Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Heartbroke Kid

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

"Oh, honey, please take this seriously. When people used to ask me how you were doing, I said, 'At least he's got his health.' Now you've got NOTHING!" - Marge Simpson When Springfield Elementary fills its halls with snack and soda machines, Bart becomes a junk food junkie and experiences his first heart attack. With his young life at risk, only one thing can save him: a new character voiced by Albert Brooks. Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talk King of the Hill, the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, and tons more. Event or product. Ah, hoi, ho, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons where every sign is wrong. I'm one of your host, the heavy drinking chain smoking clown Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Just the kind of weirdo that Bart needs, Henry Gilbert.

And this week's episode is The Heartbroke Kid. You can fight this. This week's episode originally aired on May 1st, 2005, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. In movie theaters, Triple X, State of the Union releases in third place. Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl chops the charts and Nintendo Dogs launches in Japan ahead of its popular release in the U.S. Very nice. So, Triple X. This is Vin Diesel. Are we at Ice Cube Town? Yes. This is the Ice Cube Town. Okay. Yes. Because they were asking, we need a hipper edgier James Bond that's rostified by 10% and that is Triple X, correct? Yes. The original vision of Triple X in the Vin Diesel mode was Pucci as James Bond. It was a James Bond who did snowboarding, who did skydiving, who was a cool race neutral person. like Vin Diesel, but for some reason, it couldn't come together for the sequel. So they're like, well, Ice Cube can just be like another triple X agent who still works for Samuel L. Jackson as the boss,

which he was in the first triple X as well. And this is a famously bad movie, right? It did very poorly at the box office. It's not very successful. And the only reason there was a third triple X movie was because in 2017, Vin Diesel decided he wanted to do it. It is called Triple X, Return of Zander Cage. Was this only available in Red Box or what? It actually was released in theaters and did pretty good.

It got like $300 million. Well, this is when Fast and the Furious is still very hot, though, right? Yes, yeah. It's cooled off again. The Vin Diesel seems to think that the next Fast and Furious, whatever that happens, will still be the biggest movie of all time. I think the time has passed. The ironic love of it has cooled off a bit of Fast and Furious.

I think so. And we also have Hollaback Girl, the song from Gwen Stefani as a solo artist. It taught us all how to spell bananas, and I appreciate that. Yep. And of course, Simpsons fans mainly know her as the sister of early Simpsons animation artist, Eric Stefani. Right, right. She's like the lesser-known sibling of Eric Stefani, of course. And, you know, I used to like Gwen Stefani.

He used to like, no doubt. But now, unfortunately, it's been revealed that she was always a conservative Catholic. And now you can go on her prayer app or whatever. It's really depressing to see this. Yep, she's become a kooky Catholic. And I guess, like you said, with the always thing, it's like, well, then I guess she isn't like a recent convert like the even weirder Catholics, I suppose. But still, American Catholicism is like, eh, a little too kooky.

As someone who went to Catholic school and a lot of Catholic masses, the Catholics are really disappointing me lately. We used to be the cool Christianity that would do ceremonial cannibalism in church. And now people like J.D. Vance given us a bad name. I know. You know, the Chicago... Pope is trying to give you hope because he's out there actually saying good things. The Pope is trying and to overcome all of this bad press that the Jeannie Vances and the Gwen Stefani's are

putting out there. And Hollopack Girl apparently was the first digital download to sell digitally a million copies. Okay. Yeah, we're at the iTunes Music Store. Is heating up around this time. I think 2005 is when I bought my first digital album on the iTunes Music Store. Also, one other funny thing about the State of the Union, the triple X movie. I want to say, and this is spoilers for that movie, guys. But Willem Defoe in the film is the villain, and

he is the Secretary of Defense in the movie, and he turns out to actually be like an evil guy who is misusing the army to do bad things, and I learned from the AV clubs recounting of the DVD commentary for

that movie, the director says, boy, this movie would have really helped our budget if we didn't make the Secretary of Defense the villain because the Department of Defense did not give us any free vehicles or equipment. Yeah, I can see why they would have notes on that. This is why America can't be bad guys in movies, folks, because basically the government bribes people in subsidizing movies with, you know, free tanks and jeeps and shit. The year tax dollars, of course, pay for, and you don't get any discount from that in the movies, but it certainly works as a silent propaganda. And it's one of the first time

