yes. But this is such a punchy staff now who definitely, we heard it from Mike Scully first time we interviewed him. They were sure every season was the last season. They're like, well, we're not getting renewed again. Let's just be silly. So I can definitely

appreciate joke construction in this episode for sure yeah i was asking myself the question was this a worse season or was i just incredibly sexually frustrated in the year 2000 the answer may surprise you as somebody that's always uh continuously sexually frustrated no um i think it is i it is funny like the it is machine, which is, and there's a lot of the jokes surprisingly still hit, which is, uh, again, like Bob, I was kind of looking at it. I was like, Oh Christ, this one. And I was laughing, but I do think that it's the contempt for the, what you want this to be good.

Like at the end where it does get a little, it just seemed, it seems contemptuous for the audience. And that's a weird thing. They kind of kept on a little bit. I think it think it was i mean you can hear it on the commentary they remember like oh yeah i remember everybody on the internet hated this one and scully's like oh i thought they hated everyone like they but i i think it was they were in the mood to poke the bear they're just like well oh we know you guys hate when we did a silly thing like in season 10 so fuck you we're kidding even stupider and crazier in this one it was much easier for the writers to see the criticism now

in the year 2000 uh and i i think we'll especially talk about it in the at the end of the episode but i've said it a million times but this is like the matt graining's away in the mice will play kind of episode two he's too busy with futurama and he can't tell them like homer shouldn't do this march shouldn't do this kind of lines and i i do love that on the commentary they definitely recognize that this episode should have been called grift of the magi it's so confusing that the previous grift use of grift in the title was like a year ago and there was was no grifting. It was all honest work. This is honest to goodness grifting.

Con artistry, which I always love. Yeah, Stephen, I was going to ask as a movie lover or hater, but as a movie connoisseur, what do you feel about Matchstick Man, The Sting, all of these con man movies? Paper Moon. Yeah. Paper Moon, which I've actually never seen. And now now i feel like i need to especially because of this episode and uh and i've actually never seen this thing so maybe i'm i i guess i'm a a false prophet with movies no i like i mean i like con artist movies you know and and i do like how this episode is

constructed wherein we are doing the thing where the you know what you're seeing is a con so it is a bit of not offensive but like you know you can you can get away with some sleight of hand at the end of the episode to be like oh when you when you were seeing this everyone was lying to you because everything's always lying it's con artistry i mean like matchstick man i really enjoy i do think con artistry though i think we talked about this on our past episode does become shorthand shorthand for i don't know what i want to do with a comedic character but if he's a con artistry though i think we talked about this on our past episode does become short shorthand for i don't know what i want to do with a comedic character but if he's a con artist that means we could put him in a lot of fake mustaches and have him talking funny in voices yeah that's uh by that

past one you guys did was so great i it's it really shows you that they thought like could we do these racist jokes if it's just not a white guy doing them can we do them now exactly you know i was thinking ernest had a lot of costumes and personas was he a con artist no ernest is pure innocence but for the sake of good he was tricking he was tricking the villains right yeah and verne he was yeah he was conning verne most well we're verne that's how it works so he's tricking us he conned the studio into making more films so there's in that way that's true yeah i mean i mean jim varney would have been in coen brothers movies by now if he had survived i think he'd be a multi-time oscar winner he'd be so we were robbed of him man i uh he was talented he was really really

talented uh well last preamble bit i wanted to say was one thing that this as a parody or critique of uh grifting movies is is fun but they're in the final season of community i think they did a better takedown of grift and grift movies because they just talk about how like none of these make sense like they they they watch the sting and they're like okay what did the sting teach us it's like like, well, that we need to hire 100 people at a fake hotel, and that's how you do a grift. And all of the grifts in this show are Depression-era grifts. And yet John Swartzwalder, nowhere to be found on this script. What's going on there? Pretty shocking.

Yeah, a lot of curly and fake mustaches, which we love. Well, we know from interviewing here, Carolyn Omine is a big fan of Swartzwalder. And she's one of the best writers in this time, and also very nice to us, and we like her. But I think she does a great style following of Schwarzwalder when doing Depression-era jokes like these, and all the 23 Skidooin type of comedy. But yeah, I guess let's start at the beginning here in this episode

with a parody of a very specific la thing the the magic castle called the magic palace in here i only knew about it because of that arrested development joke where tobias wants to go to the magic castle but the cockney taxi driver thinks he's saying the magic asshole yes presumably a gay bar that i was shocked they got away with that joke like yeah the magic asshole like uh but i it's what not exactly my i i just want to see it you know what i mean i'm not a magic fan i've always uh been you know as a kid i guess i liked magic i liked the those fox specials for sure the extreme ones with that asshole that ruined it for everybody and uh but i've always wanted

to just sort of like just see like in terms of a people watching perspective just to see what it looks like as as an exclusive club to be brought into with a member like yeah i i would like that if i visited a friend in la who's like hey i've got the castle membership i'm taking you there and if i saw like okay magic i'd at least be like well i am in a fancy club and i got a story to tell i was reading about this on wikipedia and apparently you have to do a bit to get in and according to this article it says quote the lobby of the castle has no visible doors to the interior and visitors must say a secret phrase to a sculpture of an owl to gain access oh i'm out all right you just convinced me i I'm very out on this. I had a coworker one who was like an amateur magician and he's a friendly guy.

We talked comics, really nice dude. But occasionally he'd be like, hey, man, look at this. And he would do a magic trick and like in the office in a quiet and a closed, closed corners. And like what it's just for you, you kind of have to do that. Oh, yeah. Oh, you did it just it's a it's an uncomfortable social situation when someone's doing magic for you is what i'm getting was this part of a larger

pickup artist persona he had uh i always do wonder where those guys who learn close-up magic it's like you've looked up the how to hypnotize women books i feel like not uh no offense to your friend i but no no but uh yeah it wouldn't shock me but it was it magic is is very fun for those who like it yeah that's where i keep it was as nerdy boys you have a chance like the door opens in your life of like do you want to be one of the nerds who learns magic yep and you can either close that door or walk through it and we all closed it we're not being into anime is no less shameful than liking to do like a cup and ball trick that is like being a nerd in your teens as you're in a long room of of doors that you just kind of peek in and like no not for me i'm not i'm not a magic nerd for sure okay chess i'm not smart enough you know and you kind of keep going on like you may not a magic nerd for sure. Okay, chess, I'm not smart enough. And you kind of keep going on.

You may be a wrestling nerd for a while, but then you move on from that. Comic books, you never get rid of. Certain things you just kind of stick with. Will I be a record collector? No, I guess. I slam the model building door shut. None of that for me. You know that fact you told me, Bob, about the weird entrance?

Now that the first deleted scene on the DVD is a joke about them not knowing how to get in okay they cut a joke of them going like oh which door is which and their family other than homer they see what looks to be a tube and they're like oh we're supposed to go through here they find out it's the garbage chute and homer doesn't follow them into okay i also though it does feel this is one of those things where like homer and the family have to do a thing that is slightly above their station so the hollywood writers who go to a fancy place can do a joke about it because the the magic castle sounds so exclusive that you can't just like drive up and go to it if you're a homer simpson you know yeah you you almost want a line where

it's like they won a radio contest and they have to go they get to go because yeah it does seem expensive march simpson shouldn't be able to afford a long island st i think oh my god that has to be like a 17 drink then i think they get away with it because on the sign outside it says the great linguine costs 5.99 so it's a budget magic castle and a lot of the jokes in this first set piece i recall because we saw a lot of them when we went to the universal studios because when you go to the eateries there in the simpsons world they show clips from simpsons at restaurants and they show this entire package basically yeah yeah i yeah i guess steven you have not been to either universal park and enjoyed the simpsons ride i'm not i definitely once uh i'm

fully vaccinated i will be doing a lot of things and i do i do kind of want to get back to universal when i get to la got it to california rather it's a good time yeah it's a good and yeah if you go to the crusty burger place well like when you stand in line they have jokes about lines that just plain clip packages so when you go to crusty Burger it's every scene that doesn't have Harry Shearer in it yeah at a uh at a restaurant yeah and mostly jokes about food not being disgusting yes yeah uh if yeah when I see these jokes about the mentalist at March drinking the Long Island iced tea mentally in my head I taste a Krusty Burger because I it's playing as I'm biting down on the clogger correct uh no I couldn't eat mentally in my head I taste a Krusty Burger because I it's playing as I'm biting down on the clogger correct uh no I couldn't eat the whole clogger that's or I have

the um the cleatest chicken fingers which yes they make it up but they copied the fried chicken recipe that the Back to the Future ride used to have and it's it's good fried chicken both characters known for their chicken recipes yes yeah why would doc brown ever have a chicken place like that's crazy long island iced tea is the last the last time i've ever been blackout drunk when i was like 31 years old way too old for it i was at i was i was at a party or whatever or i was out with friends and it was it turned into a joke to have a long island iced tea so that i had like five of them and i literally have no idea how i got home and it's like that was one of those times i woke

up i was like that was too much you know what that that was too much it's just like going to a tiki bar you get way drunker than you plan on drinking because it's just it's fun fruit juice i'll take more fruit juice please yeah well i've gotten yeah the most drunk i've gotten in recent memory was when i was like oh a zombie that sounds nice and like after i drank two and i was fucked up though i i am a lightweight with with it i i think i've maybe ordered a long island iced tea once because marge drank it and i was like i want to be like marge she had fun they don't taste bad they just have all of the liquor in them is the problem. Yeah, and they're a perfect drink to make up to be the one that gets Marge drunk, too.

I love that. But yes, let's meet our waiter in this first clip. Hello, I'm Questo. I'll be your waiter and mentalist for this evening. I'm receiving a drink order. Something foamy? Is it a beer? Yes, how did you know?

And for the lady, a long island iced tea. Oh, they ought to call that a large island iced tea. No, long is better. Are you really going to drink that?

Well, maybe a sip. I don't want to offend our mentalist. If she doesn't like it, I'll just die. Great, funny drawing acting on opposing on Marge like taking her tentative sips while looking at the guy like,

I didn't realize how strong Long Island Iced Teas are because there's five kinds of alcohol in them. There's vodka, rum, gin, tequila, and triple sec. It is a nightmare. Again, it was just like, oh, this is so funny. Like, this is such a strong drink. Imagine if we had three of them. That would be even funnier and oh yeah it's it's a it's a once in a lifetime drink i think it feels like unless you just got fired it feels like a cruel trick to get women drunk faster that's what i think it is yes yeah yeah i can see i i just love marge never gets to be

drunk this is a great series of jokes about how Marge gets to act out of character and be a funny character for a change. I just love her like bad joke pitch of like, they should call it a large island. This is realistic mom drunkenness. It's very cute. I love it. I mean, I feel like Omine brings a lot of that to her. She writes Marge better than most people write Marge.

Like she's one of the better Marge writers. Even before she became a mom, I think she just knew like the pain Marge feels and how one drink just unlocks it all for her. She's like, ah. Yeah, she's very annoyed with Homer immediately. Like it's all coming down pretty pretty quickly i do and i love the later on when she's drunk in front of lisa that you're a pretty girl bit is just such a funny

idea and her dead hand mushing against her face oh man i i think julie is having a good time doing drunk acting too instead of just being the person like homer don't do that i also love her wistfulness of like i'd like to visit that long island place if only it were real no you don't yeah no i just it does show a small marge's world that she's not know about long island so every long island guy i've met they knew every other long island guy i knew they're like oh yeah we're from long island they're in some sort of clan it is it is a very small tight-knit community that i i have a lot of cousins on long island you gotta say on long island not in or around they're on it they are physically upon long island and uh it's a it's a culture man it's a culture shift it's like you get uh if you either if you live in the bronx and or queens and you

want to get a house you either go to westchester or long island and long island is where it gets uh gets dicey see as a kid i'd have wanted to move to westchester because that's where professor x's school is the simpsons will be right back. Bart, you've got some unique activity in your brain's pleasure lobe. Diagnosis? Butterfingeritis. No cure? Afraid not. Cool. Crispity, crunchity, peanut buttery. Nothing like a Butterfinger.

From Nestle. Oh, why does Bart always get the good diseases? 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? I promise it's not a con when I say thanks for tuning into this week's Talking Simpsons. And a big thank you to our guest, Stephen Sadak.

Everybody should check out his podcast, We Hate Movies. If you listen to the most recent one, you might just hear some familiar voices. Me and Bob talking about the Simpsons movie. So follow We Hate Movies and Stephen Sadak on Twitter for all their cool stuff. And you know, if you enjoy the podcast Talking Simpsons, you can hear every episode a week ahead of time and add free none of this here if you are a subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up at patreon to get that and so many other bonuses including each month you'll get to hear an exclusive talking futurama podcast where me and bob cover

futurama in the same simpson style only for patrons and this month we're still going through our limited mini-series on King of the Hill talking of the hill is covering season 2 part 1 the first 11 episodes only on Patreon and that is just the start of the always growing list of exclusive podcasts you can only hear if you are a $5 and up subscriber at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. But if you want something as special as a long island iced tea of podcasting, then you should check out the $10 level at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. All those exclusives I just mentioned at the $5 level are yours. But for $10, you also get each month our premium super exclusive podcast what a cartoon movie you see me and bob have a sister podcast what a cartoon each week where we cover an animated series but if you wanted to hear

us go super in-depth into an animated feature film you need to go to the ten dollar level of patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can hear us talk about films like Cool World, yes, the gem, Shrek for its 20th anniversary, and a giant back catalog that ranges from Akira to Beavis and Butthead to America and everything in between. Over 130 hours of exclusive podcasts you can only hear if you go to that $10 level at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So please, head on over there today and check it all out but yes marge is getting increasingly drunk as there's crazy magic happening behind her it's it's it should tell us at the start that this is a ridiculous episode because the guy pulls a tiger out of his pocket and then makes it spin around floating and it's only in the background yes yeah yeah uh but yes marge is then while she actually isn't called on stage, she forces her way onto stage to be an assistant in this next clip.

Now, for my next illusion, I'll need a volunteer. I'll do it. I always end up doing it. I'm Diablo. What's your name? Marge. Okay, Marge. And who's that gentleman you're with?

That's no gentleman. That's my husband. Wow, Mom got a laugh. I wish she drank every day. Do we love Marge or what? Oh, please. I didn't say that for clapping. Now, Marge, I have a problem.

Oh, yeah? You see, the Emperor of China has come over, and I don't have enough colorful silk. So what I need of you is... You talk too much. Abracablabra. Am I right? See, the ladies know what I'm talking about. Tell you what, let's get this ball gag on you.

There we go. And we'll skip right ahead to the Kilo team. I was a little weirded out seeing Marge in that ball gag. Thank you. Yeah. It just, it seems far too much like a, something I would see on the side of my computer while I'm trying to illegally torrent something.

I bet. I mean, you can buy those cells. They're somewhere. There's got to be at least 20 cells of Marge in gag oh god for you online uh it does it it does seem like something like oh we're just this is a joke but if it works for somebody congratulations kind of a thing yeah well i guess everyone learned about most normal people learned about and what is normal anyway yeah i guess the mainstream learned about ball gags from uh pulp fiction that's what i was thinking too and that uh little scene had a secret reference

in it isn't that right henry that's right yes bob pointed this one out to me uh margie's i didn't do that for clapping is taken from a famous drunken speech by john wayne yes i have only 35 seconds of it but it's this has oh please thank god to, on your own, listen to the whole thing. Just type John Wayne Drunken to YouTube. You'll find it. It is amazing. I couldn't find a date on it, but it's definitely in the Vietnam era because he is talking to a bunch of graduating cadets, I think, and he is complaining about how some other liberal

college pranked the dean and poop pooped in their waistband. He's he's just complaining like you kids aren't like them. You need to be better than them. But here here's the some of the best bits of it. Guys of your age to go up. I don't give a shit if you go to the school or not. You can't stand to have this happen. Oh, Christ, I'm not trying to talk for clapping.

I'm trying to talk for you guys. You better start thinking. It's getting to be goddamn ridiculous. If you guys don't start thinking as men, we're going to have a lousy country. Oh, my Lord. I think cultural conditions affect how you act when you're drunk, and nobody acts like this when they're drunk anymore. This is classic Warner Brothers drunk guy. How dry I am to be playing behind him.

Oh, God, man. Later in it, he goes like jesus man i i do think john wayne did more to hurt the concept of masculinity than anybody you know what i mean like yeah he is everybody's stepdad that you do not want to talk to you know what i mean he'll talk to you about john wayne who is a real actor. God damn it. Well, he has the John Wayne in that clip as the act of like at a family Thanksgiving, another family member goes like, don't go over there. You're going to you're going to hear an earful of this guy. Well, also, I think it shows you like shit never changes that that recording, I think, is like got to be close to 50 years old, if not older.

And here he is complaining like these kids on the college campuses uh it's it's always the same like conservative canard but he's so he wants like you act like man well that's because they wanted sideburns you see which longer hair on the side of your face which makes you a girl essentially of course yeah which i mean again his real name's marion by the way like it sees that john that they put those words into marge's mouth is very funny if they could have made her say we got damn diculous they would have sorry yeah no i do i do love that his voice is also so hoarse from smoking 2005 cigarettes that afternoon you know that that was part because you're just in a bar in the world's reddest room drinking very warm paps you just say give me a beer and you get a beer that's all you get and uh boiler makers are there you're just smoking next to everybody and

you smell disgusting and probably hasn't drank a glass of water in a week oh no he's just dehydrated in bright red yeah just and you know come on like and last thing i love about it is that he's clearly in a room full of people who respect him too much to pull him off stage they're like well also they know that john wayne would likely take a swing at him for doing it so they just i mean there's that classic story that like when the indigenous woman accepted the oscar for marlon brando at the oscars that who knows how true this is but the story was john wayne had to be like held back from getting on stage and showing this lady what for for daring to speak about the the needs of the the indigenous

people of america well heaven forbid um any any indigenous people are represented in in a fashion that john wayne doesn't agree with. Not like that man made a nickel off of them anyway. But yeah, in this whole sequence, Marge is like her listening and they're like, yeah, yeah. So funny. I love the idea of the long setup

of the emperor of China is coming over. It's just like this completely out of date reference that a magician would make it's very it's very sharp and well observed yeah that's great that's why mark just bored with it too she's like yeah yeah all this setup like the one time i saw magic uh we left at the intermission because it was very uh bland and lame and it was a family of magicians so i felt like there was some darkness going on behind the scenes but uh the magician on stage used a very similar premise in which he was talking about how the pyramids were built and like each color of sand represented a different element like this is the

bricks that were in the pyramid and these were the slaves that built the pyramid so slavery was part of his magic act and it was kind of a bring down for me you want to pull down the the limit the use of the word slave in your entertainment i think i agree it's not a fun night nope no no one's having a good time uh but yes the this magic trick thing i will say i think another thing i held against it when i first watched this in the year 2000 was that 19 months before this king of the hill did a bit of peggy being an assistant on stage and uh they used it better that's the one where hank is mad that he can't figure out how the the magic trick was done it was mostly based on that mask magician special right yes yeah it ended with bobby explaining how the trick was done

matt uh the secrets of the magician style yeah but i think i probably went like oh they're ripping off king of the hill and i buy that i mean but also i'm sure at that point king of the hill that episode was about that it wasn't just a a way to get a sturgeon to fall in the car yes yes they they could be driving back from anywhere here also the the point of king of the hill was that it actually was a believably done magic trick that you could do in reality unlike just a sparkle hits the screen and marge vanishes and four monkeys appear that wear her dress i like the very calm man who is mike scully saying please help her i love yes yeah that's why i played it there i was like this is not part of the act please help her and then homer said like oh she was so she was made of chimps i love that

too it's a good it's a good delivery too uh on she was made of chimps i love that too it's a good it's a good delivery too uh on she was made of chimps you you actually do believe that he believes that his wife was made of chimpanzees and also i uh a little earlier where lisa says like wow mom got a laugh that feels like the actors commenting like wow marge never gets laughs on the show and now she got one which it is funny because it sort of sets up a marge-ish episode that doesn't happen. Because then like really quickly she goes back into her Marge mode of being upset that people are having fun on the show kind of a thing. Yeah. There was a season one episode we covered last year where Marge gets drunk and there's the episode.

What follows is the fallout from that. Homer is embarrassed. He wants to go into family counseling. And this one, Homer doesn't mind that she's drunk at all in fact he enjoys the trick yeah he's like she's fun everybody wants her to drink more they want her to be an alcoholic after all that bit and i guess the monkeys were quelled homer and bart head into the gift shop homer tries to leave without buying something but they just walk into another gift shop and are forced to buy a magic kit and that is pulled from real life as well because uh mike scully took his kids to a lance burton show in

las vegas and said that there was no way to leave without going through the gift shop and he felt the i mean he has five kids so one of them was going to pressure him like but you got to buy me this. Did anyone have this magic kit? I definitely had. It was a gift that somebody gave me. Somebody sized me up as the wrong shape of nerd. And it's the same. What I appreciate was the box was that big.