I learned about that was that AV Club article from 2005. So thank you AV Club. Oh, and Nintendo Dogs. Did you hell with anticipation for Nintendo Dogs when it came to the U.S., Bob? No, never dabble with the Nintendo Dogs or the Nintendo Cats because my income was very limited at the time. And I knew this would be a fleeting fancy if I played it. There's not a lot of replay value with these virtual pet programs, games, whatever you want to call them. But games like this and brain training, they are the games that made the DS bare.

the PSP. We gave the PSP a very short life and made the DS this juggernaut with incredible sales. Back when we had a caste system in gaming where we would refer to the hardcores and the casuals, oh, this is a casual game. Yeah, it got a lot of people, Nintendo dogs and brain training together when they first were hits in Japan and then were able to replicate that success in English-speaking countries too, not just America. And yeah, it did appeal to a casual audience. And that and then really led to like the ramp up towards the Wii. But in both those cases, and Nintendo's is a great first example of it. It trained people for the phone apps that they would be playing,

not the next system that they would be buying after those. That is true because the iPhone launches, I don't know, 2007. And then interest in the DS dries up pretty quickly. And then Nintendo has a lot of trouble getting the 3DS off the ground. The Vita is basically dead at launch for Sony. Yeah, the 3DS needed to go back to Cortinus Hardcores with not just, you know, Mario and Zelda games that were some of the best ever on the 3DS, but also it was time they had to come crawling back to us weabs who they're just like, okay, here's your 100-hour RPGs again. All right. Yeah, you know what?

I really think the hardcore casual stratification was very odd because it's like, yes, I'm a serious experience gamer. I play a little game called Super Mario Brothers. Yes, yeah. Not for these newcomers. And you know, Nintendo's was the only one in that series I did play. I did play it for about a month. For some reason, I got a free copy from Nintendo, and I was not in the press then. It was like sent out to some Nintendo club members back then.

But I did play it, and it was the first time I dealt with virtual pet guilt because I didn't play Tomogachis or any of that. So I, you know, played the game for about a month. And the first time I came back to it after weeks, and my dog was covered in fleas and I had to bathe them. I closed it and was like, I can never play this again. I feel too much. Give digital guilt. Yeah, yeah. I mean, those games can have an effect on you like that.

And there's really no way to stop playing them peacefully. You're always thinking about your old Animal Crossing Town, your star for attention in 10 pets. Man, now I'm feeling guilty all over again about the town I haven't visited since like 20, 21. Oh, I never even hit credits. I was so depressed over COVID. I just thought like, man, even this isn't doing it for me. But that's what also was happening this night of the launch of animation,

domination when you'll hear more about it in the future too but we talked about this on don't through the roofer as well and today's guest is no one because henry and i can't record for like three weeks in september so we are backpiling a lot of episodes backloging them however you want to say that in order to get ahead of our recordings and yeah we've had a rough couple of season 16s and i thought future drama was okay does that come before or after this i forget it's before it's before okay thank god i'm mixing up when actually these things are going live but i do like this one, and it's not just because of Albert Brooks. I think this is a notch above what we've seen in this weird mid to late season 16 period. I find this one an improvement on Don't Fear the Roofer,

which is the one directly preceding it yet. And I think it's better than the one right after this that is the American Idol episode, A Star is Torn. I think the third episode named after A Star is born in the Sea. Yeah, it's up there with The Old Man in the Sea for title inspirations. Yes, this is a good, by season 16 standards, a good wacky one with a lot of like throwbacks to styles of jokes they used to do that are funny. And you know, they have a good, I mean, this is basically just doing like a Homer is fat and has a bad heart storyline, but they shifted on to Bart to then also talk about childhood obesity. Yeah, I will say it has an act three, switch him up, change him up, that makes the episode a bit lesser in my eyes compared to where it could have been. but I do generally like it. I just don't like where it goes.