It was a big, dumb box that came with the hat. And you know what I mean? And everything was cheap and chintzy. And then eventually it just sort of like it turned into a scavenger situation like you'd use it for other things like the cards went someplace the wand went for somewhere else you know that kind of yeah the the fuzzy red ball goes somewhere else the set comes with like the rings and the balls yeah that you're used to seeing sold separately yeah i mostly got science sets uh yeah i i like that bart it's a it also is a very stock simpsons

thing of like bart gets into something for one day like it's it's it's much like his guitar honestly and uh i obviously didn't know this as an uninformed american but hyderabad is a uh the fourth most populated city in india so bart didn't just say a funny city name it's a very real place i'm learning this now yeah and we do of course get our um ivy league joke of it is a party magic college which i do love yes yeah but of course lisa would be the one to like she she doesn't want to go to brown so of course she looks down on these party schools uh and poor marge she has to be hung over instantly too i do i do feel bad for her that she doesn't even have to be hung over the next day but she has to be instantly hung over because then she can be

disturbed by a loud fish smashing onto the car which that is some random ass shit man i gotta say i i still don't love it hey uh mirror jokes were funny in the year 2000 mirror would come to the earth in a few months so we had very precious little time left all those mirror jokes i guess it also pissed me off because like if you remember the first south park halloween episode it basically had the same deal oh really yeah okay well it's i don't think it was actually, but it was a space station crashes, and it was just all these space station jokes that cause a problem,

and guys arguing in the space station. I was not into it. I do like the giant door of the space station slamming shut like a screen door in the wind, in the space wind. I also like that they're going to have a whole sturgeon in space as well. That seems like a tall order,

and against, not exactly powdered, for sure. The Russians, when they brought up all that stuff, they're going to have a whole sturgeon in space as well that seems like a tall or tall order and against not exactly powdered uh for sure the russians when they brought up all that stuff they're like and of course a full un like not even deboned sturgeon bring it up out and that somehow it fell and it re-entered earth's atmosphere and still looks like a out of the water sturgeon it's so i it's re-goddamnod damn diculous there you go henry you're drunk it is i mean like if you've ever thought if you ever worked in an office where somebody microwaved fish for lunch oh imagine that on a space station that's a you know compressed air that's kind of ruining your entire space station you need to come back to earth at that point

i i fortunately have never had a microwave fish guy when I worked in an office. There's enough bad smells. I feel, what was the worst smell? Well, the worst smells would be like when multiple people at our video game one would be like, well, I went to McDonald's, well, I went to Subway, well, I went to KFC. And the mixing of those smells in one open office. And burnt popcorn. Oh, of course, burnt popcorn.

Don't forget that. Yes, yeah. And no one wants to take credit. And burnt popcorn. Oh, of course burnt popcorn. Don't forget that. Yes, yeah. And no one wants to take credit for the burnt popcorn. Like once they burn the popcorn, it just kind of goes in the garbage and like, I don't know. Nobody knows.

Man, we got to find this popcorn burner around here. As an adult, you should know by now how to not burn ear mic-loaded popcorn. Come on. Never hit the popcorn button. It's a trap. Look at the bag. It's got a minute restriction on it use it i have lightly burned popcorn once or twice just out of pure greed where i'm like i know it's the pops are slowing down but if i could get

just three more pops i'm i i won't be wasting as much popcorn apparently they got real russian like oh really okay apparently those are real russian swears i as i recall in our i wonder if we had somebody who spoke russian we could have a moment uh as uncomfortable as finding out that from our friend shivam that was actually like very dirty words being said by uh in hindi by the uh apu's mother like i felt so bad saying like hey what's she say there and he's like he he had to say bitch like because he's like that's what she said i was like oh i'm sorry well at least they got the actual language yeah yeah but uh yes it's for some anything could have fucked up their car but it had to be a sturgeon from space uh yeah it's it's a long way to go

it's got nothing to do with magic it's got nothing to do with marge being drunk and it's a long way to go. It's got nothing to do with magic. It's got nothing to do with Marge being drunk. And it's a sturgeon from space. Yeah, I mean, ridiculous things have happened on the show before. This does feel like a Mad Lib kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. You are in danger of family guy style. When I watched this episode with my husband a couple nights ago, he'd never seen it before. And when he saw the sturgeon fall out a mirror, he said like, that's a manatee joke.

That's that is a family guy manatee joke right there. Yes. It's there's worse ones out there. Like, so it's not like terrible, but yeah, I, if there's one thing I could change about this, it wouldn't even be the ending. It would just be like, let's something other than a sturgeon from space cause this problem. That's all. But yes, Homer heads over to dense where it's known for the blackest fingernails in town.

And, uh, the Bronson voice guy tells him that it's a foreign fish, going to be hard to remove. It'll be $6,500 plus $350. I love that just plus $350. That's a top for that car. You know, I mean, at that point, it's a real, I mean, I guess the Dent, it's more than just the Dent. It's doing something to the engine. That's a lot of money. Yeah. just the dent it's doing something to the engine that's a lot of money yeah i mean honestly in two thousand dollars that old car homer has is that's the full price of the car yeah i was gonna

say that and then the repairs have to be more than the car homer could get a five in the year 2000 he could get a five-year-old car with a ton of miles on it for 6500 like easily yeah the 6500 plus 350 is it's it's a reminder reminiscent of the well that's if i order it today which i won't yes i i do love just how he says plus 350 like no justification for that extra charge just plus that that's our modern convenience fee like how about five more bucks yeah well of course if you're ordering from uber eats like there's the extra fee of uh the uber eats fee that's your co-pay yeah we me and bob had that experience recently of like oh when you actually do take out again it's half the price because that's how much and uh of a delivery fee is on this shit oh no yeah you just you have to do that math and you i mean

like and and the right thing to do ladies gentlemen, is to tip on top of it. You got to add that up, and then you start tipping. Yeah, I do the 20, even though it's an obscene amount of money, to get a Popeye's chicken sandwich. I go like, I should tip 20%. These people are risking their lives. It is weird to eat a $20 Popeye's chicken sandwich. This better be the best chicken sandwich I've

ever had. You got lucky Popeye's it was. But yeah so they decide they are going to try to earn the money by Bart trying out his magician act and I do like Homer's just statement of fact when he takes the hat off and the cat is struggling to breathe and he says he couldn't breathe. I guess Homer thought the trick was Bart almost killed the cat. That's what he's walking away with. Yes, you're right. He took that as like, well, if Bart's trick worked, he almost killed our cat. I have a fairly naive question just because I rewatched the episode where Santa's little helper, the third season episode where Santa's little helper needs surgery.

Is there ever a snowball centric episode? I think in season 14 they did one. Yes. It's about how snowball dies like this snowball gets killed lisa buys a number of other cats who also die and eventually she gets one that lives that is looks exactly the same and lisa it leads to a classic scene of lisa saying but we'll just call you snowball 2 to be safe skinner then shows up and says that sounds a little ridiculous and she says like oh really armin tamzarian and he goes all right i'm out of here like he okay i now remember this episode okay i'm glad to glad to

derail us entirely for that but it was important for me i think that's the only i mean the only stuff that ever happens to if snowball 2 gets 2 gets anything, it's usually animal abuse. Like a horrible thing happens to it. Get that cat out of the way. That's why it's been fun rewatching in season two when we alternate with season two episodes to see Snowball just drawn to do a normal thing a cat would do. Like Bart is using his pencil and Snowball like tries to claw at it. At a certain point point they forget to animate the pets doing anything natural yes they become uh little uh pound puppies essentially we head

back to the squid port a lot of squid port in this episode yeah it's your prime grifting territory people have money to spend i think the squid port is a stand-in for hollywood boulevard because there's some real hollywood bou Boulevard denizens jokes in here. Except they don't have guys dressed as like Elmo or Pikachu. I feel like that happened first at Times Square and then the Times Square people

flew over to the Hollywood Boulevard. Yeah, they rode the rails, essentially. It was a real gold rush of smelly Elmos. You know what? I was in LA visiting in the year 99 to 2001, and we were at Hollywood Boulevard. I don't remember the Elmos and the Pikachus and the Marilyn Monroe's in that era. Were they come after that? When I first visited Los Angeles and went down Hollywood Boulevard, it was like 2010.

And by then, all the celeb guys like, oh, hey, there's Jack Sparrow. I know Paul F. Tompkins does this amazing bit. 2010 and by then all the celeb guys like oh hey there's jack sparrow there's and i know paul f tompkins does this amazing bit i'm not just going to repeat on here but an amazing bit about all of the hollywood boulevard people and i believe that was recorded in like 0506 so hollywood boulevard was starting to get filled up with like freddy krueger's and pikachus by that point yeah spider man it's a fun way to make a buck you see now I have to give it to a Spider-Man that you see on the street who actually stays in shape that is hard you have to be in peak physical condition to look like Spider-Man I feel I mean of the worst I mean aside

from the big plushy people the Iron Man guy is just always so hapless because it's just like it's always falling apart you know what i mean like this that costume works proper or is fastened properly for like 38 seconds and then you're fucked vegas also has these people that i was thinking the one guy i feel worse for than the iron man people well actually on vegas there's also women dressed like the you know show girls and i feel really bad for them that they have to be out in public risking their lives basically wearing the skimpiest of outfits but the other person i feel bad for is the guy in the full michael bay bumblebee transformer outfit i was

thinking bumblebee yeah that looks awful yes oh yeah the transformers are always not good but what we've never seen on the street was the Jackson 5 puppets. That's a real gong show kind of act. Yes. I did some research into this guy. There are people who ripped it off, but the Jackson 5 man is one specific guy. It is Christopher the Puppet Man. Okay.

All right. Is he a Tim and Eric character? I'm shocked he never was on tim and eric but uh yes i when i searched jackson five puppets i got to his official youtube page and at least in 2016 if you wanted to book christopher the puppet man you could do it he he will be the jackson five but cameras off uh yes that's well so i found out jackson five i think was his first act but he also had the spice girls which he'd do in drag he had the village people of course and sure and he also did one where he was just i believe he's darth vader and he has two stormtroopers on each side so it's it's

not just the jackson five this costume well i i think eventually in the late 90s, he sort of was like, I need to really get off this Jackson kick because it's becoming less fun every day. And I feel like that documentary was like the last straw for him. I would hope that he's like, you know what? It's not even fun to even do this anymore. I found a clip of him from like America's Got Talent or a similar type show. And so it was like from seven or eight years ago. And's saying i've been doing this for 30 years and i basically live with these puppets and it's it seems kind of sad because he's like he had he like his big moment in the sun was like in 2002 he did the jerry lewis telethon doing his spice girls routine

and i think he thought like well it's a sitcom deal for me after this. And he's now like 58 and still being Christopher the Puppet Man. He's in the middle of a human centipede of puppets. Puppets in front of him, puppets behind him. It's kind of creepy, actually. It is. I've never liked it

because I guess it's impressive puppetry. I don't like the idea that they all move in unison. Unison creeps me out it is horrifying i couldn't find any horror variants he did he should do at least a thriller variant michael jackson is the horror variant oh you're right yeah yeah he also had to retire his great director series which was he was woody allen and on the left of him was brian singer and on the right was roman polanski and they would dance around. He's like, you know what?

Just too much. Just too much. That's probably why he's close to throwing in a towel. He's like, God, nobody. It's just village people now. I can't do anybody else. They better not get canceled. I don't think he ever did a Backstreet.

I was shocked to see he did in his 2002 one relatively contemporary Christopher the Puppet Man did the Spice did the spice girls like i was like you know and in 2002 that's not too old but he's pushing it he's pushing it and most of the comedy in that is just like that's right i'm wearing a girl's costume i have on a wig that's a d slapper i would hope you know i would guess probably this last year has been a tough one for the puppet man i gotta bet you can't how how active can you be on hollywood boulevard with this kind of act now you know i i i hope he's doing well i couldn't find a more anything more recent than like three or four years ago from him uh but yes homer is freaked out by it i do like him saying like dad only one of

them is real yeah but which one uh well this this leads into our next clip where they point out a commentary and they are right this is one of the meanest and awful things homer has ever done to part uh but it is funny i i have to admit 60 cents i would have made more if i'd gone into work today hey don't blame me i gotta compete with TV and the Internet. A good son would come through for his dad. Yeah, and a good dad wouldn't miss his son's Little League games. I told you! I find them boring. Well, I showed up for all your stupid interventions. Oh, that's it. You can walk home.

Dad, come back! I can't walk home with all this stuff. Poor boy. Here's some money for bus fare. My father was a monster, too. Come on, brothers. Dig deep. Stupid non-magical son can't pay to fix my car hey homer check it out god that okay so they've danced around the idea of homer's alcoholism in the in the past right

but the reality of this joke is that homer has had multiple interventions and bart was there and none of them take and Bart's sick of it. Yeah, yes. That's a harrowing thing to put a 10-year-old through, I think, numerous interventions. I do love the, I'm sorry, I find them boring line. Yeah. 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 care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Delightful. Then Homer's like, look, I told you already. I've stated that I find them boring. That's my only excuse.

I find them boring. And yeah, the commentary, they're like, oh, Homer does just drive away and he does not come back. He abandons his son in the middle of town as far as homer cared he was up to bart to get home like that that's pretty awful to do and homer has to be surprised by the money twice once in the taxi when he sees the taxi out the window and then immediately when he sees bart eating a steak next to a hat full of money i think too homer's abuse feels more real because bart's sadness is really he's like how am i supposed to get home like he's he's actually desperate and and the real the realness i actually was kind of touched

by how mel goes like my father was a monster too just oh just so sad that mel's like yeah i know an abusive father here's here's 10 bucks i mean if you if you've got that haircut it's it's been a rough road that's true you know what i mean you mean? You don't just wake up and decide to be Sideshow Mal. And to always walk around in costume as well, even at the Squid Ports. Also, just Homer's like, stupid, non-magical son, can't pay my bills. His grievances are just terrible. They are enjoying riding Homer the worst they can. That's the fun they're having at this point.

Yeah, we push that a lot, right? Like, is Homer stupid or is he mean or is it both? And this episode is pretty freaking mean. Yeah, the movie tries to make the best cover they can of, like, they still have Homer is mean jokes in it, but Homer explains to Marge, like, i just don't think about things i i rush into things without thinking like they try to make the argument that homer is thoughtless not cruel which like honestly what's the difference i i at a certain point if we're talking about him

like he's a real awful father homer's reaction to seeing that steak and bart acting like yeah i know a little place like uh i love that line and so do like, yeah, I know a little place like, uh, I love that line. And so do you want to eat my fat? Yes, obviously. Disgusting idea. I, you know, if I ever had a steak as a kid, I wouldn't have the gristle and my mom or dad would be like, hell yeah, I'm having that. Give me that. Give me that fat. A big, oh man, I, I, I could go for a big fatty steak right about now. It's been been it's been a long time since i had a nice restaurant steak i tell you oh but yes that's what homer figures out you know what we could just rob people in the same way uh his justification we know we'd be stealing for

people we know it's just like the seasons which I was trying to deconstruct if that means anything more than just Homer saying nonsense. But I don't know what else that could mean other than Homer. How do the seasons steal from people they know? That's the bit I don't really get. They steal time from you, right? I guess that's it. Yeah.

That's my best guess. Yeah. We're like, yeah, I'm trying. I got nothing. I got really nothing there. It's not a lyric to a song that i could find it's not like a saying from something so i think it's just homer saying a dumb thing though commentators if you know like obviously it's a reference to this song from 1978 fine tell me i'd love to know but i i don't know where it's from and so yes come back from break and the the

boys are reading through their many possible cons this book has all the classic cons there's the pigeon drop the ear wigger the brilston grab do you have any father and son griffs well there's Interesting. Oh, wait. Here we go. What are you doing? Why are you frosting that old throw pillow? I could ask you the very same question. Should I just back out of the room? Would you? Hmm. Hmm.

Okay, Dad. Ready for our first con? You bet. Let's trim the mark mark nice use of the lingo homer 10-4 kimisabi the running gag of the episode that homer barely can do cons and is pissing barn off by how bad he has adam i really love that i like that a lot so one thing about that book he was reading a child's garden of cons it's a parody of the classic book a child's garden of verses by robert lewis stevenson so that's a parody of something and also the brilstein grab is that a reference to bernie bill bernie brilstein the agent you know i think it is well because his management team was brilstein gray so the brilstein graph i i think it is i think i

think somebody on the staff had a bad experience working with the brilstein gray company and albany ham scam not a reference to steam hands i'd like to think it is though yeah it's there it's there uh i i also we're we're very much is march part of this episode no she has to back out without saying a word so that's how that goes i do like that i do kind of episode? No, she has to back out without saying a word. So that's how that goes. I do like that. I do kind of like the, like, is she going to quote him? Is she going to nag him?

And it's like, yeah, I'm just going to walk out of the room and just not. It's like Homer does not have an excuse for this. There's no possible way to think of another way you could be frosting a pillow for any other use. So please leave. Okay. This was the first scene where this episode to me felt

like them self-parodying themselves they're like they've written so many scenes where marge discovers homer doing something weird and homer has to make an excuse and at this point even marge is like uh can i just say my stage direction out loud and i back out of the room and she just doesn't like they've they've all been through these motions so many times and Marge is like okay you're doing something crazy forget it I'll just leave yeah it's it's self that that is that's on the right side of self-referential I think you know where it's it's really about the character dynamic not you the audience for consuming it you know what I mean it's like listen we're gonna we're going through we are this is the two-man bit we do all the time let's just not to do the second part okay sounds good

you know that kind of a thing this is also them indulging in another like scully thing scully loved was bart and homer adventures like they suggest some antics and capers even together like this episode no women yep keep the ladies out of there they're not as we've seen before marge is only funny when she's drunk so keep them out of this no girls allowed no i'm kidding i they wrote lots of great jokes for women in the scully years i'm not yeah it's uh but it's still it had a boys club air to it you can't you can't lie yeah so they head back to the squid port they uh they start their fake cake plan where Kent Brockman, who is saying I love you to somebody on a payphone,

which seems to me to be someone he's cheating on his wife with. You definitely wouldn't call your wife from a payphone and say I love you. Is he signing off like it's a newscast too? Is that the joke? Oh, yes, yeah. But that's definitely not Stephanie the weather lady he's calling there that's my i i i feel sure of that when he knocks over the cake it's very clear that it is a pillow like they didn't do a great job of um making it a cake you're right yeah it should be like

you're right you can see the seams when it's on the ground and they really have to dress up this sad story where that's cake is for your deaf sister you'll work this off in the acid mines young man uh that that in homer's story he not only has a blind son but a deaf daughter i love that and then they they trim the mark can't give them the money homer calls him a mark to his face and bart has to shove him like he does most of this episode and uh then we also get a very 2000 joke about homer saying the first thing they're gonna buy is a talking rubber fish meaning billy the big mouth bass oh yeah i was there for that craze we sold them in my grocery store wow did you have one i think my mom bought one as a joke and it was funny for about a weekend yeah yeah and then it went away then it just lives on the wall unbuttoned the button unpressed you let you let those batteries

die for sure i had a friend who worked at spencer's gifts at the time and he said he was driven insane every day every minute somebody would hit the button they'd have to hear take me to the water every over and over again he had to hear the billy the big mouse bath sing and all the ripoffs too you're taking your sanity in your hand when you sign up for spencer's gift i have no uh sympathy for your friend i'm sorry uh you know what you're getting into uh well i do believe my friend enjoyed the fringe benefits of having co-workers who just like you know a casual drug use is fine among all of us like that again if you're the manager of some place in florida you you likely know where to get cocaine i'm just gonna say that but also this bit here where homer and bart are counting the money

it is home to one of the biggest deleted scenes of mike scully's era that's right this sounds made up but apparently this had a uh cameo from someone from the doors in it yes yes so this is an insane story and if the deleted scene wasn't on the dvd i still wouldn't fully believe it so in season 11 you may recall when omer was considering suicide and walking down the street they're playing this is the end my only friend the end and the doors rarely uh licensed songs like they don't do it all the time or at least back then they did i i don't know now and so they had to hit up the remaining doors for it and bassist i believe robbie krieger he said that he would do it if he could do a cameo on the simpsons because he loved the show and mike scully's like sure yeah you can be on the show so a year later they do this episode Robbie Krieger

is one of the guys they gave money to like Homer Bart says who gave us the c-note and Homer says Robbie Krieger from the drawers and then he pops up and says hey guys sorry I messed up your cake do you need another hundred no we're okay and he walks away and it's a fine enough scene but mike scully was just clear on the commentary he's like it was so obviously a name drop scene and a favor to somebody that we cut it and even bart says at the end of that scene that was weird yes yeah so and in a way they kind of scammed robbie krieger for real on the show they told him like oh we'll put you on the show so give us the use of the song the episode airs with the song and then when it's time for them to pay him back he's cut out of the episode it is yeah i mean like those that licensing has a cash

value they could have mike scully could have been uh arrested for fraud like you know i mean like not defrauded out of hundreds of thousands of dollars he's he's lucky robbie krieger, didn't even, I guess maybe Scully could even lie to him, like, oh, yeah, it aired. It definitely aired. It's funny. In this episode, Mike Scully pulled a con. He did. In real life. He really scammed him and flammed him.