I feel like it's the Act 3 problem where there was never a problem, but we need to make it a lot wackier and kind of change where we were headed in the first place. Yeah, it's a long Act 3 that is also complicated by a guest star that can take up a lot of space in a good way, but it makes it for not much time for other things in Act 3.

And Act 3 seems wholly inspired by one bad experience Al Jean had with a German exchange student, which is odd. Yes, yeah. But hey, we use our... to grind access constantly. So we can't be too throwing our houses. Throwing our houses, throwing stones on our glass house. We're going to throw our glass houses too.

It's very dangerous. This was an Ian Mackstone Graham pitch, and he apparently just pitched like Bart has a heart attack. Like, that's where it started with, and they worked backwards from that. And Al Jean says it was like him and George Meyer that then kind of took bits from the news about, you know, not just childhood obesity rates, which are always being talked about and something to be concerned about. but also the prevalence of vending machines in schools back then, which we got to see a little of that at the end of our high school careers, I think. Yeah, I started seeing sitcoms and other media take on the idea of vending machines in schools as I was exiting high school.

I believe Darya has an episode about the same idea. And I think in all those cases, it should be talked about more of like, well, the schools are turning to this as a way to make money because they're horribly underfunded. Like, why don't we see that as? a way to do it. That doesn't come up as much. That part. Yeah, hey, I went to private Catholic school and they still had vending machines and other ways to make money. Subsidize.

I think, too, that there, via BART, not just as they do with Homer, to talk about the writer's own middle-aged health concerns and the battle, you know, the battle to stay healthy and eat healthy, but also, like, they touch on it a tiny bit on the commentary that

the staff kitchen at the Simpsons, at least back then, was famously full of bad snacks for you and just chocolate treats everywhere. Yeah, we're about a decade past the giant bowl of Butterfinger Beavis, but still. Yes, I do wonder if Matt Selman, this would be my only question, Matt Selman, or first, what we meet with him if we ever got to interview him would be, you know, how you're very health conscious now, have you cleaned up the snacks in the Simpsons, you know, writer's room and kitchen

area these days, or is the chocolate still flowing? Yeah, yeah, I think in the past 21 years since this episode went live, there are a lot more healthy and tasty snacks available compared to where we were in 2005. Yeah, yeah. They don't have to just eat Islands burgers every day like they did back in Conan O'Brien's Day. As I recently heard on the MacRaining Conan O'Brien podcast that came out this week when we're recording was fun, but it is just them telling stories that you and I both know very well

already. But it's always fun to hear the stories again. Yeah. But anyway, but yes, I think this episode, yeah, funny. And you know what? I think too, Stephen Dean Moore and the director, and his team had opportunities to do good animation in this and took advantage of it, I think, too. Yeah, yeah, it's a good-looking episode, too.

And I think just the energy of Albert Books really brings a lot, gives them a lot to work with, with this over-the-top character, probably the most high-strung character he's played, even more so than, oh, God. Oh, Russ Cargill? No, not Russ Cargill. Hank Scorpio, there we go. Oh, yeah, yeah. This guy never relaxes.

Hank Scorpio knows how to have a good time sometimes. Like, he goes to the Hammock District, you know. tap a spangler never goes to the hammock district. Now, I want to cut this off at the past, Henry. I believe it's tab. Tab. Sorry. Ah, I wrote tap all these times in it.

Okay, tab. Yeah, I mean, tab makes much more sense than tap. But so the episode begins after a cute catapult opening. We then, this already feels like we're going back to like season two or three here where they open with a dream sequence. Yeah, yeah, and it's a Skinner dream sequence. Or I guess it's a fantasy. Like, he's not sleeping.

I should say it's an imagination scene. Yeah, we are led to see what Skinner is viewing with this little game he's playing with his Green Army men in office supplies. Yeah, it's like a saving Private Ryan parody, which is funny. When I first viewed it, I was like, oh, this must be a Vietnam thing. And like, no, no, those are Nazi tanks. These are American soldiers. It would make sense that Skinner wouldn't imagine Vietnam, even though he has PTSD from that.