I would love it if there was a really, like, Alec Baldwin-esque voicemail of Robbie Krieger just going to town on Mike Scully for duping him. And it's like, hey, man, I never never told you things get cut every episode you know it's like but also like in an episode like this wherein at the end of it they got so uh out of sorts about how to finish it they just basically said that's the episode you can't find that second for robbie that robbie krieger thing is a bridge too far i don't know yeah you're right why why was that like in the episode where a fish winks at camera why are you worried like this robbie krieger thing's a little too extraneous we don't need it uh it was a power grab man it was it was all for the fuck you of robbie krieger like how dare you tell me what to put on my television show uh scully does say on the commentary he's

like well look i put the the deleted scenes on the dvd so it's out now robbie krieger can relax you know then we get the next scene which again feels like full-on self-parody where homer just doesn't care about the plot anymore march doesn't care about the plot lisa barely cares about any reality in this scene here wow Wow, look at all this loot. What should we buy first? A singing rubber fish, of course. There you are. How was the magic act?

What in the hell are you talking about? Oh, right. The magic. The magic was great. It's really the way to go. How'd you do your act? You left your magic kit here. Or so it would seem.

Suckers. I don't know, Mom. I think they're up to something. Sure looks that way. But at least Bart and Homer are spending quality time together. Is that a Long Island iced tea? Oh, this? Hmm. I think it is.

You're a pretty girl. Oh, that's really scarring Lisa now to see her mom that drunk. Oh, for sure. That's a great defense of day drinking. Is that a beer? I guess it is. Oh, I guess it is. Well, since it's right here, I also love, in this era,

they really loved having Homer call his family members suckers. He just loved suckers. And you can tell it's's ADR like there's no mouth movement on it they just were like it's funny if Homer said that uh but yeah Steven you made it your your intro line his what in the hell are you talking about like it's so good it's so natural it's just Homer like it's almost like the actor forgot his lines in the scene i just remember that so clearly and i it was one of those like great lines that i don't like it just kind of gets lost like you don't know where it is and it's like oh i found it it's that great line yeah it's when homer there's another bit in here where i'm like oh it's this episode but like homer's what the hell are you talking about it would work in any episode but it's where homer

cares nothing about the grift. And when Marge, I just love it. She's like, quality time together. She does like a very silly like arm up, kind of like, yeah. Like she has stopped caring too. She's drunk, day drunk, and doesn't need to care about

whatever Bart and Homer are doing. And so in the next scene, they do a quick grift on Hibbert with a lost dog. And I have to say, this is kind of on Hibbert because he should know who Bart and Homer are. Like, he should at least know that that's Homer selling a dog to him. But I do love Homer saying, like, dog for sale. Oh, he's not for sale, but for the right price. They do a good job, at least, of never letting you know how much this money is which

is helpful you know what i mean i think specific numbers would make it a little difficult to sort of swallow some of it but if you just you just see dollar signs and bags with dollars in them you're just like okay they made money yeah i guess ultimately they do get to 6500 plus 350 to pay off the the car fixing but uh and and not only that but enough to pay for all those fancy like i grift signs and all those all that frosting you need to buy for the fake cakes oh man they're probably knee-deep in frosting uh now a bar mitzvah cake that gave me a little laugh too i like bart shaking it up with his different religions in this act uh but yes then we get a reference to uh well the film paper moon and also again to punish ned for being a widower i love i love ned's reaction to

homer asking if the wife is home yes homer no it is a thing where he has to be like he's so offended but also like he's such a nice guy he has to just be like okay we also there's also another great uh flanders line earlier on uh when they don't support the black arts such as oriental cooking yeah it doesn't age well but it's it's humorous that that's what uh ned flanders would think about asian cooking yes and he views asian cooking is also from the devil which yes well that is the turn i will say the scullier return on on, and we're really going to see it, I believe, in an episode or two, is that Ned is no longer just the nice Christian. He is a conservative Christian who watches a Davian Goliath show that shows how to bomb abortion clinics, for example. And I think definitely the Georgeorge w bush era influenced that oh yeah yeah we once w got elected everybody learned what you know that one version of

christianity was because uh w marketed himself so heavily on it yeah it's an ugliness which is nice to see with ned who's you know because sometimes the ned's almost as not even almost aspirational you know what i mean you want to be Ned because he's got all his shit together. And he's got a real good lease on life. It's like, no, there's stuff there. I think when Jean took over, that's when Ned got to be nicer again. Like, he's not. But yes, in this bit, they try an old grift on Ned.

Hello, is the lady of the house in? Oh, no, Homer. Remember, Monty got called up to heaven. Oh, of course, of course. It's just that... What? Well, before she died, she ordered this Bible, especially for you.

Why, there's my name in gold. Now, you weren't home, so we had to pay the delivery man. Well, I'll just reimburse you right... Wait a minute. This seems an awful lot like that movie paper moon run dad okay we'll be safe in here that was too close maybe it's time to quit the game amateurs dad that's right you don't smoke a pipe that's right. You don't smoke a pipe. That's right. Why'd you get wise to us?

Are you kidding? They used to call me Grifty McGrift. I wrote the book on flim flamming. Wow, he did. Yeah, in the Depression, you had to grift. Either that or work. So what's the pitch, old man? Team up with me, boys, and we'll and this is a scene out of Paper Moon. That was a real scam of the era, too.

Yeah, yeah. As it works in Paper Moon, which is a 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film, Ryan O'Neill and Tatum O'Neill, uh, they show up to the guy finds obituaries for men in rural newspapers and goes to the homes of the widowers and say, Oh, your husband ordered this. And it's, uh,

you know, and then they buy a $12 Bible off of you because they said your, the husband bought it. And, uh, it's, it's a good, actually, they almost get caught in the scene in paper moon as well so homer and bart should have known that that would get them called out on though it's funny that i do also laugh that ned knows the film paper moon yeah like why would he have seen that i do wonder um if this is a the

grandfather of people calling me at all hours of the day talking to me about my vehicle's insurance. You know what I mean? It's an opening to a conversation. How is this going to work out for you? Oh, yes, you're right. Here's my vehicle information, even though I don't have one. It's a con, and it's amazing. Yeah, that's the newest Bible con is the car warranty con.

And I think as Americans, we just accept the fact that we just never answer our phones anymore. amazing yeah that's the newest bible con is the car warranty con and i think i just as americans we just accept the fact that we just never answer our phones anymore yeah that function on my phone is no longer operating i'm sorry you have to give it up i am a substance character when i answer every time like it's i don't know maybe i have like memento disease where i need to write something on my arm do not answer even if it's your area code, that means nothing. I have an area code different than where I live. And so that's even more telling when you get one of those. It's like, oh, it's from my old area code. Then this definitely is a scam. But yes, Bob, I think you're right on to something that the Bible has been replaced by car ownership in America's godless

century. We got really deep there i like that uh though that joke also felt like a very critic joke of somebody recognizing a movie reference and then the characters running off because they know they got caught uh that all of their planning is done in bart's tree house is also very funny to me homer is just a big kid i did like that picture of abe with the zoot suit on on suit on the back of that child's garden of cons. I buy Abe as an old con man, actually. Like, you know, that was one of those, a true character. Okay, yeah, Abe would definitely have been a grifter back in the day.

And as of this recording, they're doing some interesting things with the Simpsons timeline because Homer is the age of Henry and I, or at least the age we will be very soon. Homer was a teenager in the, I guess, early 90s? By now, with the shifting timeline, yeah. So there's no way this Abe could have lived through the Depression in our current timeline. Yeah, or been in the Army in World War II, none of that stuff. He was born in like 1940 now. He'd have to be a Vietnam vet at this point, and that's a whole different level of joke with with old abe yeah he would be tying an onion to his belt specifically juan skinner to be a nom vet like even if he had been in in vietnam in like at at

16 he got put into it by uh of course that judge that he ran over uh even if then he'd still be in his early 60s at this point he'd be be like a Desert Storm veteran now, I guess. Yeah. But, yeah, also I noticed that Abe, his teeth are weird in this. Like, he has a bad mouth chart on his teeth. He has really spaced apart teeth when he's talking. I don't know why they did that. Yeah.

But I love his, that's right, when he puts away his uh his pipe that's so great uh but yes they decide that they're gonna grift the uh best people to grift in town the springfield retirement castle which i do agree with them it's a really great uh they have so many great jokes about how you justify doing evil things and they say like well you know god screwed me out of 6500 and homer's like well i remember a guy who stole my bicycle so i actually should be able to scam more people and and now they tell themselves well they're gonna send the money to televangelists anyway so fuck it let's just take let's take a bunch of money from these old people i also do love that he says like this was in the sting too which nobody saw

apparently that was a whole new cast for the sting too i never saw the sting but the sting too is just a cheap knockoff sequel yes yeah it's uh i don't know how much you know it uh steve i know but i do love the detail the uh abe is just like so jackie gleason like really going deep into the sting too the idea that jack knowing that Jackie Gleason was in it. Yeah, so the Sting one was, you know, a Redford and Newman vehicle, a very popular film, and none of them wanted to come back for the sequel. Only the writer returned, and they're like, well, it's just like it's more con men in a similar time,

and we're calling it the Sting part two. And yeah, Jackie Gleason, Terry Garr, Mason Ryan. No, whatever. time and we're calling it the sting part two and and yeah jackie gleason terry garr mason riot no not whatever terry gar and jackie gleason those two i remember for sure and hey look i'm not watching that whole movie for this podcast but i've got multiple synopses and none of them involve a grift with the sweepstakes the grifts in that uh the big grift in that movie is a boxing game is is the grift but again i'm not i'm not watching the sting too i'm looking at carl malden it's like i think maybe the other big con man there ah okay he's that box office draw in 1983 carl malden yeah well jackie gleason on for me i may be fortunate because uh he didn't seem to be such a nice guy

like was literally taking garbage out of the trash and making it for people like he was in that weird Smokey and the Bandit sequel where he was the bandit oh yeah he did the toy after this too he was in Skidoo

I don't know that's the LSD movie Skidoo oh okay I'm going to take your word for it I don't know that film now I'm That's the LSD movie, Skidoo. Oh, okay. I'm going to take your word for it. I don't know that film. Now I'm fascinated with an LSD movie with Jackie Gleason. I believe Groucho Marx is in it, too, and it's a movie from the 70s. Wow. And it is very odd, and I'm vamping here to find it.

1968, directed by Otto Preminger. What? With Jackie Gleason, Frankie Avalon, Frank Gorshin, not playing the Riddler. What? Yes. All right. I got to watch this Skidoo movie. Mickey Rooney and Groucho Marx.

Wow. That sounds even better than the head, or head, the monkeys movie. Man. I would like to watch Frank Gorshin and Jackie Gleason vamp in front of hippies. That sounds like something. That sounds great man the sting part two meanwhile was like it's a direct-to-video movie before there was video to go direct to yes or like it should have honestly it should have been a tv movie yeah yeah but i guess when

you got jackie gleason it's like we're above a tv movie like this could be in theaters but they then start their con they arrive at the publisher's clearinghouse dealie i love abe's dance like i've seen that meme dance anytime i put like simpsons into the gift searcher on twitter i see that dance and i never remembered where it was from talking about his crazy stripper wife yeah the craziest strippiest definitely anna nicole smith reference very much so yes yeah which right when that was funny right before it went really bad uh i guess no yeah she i looked at the timeline of like she married that old man in 95 but but the lawsuit went so long that it was i don't think it

was even over yet at that point in 2000 now they done gone to heaven i know it's it's now anna nicole smith just it's very sad like she i mean when they made that show about her it's just like this is depressing no one should film this like this uh get this woman help please this is not this isn't a reality show well that's the weird thing is like the when that uh you know britney spears doc dropped pretty recently uh is you know, it's like, weren't the 2000, like everyone's sort of coming to realize that the 2000 tabloid culture was awful.

And I'm like, not to be, I'm not taking a victory lap here, but like, yeah, in the moment, I was like, this is pretty gross. You know what I mean? Like not everyone was, you know, hanging on the, like watching E every night. Yeah. I also took offense to people on

twitter and other places saying we are all guilty we did this to her and i said i didn't do anything i didn't like it uh i never bought us weekly yeah i i mean i i also to take a line from our friends at the uh the michael and us podcast will sloan uh who's been on the show before he pointed us out i think it's a really good point that this is these documentaries that you're good i watched i'd really enjoyed the britney spears one but in that one they it feels like the media is is exonerating themselves they're like boy we used to be bad not now though like we all learned a big lesson yeah we'd never do this now in the media no way uh but i mean i guess we're not as explicitly horrible to like uh asking a 16 year old girl if she's still a virgin or something i don't think i don't think that's acceptable on tv like it used to be uh diane

sawyer rot in hell uh but yeah so the grift seems to be going fine a abe does a little dance and then fakes a heart attack uh they say that they need the all of the elderly people to pay a wealth transfer fee to sign over a check that big just a hundred bucks ahead and uh and then when they're collecting the money i did note that alf clausen did a good little like riff on the entertainer there so you can hear a little bit of the the sting song and also i was thinking of matt grating would be pissed off because there's an old man who walks in there who's got a beard line he's got a homer beard line that that should be cut out of extra characters to my season 12 distracting i mean it drew my eyes instantly i was like oh another beard line

nobody has that but then big guest star of the episode is here edward norton who uh he was uh he was getting pretty hot at this time in the year 2000 oh yeah well it's also it's shocking it takes so long to get there you know what i mean like you would think like you know edward norton had a lot of juice in in 2000 you would want him to be front and center or at least like a bigger character it's it's like what 12 13 minutes in like there's only 10 minutes left of the episode and he barely has he has like two minutes of lines in the whole thing apparently he came in he was a big simpsons fan and he gave them a spec script and i think if he would have come in 10 years later they would have made it because now sure now they are in the habit hey ricky gervais you want to make an episode uh seth rogan write a script for us they they are

into making celebrity scripts happen so they definitely would have done it if it happened later I think it was definitely a Edward and this is probably why I remember this episode so well and I kind of forgot about it because that was such a big Edward Norton head at the time I was like that man is not only our greatest actor now he shall continue to be our greatest actor because he was in fight club he's so yes yeah i mean his debut well not debut but like his thing in primal fear like he's amazing in that i even watched that awful ben stiller movie that i'm sure people like that's what i was gonna ask you who this film this episode aired around when keeping the faith had come out in theaters so i saw it too and it's it's the magical idea of like what if there was

a priest attracted to adult women no i said i had to make that joke i'm sorry but yes it's it's the joke about a priest a rabbi and a woman walk into a bar and it's it's one of them is jenna elfman yes jenna okay she's we were we thought that she would have a movie career we were like that it's gonna happen ladies and gentlemen it's going to happen this and kippendorf's tribe look out for the power of scientology did not help her and my question is what happened to him because i've heard things about him being very hard to work with he burned pretty fast in brights in the early 2000s and uh i'm sure he still gets work but i just don't see him he's in he's now he's turned into a wes anderson guy it seems that i'm looking at his new yeah he's been in his last

well he did that horrible motherless brooklyn which i couldn't even bother to watch even though i love the book he he entered into the yeah the wes anderson troop of people but all yeah i mean the stories about him are mainly that like he is that story of him and his writing partner bringing the spec script to Simpsons. That sounds like a lot of his stuff. The story was he was in the Italian job remake and he was difficult on set because he wanted to like change lines and stuff. And of course, the reason he wasn't the Hulk in the Avengers movie is because when filming the Incredible Hulk the stories were that he was like no the Hulk should do this the Hulk should do that and yeah Kevin Feige is not into too many notes from the the actors he casts and things I think or the directors or the producers or

the writers it's Feige's show it's uh it's a smooth moving machine you can't you can't argue with success I did not know this but he will be back on the show in 2013, the episode Pulpit Friction. Oh, wow. I did not know that. Is he playing another Catholic dude in there? Possibly. The last thing I really liked him in, and look, I think the Birdman movie was a little overrated, but I did like him in it playing a douchey method actor.

He actually does a really, really good job in that. He's good. He's good. He's very good. And I mean, I think he hasn't lost a step to acting wise. I mean, I like him in those Wes Anderson movies because I'm a white male, but I do. I do enjoy. I do enjoy him in Grand Budapest and specifically Moonlight Kingdom.

He's very good in that. Yeah. Yeah. He's he is a great actor. I think it just sounds like that. He. Well, some of these stories are like i wonder if it is is this edward norton being unprofessional or is it him being invested in something and producers not liking him wanting to say a thing sucks like that's that's what i wonder like it could be he was given a script

that sucked and i i could see myself on a set going like no this sucks i could write a better scene like this but and producers don't like hearing that and i'm sure we all wanted to like death to smoochie i i thought it was going to be this is the next fight club yeah we all wanted we all bought death to smoochie stock and watched it plummet uh there's just nowhere to go there uh but i do think think him being a Wes Anderson guy is interesting in terms of him wanting to go off book and off script. It's like, there's no way he would do that

on a Wes Anderson set because that man likes to make his little doll houses and all of his dolls need to be the right way. So I imagine either it must be a quote unquote, what he sees as the quality of the work being a problem and then he's going to come in and make it better, which I could see that rubbing people the wrong way. Yeah yeah i mean i i believe i heard the same about american history x as well that he was uh uh had had his own views on that film which that yeah it uh but

he was hot stuff in the year 2000 absolutely uh but yes why don't we give a listen to our guest star they they also said the reason they liked him for this role is because he basically has to play three different guys in the same guy. He is playing a character, playing a character, playing a character. It's three deep when we first meet him at the start of this scene. Forget it, Ed. Do you know what it costs to sign over a check this big? Why, the wealth transfer fee would run at least $100 a head. You're right. We better just take this check back for shredding.

No, wait. We got $100 each. Hang on. Thank you. No shoving. That's right. Put your money in here. All of it. Is that everyone? What's your problem, sport? Afraid to be rich? Hold your horses, I'll get to you. FBI, you're under arrest for fraud.

Throw the book at him, sonny. Don't. Now now where's the inside man call me mint jelly because i'm on the lam so we're under arrest for fraud yes fraud i i really respect that joke because uh we were talking about it before the recording, Henry and I. That joke of Abe going over the hill on over the horizon on his wheelchair, that should be the act break, but it's not. So they cut back to Homer. He needs to kill time and kind of restate the plot because there is no act break yet. I love that. Homer has to be like, so we have the stakes for the commercial break, right?

Yes, that is. They credit the mint jelly line to mike reese in the rewrite room that's a classic mike reese but i you know what i've never really had lamp that sounds gross to me i know that's how you eat lamb nah no way you don't need you definitely don't need to i've eaten lamb and you're without mint jelly and it's totally great i've talked before about my enjoyment of the uh youtube channel uh binging with babish where he makes food from other things and he just did one for wandavision where he made the 1950s food which is intentionally disgusting when he makes it it's like okay here's the steaks and now to cover them with gray and then and then a little green jello in the middle like with hooves yeah uh but yeah he's ed norton here is great playing the old

man who then reveals himself and has to pull down his pants to waist level once i love that and also that's a great detail he very quickly shows his badge and puts it away i could not pause it uh fast enough to see if it was the colgate thing i i think it was though it even in freaky act they don't have that as a single image oh wow that's too bad it moves too fast but but yes homer barter arrested they're being driven in their own car there which really should be their tip-off already of like hey wait a minute uh which also if anybody here has watched the uh the oscar nominated at the time of this recording film judas and the black messiah this is kind of how that film starts actually oh yeah

that's right yeah you uh as a as a uh a fake fbi agent yeah fake fbi agent who steals a car or tries to it uh it actually works out better for the guy stealing the car in this one that that movie's really good i don't know who knows if it'll win the oscar but i i like that a lot i i actually yeah that that is i don't know if it's my i'm trying to think i keep forgetting what's even got nominated but i really love that movie i thought it was really and the two of them are excellent although i don't know my one note there is like i think it's closer that they're both lead actors than that they're both supporting actors and i know that's a weird distinction but but it is to me, that's important. To call them both supporting makes it sort of lesser.

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 dejaden.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care yeah it's one it's one of those things just for award purposes they just choose like all right who's the lead and who's not yeah uh but uh who

knows who what by the time you're listening to this the oscars are in the past so you know who won but uh but yes they are they dropped off at the police station and so at this point you want to ask themselves who's in on it when is wiggum aware that they are being dropped off by the actor who's in uhicolor Dreamcoat. I think so. I think only Willie wasn't in on it. So everybody at this point knows this guy is grifting up. Yes.

I guess actually it must begin with Abe then. When Abe meets him in the treehouse, he already is in on the super grift with the Edward Norton guy. I love how Wiggum is drawn when he meets them walking in, that he's just sitting next to his desk with his hands in his pockets, like, oh, hey, how's it going? He is waiting for the scene to begin. And he is waiting to launch his amazing Rick James joke, which is not dated in 2000. No, not at all.

I love how the commentary, they're even like, yeah, yeah, it's not that funny. But yes, the guys pretend to be arrested when really they then find out that they were getting scammed the whole time their car and all their money gets stolen and uh the trick is revealed to them that's not an fbi badge colgate cavity patrol oh that guy was a grifter. Yeah, he conned us good. Well, at least we still have our jobs at the sweepstakes place. What? Mom's gonna wonder where the car went. We better have a good story. Lies got us into this mess, son. From now on, it's honesty all the way.

You were carjacked in the church parking lot? Absolutely. We had stopped in for a quick prayer when... Bart, would you call him a crazy man? Definitely. Well, crazy about carjacking. What did he look like? Uh, hmm, let's see. He was foreign and he had some...

Wild, bushy hair, like an animal. Anything else? Oh, well, he seemed like a loner. Kept to himself, mostly. And he said if we went to the cops, he'd come back for Maggie. Oh, dear. We don't want that. Anywho, the whole nightmare has really made us sleepy.

Let's hit the hay. They run up the stairs. I also like when Ed Norton's character drives off. He gives a very Homer-y woo-hoo, which feels like Norton going, I want to say woohoo like Homer does on The Simpsons absolutely that's a I'm I'm only doing this once I'm gonna I'm gonna you know what I'm gonna slide down the fire pole and this is the first of two times that Homer goes to bed early uh very suspiciously yes yeah I love him running off to bed and I I also, when you know it's a scam, I guess Lisa and Marge are trying to get more details out of Homer

so he can, like, be trapped in a lie better. I think that's why Lisa goes, anything else? Like, they know they are being lied to here. And then based on this description, they have to find somebody who matches it, and that's Willie, who they don't tell. They railroad Willie without his knowledge it's just you know you live in a unabomber style shack that long people are gonna start taking advantage of you uh and it not only

does he arrested but the news media films it as homer will point out later this is quite a lot of work for this grift here i love homer being woken up at marge telling him like hey we yeah we reported on him after we got maggie to a safe house and and homer going like well of course that's right i do like the cutaway gag of maggie dressed like patty and selma as the third twin it's it's a funny little gag she's barely touched her man which i love any man which comedy it's a fun word which when we talked about the man which joke on futurama i was surprised some people did not know man which was a real like a brand name of a sloppy joe i also love margie's weird statement of like they always say they're innocent it's such a turn off like what the hell but uh and then just to let you know how much they are deep into the

series here uh of their specific scullier jokes homer chloroforms himself at this point yes and attempts it again was that a callback to earlier chloroform jokes or we're just introducing chloroform this late in the episode and we're cool with it oh no it's well it's a callback to other ones in other episodes i think at this point they're like we've done so many chloroform this late in the episode and we're cool with it. Oh, no. Well, it's a callback to other ones in other episodes. I think at this point they're like, we've done so many chloroform jokes that Homer pulling chloroform out of behind his back and humping it is not out of the ordinary. This episode also has a pennant joke. That's right.

Yeah. Oh, man. I mean, we were not too far removed from the Who episode where Homer punches through the window of a just chloroform place and grabs chloroform. The Scully era, so chloroform and penance is Mike Scully. That's chief among them are the chloroform and penance eras. Yes. So, yes, Homer knocks himself out at 10 a.m. and sleeps until it's time for the trial. And so we head to the trial, which first off is distracting because the judge sounds like Judge Schneider but isn't Judge Schneider.

It's really weird. But I guess it's part, let's just say that Abe is very good at imitating Judge Schneider. Let's just say that. But yes, the trial begins. Will you tell the court your whereabouts at the time of the carjacking? I was alone in me Unabomber-style shack. I had nothing to do with that carjacking.

Carjacking? Who said anything about a carjacking? I mean, yeah. But didn't you just see? I'll ask the questions here, carjacker, will he? Objection! I'm going to allow it. It characterizes the defendant as a carjacker. Dad, we've got defendant as a carjacker let's see how this plays out mr. Simpson could you describe your assailant to the court I told you my memory is fuzzy fuzzy fuzzy like

Willie's beard yes exactly no no I mean the whole incident is hazy. Hazy like the moors of Scotland? Yes, exactly. Oh. Hey, Mountain Dew. Couldn't show the whole logo, though, legally that they've withheld a mountain dew ad there i think i think sometimes when they show a logo they're like well that's not advertising in here but you can bet mountain dew would at want to advertise on simpsons or one of their competitors

it's a they love to make fun of mountain dew and the new york episode you've uh had crab juice and mountain dew those are your options this is a very funny scene and i do like that they can actually write a good court scene without lionel hutz it's been a few years and they they figured it out now sounds like a lionel hutz joke the carjacking whoever said you know what i mean but it's i love i i just love the delivery on who said anything about a carjacking it's really funny blue-haired lawyer can still be this funny i like that yeah and that he especially him now calling him carjacker willie instead of groundskeeper willie i love that and and also like hazy like the moors of scotland yes exactly oh man it's so and i also just love the

judge even saying like oh yeah it helps paint him as a carjacker i'm gonna allow it also it's very distracting though on that jury louis is there but his hair is different that louis of louis and legs fame yeah oh it's it was really distracting well you can hear cletus yes cletus is the foreman of the jury for some reason i guess you think uh that they were changing his hair because of that lawsuit that that guy filed oh maybe that's right all right the goodfellas guys yeah yes uh and yes homer's chloroform mountain dew joke is directly followed by him walking into the new scene with a pennant that says justice so chloroform and pennant back to back wow you're right you're so right.

The Scully. I mean, this is Scully and his team really feeling themselves for their era of jokes here. But yes, the judge is then sentencing Card Jacker Willie. And things are almost going too far. But Homer is not ready to move just yet. Guilty. Card Jacker Willie, I sentence you to ten years in prison. Dad, tell them.

When the time is right. Ten years. But I didn't do it. Sure you did not. Now let's get you to Attica. No! You'll never send me up the river. Dad. Let's see where he's going with this willie who's your employer i insist

stop this has gone on just long enough nobody carjacked me i tried to pull a con and got conned myself. And then I lied to you all. So did Bart. Okay, players. That's a wrap. God, you know what? The ending for this episode, I'm not too mad about it

now, but there are so many great jokes in this courtroom scene i'll forgive it yes yeah i will say i let's see where he's going with this uh homer keeps refusing to do anything it's so great the the it's gone just far enough assumes that skinner is absolutely an acceptable loss like it's like all right he died let's make sure nobody else who's really important get hurt now that skinner's dead all right fine i guess i'll say something again willie does not know this is all an act he they found the man who was willing to take a gun from a cop and kill people in the courtroom yeah he's like i'm going out in a blaze of glory like if willie has decided to die like he's like i'm to die or get out of here.

And Skinner's little line is so great because he's asserting authority as his employer to a gun craze maniac. That's great. As your employer. And yes, also like the, obviously this is what Homer points out, but how did they know who needed to have squibs in this scene? How do they predict any of it? It makes no sense but uh ralph covered in blood i'm cable television's pretty funny i do like that though though i will say i think that almost seems a little puritanical for the show here they're like oh cable tv is so violent

kind of statements well i mean it's also like really soprano z i guess also that like somebody was watching the sopranos because you've got the uh rubber fish the singing rubber fish and the bloody uh whatever in one episode yeah were we also like in the nip tuck era of television where it was like fx racy it was coming soon i think i mean 2000 like there there it was pretty much just hbo and in showtime trying to get into i i definitely i think it's mostly about sopranos this bit here yeah uh possibly some oz oz got yeah yeah and oz got bloody yeah actually i think there's some oz jokes uh i was a regular viewer of oz i liked that show it was oz was such an interesting crossover of it had its gay fans because there's actually like a

real uh gay love story in it, which I did like. But it also like a lot of people like Method Man and other like hip hop stars, Mums the Word, like they were on the show. But also I knew when the show was airing new, I also knew friends who weren't into either of those things, but were into mixed martial arts. And mixed martial arts guys appeared on the show as well. I was a huge Oz fan fan yeah i i just it was one of the it was like so extreme and it was and i was such a character actory kind of a kid and grew up to be this goblin person but it is kind of a rosetta stone of like character actors like you know watching jk simmons go become jk simmons from the guy from oz is kind of fascinating

too yeah it's amazing that he got to go from being like the most famous white supremacist on tv as a character and now he can just be in anything because he's jk simmons uh i yeah i i miss that show i love it but uh but yes so there is one more big deleted scene here which i think was almost you could say akin to a reshoot because so from willie saying no one told me willie didn't willie didn't yeah there's so the deleted scene is lisa says oh right sorry we were going to tell you and they they sum up things differently but it still leads to them going like well what are we going to do and then it leads to the uh the surfing contest so i think they they fully reshot it to like goose it even more and to make it sillier like they they just say

like uh oh homer the extra bit is homer and bart try to pretend that they were also in on it they're like you know that's funny we didn't learn a lesson i was in in on it, too. Yeah, me, too. I do think the gay voice is a bit much here, this close to the end. I mean, ever, it's not great. It's a gay voice. It's like, oh, okay. It's a bit, 2000's a bit too late to be doing this. Yes. The joke is this guy seems so scary, but he's actually a homo, so it's fine.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Marge going, squibs, is also very nice that's very fun yeah and the way she explodes more of her hair is so funny looking to me i think that's where i learned the term squibs i think for me too yeah maybe yeah i i definitely wouldn't have i don't think i would have known it then before now there's no more squibs than nothing man i i not not to steal a complaint we've heard from one of our our friends who's also been on the show matt chrisman but no nobody does squibs anymore it's

all digital blood if even people get bleeding and stuff like it's there's crafted squibs man and it's it's it's i mean to to quote my friend chris cabin it's light hitting something that's real you know what i mean so when blood is on someone's face it's on someone's face you know what i mean as opposed to cgi nonsense and i i get why you know you've got actors on the set and they're like i'm not i don't want to be covered in corn syrup all day please don't do that but but it's something that's what feels special like there's a lot of reasons tarantino movies feel special but one of them is that he definitely is insistent on, no, you're going to be covered in fake blood all fucking day because you're in my movie. But yes, the true ending is revealed here.

Nice work, everybody. Wait a minute. This whole thing was a setup? But Skinner got shot. Yep. Blinks in a blood pack. Hey, watch it. I look like cable TV.

What about that bottle in your hair? Squibs. Yeah, we aren't swaggled, you good. But what about the guy who took my car? Devon Bradley. Character actor, dancer, singer. I'm a triple threat. He's doing Dreamcoat at the dinner theater.

I can't believe everyone was in on it. Well, it wasn't! Wait a minute. You're telling me the police force, the TV news, a courthouse full of people, and a popular entertainer had nothing better to do than to teach me and Bart a lesson? I know it seems far-fetched, even insulting to your intelligence,

but there's a simple and highly satisfying explanation. You see... Hey, everybody! Surf's up! Yeah! Cowabunga! Oh, boy. What an ending.

Yeah, you know what? I kind of like it. I've changed my mind about it because everything is... It's still funny but things like the scene before it just so there's so many great jokes yeah okay i i'm okay with this ending i still don't love it because it's just such a lisa saying like it's insulting to your intelligence i know but hey we've got an explanation surf's up dude like that it's so i also didn't like being

reminded of the mirror guys i was like i had already forgotten that bad mirror joke and now now you're bringing it back for this shot and the sturgeon winks at you as the last shot of the episode as well yes yeah it's i do i say i get what they're going for here but the problem i guess is that they leaned on this a bit too much where it's like if we can't figure it out we don't have to you know what i mean like we could just go crazy nuclear whenever we want and also uh show our open disdain for our audience occasionally i think uh like upon reflecting about it now i don't think i have a problem with it anymore because i'm not looking for the answer that uh homer wants because i recognize watching the show for uh at this point 12 years

when i saw it originally homer is the center of the universe everything revolves around him the show he is kind of like the god of the show so of course the entire town works teach him a lesson i don't need a satisfying answer to that but that is what this ending hinges upon sure i guess i just learned to throw up my hands at this point and be like well look these these are cartoon characters and i laugh at jokes like i i i still miss being able to care about pete like when homer has a heart attack in season four you actually do feel bad for him he's this poor little man and you can think of like oh the family's worried about 36 yes 36 at that time but i'd also point to when abe and homer are selling the love potion it's also

kind of a grift but at least there's that undercoding of like it's going to be about their relationship at the end yeah yeah instead instead this one they throw up their hands like look this is crazy all right look how crazy it is and one thing we must point out is that uh if you listen to the show you know that matt graining is a stickler about a lot of rules in the show and certain things make him really mad and because of that the writers take every chance to sneak those things onto the show and you know at this point in history

he's working on Futurama he's probably not there every day probably distracted by his new show which is why this episode ends with a fish winking at you which is how the season 2 episode War of the Simpsons ends which Matt Groening hated hated hated hated this is an even more flagrant example of that yes yeah the the general sherman winking at the end of the

episode he still on the commentary they recorded like you know 10 years after the episode aired graining's like that fish i hate him so much so then here they have a giant fish jump out of the water float in the air and then wink at you also i have to say aljean still spreading apocryphal lies on that pod of the myth that he says that bart never naturally said cowabunga on the show they only did it as jokes because they saw it on t-shirts wrong me and bob have Bob have said it many times. There are two episodes, one in season one and one in season two. Bart says cowabunga and he means it. And he means it. I like that idea.

In Telltale Head, he does a bunch of skateboard tricks and says cowabunga. And then in Bart Gets an F, when he's about to go sledding outside, he runs outside and says cowabunga. In both of those times he meant it i i think maybe al jean is thinking that in 1990 every bootleg t-shirt was a mix of ninja turtles batman dick tracy and bart and all of their catchphrases were just in a giant slurry together well that's the funny thing on imdb trivia which was a wealth of knowledge as always uh one of the trivia facts is in this episode, Bart says cowabunga, like which is popularized by the Ninja turtles.

I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? Surfer slang and Bart Simpson. Yes. It was also known for saying that either apocryphally or not apocryphally, but as Henry just let us know, it's not apocryphal. The,

the, the surf party ending that is credited to george meyer which also just fits with this era where george meyer would throw out he one of the best writers the show ever had one of everybody's favorite writers who worked on the show and his thing was he in the writer's room would throw out crazy things and in the early years most of the time they go like oh that's so funny and crazy obviously we can't put it on the show in the scully years they're like that's so funny and crazy and we will put it on the show and that's the case here and it absolutely feels like a george meyer like zany town ending of uh which you know it pissed me off in my teen years i can appreciate it as a joke here but i'm still

like i wish i could care about these characters more that's that's my only real complaint at the end of the day about endings like this one i think it's it's a i mean like why i like this episode more than i thought i would uh or more than i would have remembered is that we're in the era of this show being a joke machine and but if the jokes work then the jokes were you know what i mean like that's that's the that's the grade you almost have to go by although i totally agree with henry i do miss caring and stakes and relationships and all those good things but if the jokes hit the jokes hit it's a joke machine so there you go totally agree so steve thanks for being on the show again please talk about we hate

movies where we can find you online i must say you have been killing it lately uh this will go live a few months after we recorded but i just listened to your three hour podcast about goodfellas oh and your movie podcasts are getting the size of our movie podcast so congratulations to you sir yeah i think it's a that's a quarantine thing and like back in the old days when people had to catch trains that's not so much anymore it's like oh i'm talking to someone that's not my wife like you know what i mean like my friends um yeah we're uh we hate movies uh whm podcast on on the internet uh whmpodcast.com on the internet whmpodcast on twitter uh you'll catch out all of our stuff we this is coming out in may so we just did an april month celebrating the works of sean

connery um uh we finally did the avengers which uh has been super asked for for years and years we did jadaj um and all sorts of fun stuff in uh we're just about to get into our uh what do you want to call it there are uh summer blockbuster extravaganza there's a bunch of great uh big titles coming up and as i previously mentioned uh your good friends uh bob and henry who you're talking to right now are going to be on this show in the month of May. We're super excited to do that episode. We also have patreon.com slash wehatemovies where we have a ton of different tiers, giving you a bunch of stuff.

If you like Star Trek content, Star Wars content, we did the Snyder Cut there. If you like Beverly Hills 90210 and or Melrose Place, you want to check us out on Patreon. We also do a monthly We Love Movies, which is where we talked about Goodfellas. And last month, I believe we talked about goodfellas and last month i believe we talked about goldfinger you know it's uh it's not out yet but i can't wait for your snyder cut one honestly the reason i'm going to watch snyder cut this weekend is because i want to be able to best enjoy podcasts of people who also watch the snyder cut okay so so long as it's not just us i I would feel tempted to Venmo you money. Eh, you know, I got an HBO Max account. What else am I

going to do? I'm personally really enjoying Mel Rotuno, the grand return of it. It was meant to be a quarantine-only podcast, but it's still happening. It's still going. Yeah, we just had too much fun with those characters and those worlds. As much as we are a sci-fi and whatever kind of fun show i i really do

think like uh stuff with like real quote-unquote real relationships are also just as meaty for us to fuck around with i've been loving all of your guys's stuff it's been so you you even suffered through the past one of the worst films ever ever uh but but thank you so much steven we can't wait to have you back on and we can't and we're really looking forward to to our own appearance on your podcast super excited about that thank you guys so much for having me i love i i love talking Can't wait to have you back on. And we're really looking forward to our own appearance on your podcast. Super excited about that. Thank you guys so much for having me. I love Talking Simpsons with you guys.

And I love actually revisiting my high school. Didn't expect to be nostalgic for high school today, but I was. So thanks for having me on. So thanks again to Steve Sadek for being on the show. Please check out We Hate Movies. We love it. And as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get bonus episodes and every episode one week at a time and at free, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up there for five bucks to get just that and access to everything behind the $5 paywall.

That includes every bonus thing that we've made for the past four years of the Patreon will be available to you immediately the second you sign up for five bucks a month. That includes all of our limited miniseries. The most recent one that's happening right now is Talking to the Hill Season 2 Part 1. We're covering the first half of King of the Hill's second season in 11 episodes. It's all waiting for you behind the paywall along with all the other miniseries we've done for the past four years at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. You sign up for that. You get all the $5 stuff, of course, but also access to one make-along podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher.

And what is that Henry? Bob is talking about the, what a cartoon movie podcast. You see each week, our sister podcast that we do is what a cartoon where we cover an animated series in the same in-depth style that we cover the Simpsons. Once a month, we cover an animated feature film in the same style,

which often means we talk for over four hours, sometimes even five hours about a specific animated feature film in the same style which often means we talk for over four hours sometimes even five hours about a specific animated feature film last month was the 20th anniversary of shrek and we got ogre it and involved in talked about shrek for a good long while before that we did duck tales the movie and there's a giant back catalog. That five-hour one I talked about, The End of Evangelion. Boy, do we dig into everything about that very complicated movie. Over 100 hours, two years' worth of what a cartoon movie are yours, in addition to all of the $5 stuff Bob mentioned. If you go up to the premium $10 a month level, it's definitely worth your money.

So please check that out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons 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 by the way is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast about old video games find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two full-length exclusive episodes every month henry how about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g stay up to date on the world of henry gilbert there and as long as you're on twitter following me and bob you should definitely be following the official twitter account of talking simpsons and our network at talk simpsons pod at talk simpsons pod on twitter is where you will stay up to date whenever new podcasts go out on Simpsons, What a Cartoon, whenever there's updates on the Patreon, whenever we have a cool poll going

on, whenever there's new exclusives coming out, you stay in the loop if you follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter. So please do that today. Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next time for season two's Bart the Daredevil and we'll see you then. Cool gift shop. Ages 8 to 80. Hmm. That's me. Dad, will you get me this magic kit? Gee, I wish I could, son, but we already left the gift shop.

Don't!