He would imagine a winning war, as he says. Like, we'll finally win a war here. Still hasn't happened since 2005, so. Yeah, that's in future drama. This is their second joke in this season. Future drama has the bit about like, you know, the Gulf War Six or whatever was. Like, find the president's head. And you know what?

Swingline staplers still dominant. Still a dominant brand. And since 1999, they've been produced in Mexico. So not really an American company. I was surprised to see the swing line not bought by. Private equity. It's still relatively, it's just a regular bad company. I mean, most of us don't have a need to staple anything anymore. So I imagine there's some shrinkage within that company. Yeah, with fewer paper things, yeah, I guess it really would just be schools using it a lot more these days. How many things are being printed in offices these days? I think the main stapler people buy is the red stapler from office space as a gag gift. Oh, man, if Swingline didn't get the rights to that one, I didn't even get it. On the Swingline, the Wikipedia page,

for the company. There's even a section in there about like a red stapler debuted in this year. I was like, wait, why are they shouting out the red stapler? It has to be because of how famous office space made the red stapler. Yeah, yeah. That's just the iconic stapler in media now. This is where his dreams are interrupted by the arrival of Chalmers in our first clip. Kidder! Yes, uh, Superintendent Chalmers? Do you know what today is? Yes, of course I do. And. Happy birthday to you. It's not my birthday, Seymour.

You know I'm a Sagittarius. Really? I'm a Libra. There's a lot of compatibility there. Skinner, be gay on your own time. Today is the day we choose who gets the school's vending machine contract. I anticipate quite the dog and pony show. Sir, this school has a strict no animal policy. I assume these are hypothetical dogs and poni.

And Chalmers doesn't even bother to reply. I do like the made-up pluralization of ponies, poni. Pony. Also, it feels very 2005 that Chalmers just says, like, there's no euphemism for it. He's just like, be gay on your own time. Yeah, we're still in the that's gay era of language, slang. I stand by my belief that Seymour Skinner is a bisexual man. They need to really embrace that, much like how Harley Quinn just became canonically bisexual,

because fans want it. I want the same for Skinner in the show. We need something else be after the done-and-done joke. and give him a new person to date he hasn't had any success in love since this season of the show so let him start dating I'm Mr. Largo boy

Smithers I don't know there's only like three gay characters in this world I'm gonna say comic book gay just so he's not dating another Harry Shearer if I said Smithers it'd be like what another Harry Sheer character you call him comic book gay Is that a different character or Oh yeah yeah sorry comic book gay Yeah they made him up for a future gay episode

Oh okay see I was not aware of this Comic book guy has a, I believe it's his cousin, who looks very similar to him, and he's called Comic Book Gay. And Bart says, so you like comic books too? And he says, Only Certain Kinds. Oh, yes, I see him with a big bushy mustache. Yeah. Though there's also, there's actually a more regular bear character who appears.

Like, anytime Julio is with a group of gay friends, there is like a stout, bearded, bald guy in the group. Who is your typical bear type? And I can't remember his name now. I think it's like Stocky Gary or something. That's not, but not that. I like that, though. That's a good pitch.

And yeah, this is the closest to the political commentary of like selling kids unhealthy food, this whole section here. But also it sets up a good joke delivery device that The Simpsons has many times, which is people pitch goofy things to characters. And we get three jokes. This is basically like pitching Mr. Burns on a casino. They've done so many of these where here's my idea. And we get three jokes that are associated with three different characters. And C-Captain is one of them actually just. like,

yes. Though this time he has an actual plan, I guess, instead of just sailing around the horn. Yeah, it's a gumbo machine instead of a gumball machine. And of course, it scalds him horribly when it's dispensing the gumbo into a paper cup. Skinner is very flat on just, nope, the nurse does not treat burns.

And that's just the end of it. Yeah. And Gil is basically just an errand boy. The kids will write down what they want, give him money. He'll bring it back the next day. I have a feeling in Gil's plan. He never shows up the next day. It's just this is a one-day thing.

And Skinner throws a stap. player out of his head. So more stapler violence in this first act. This is just like Roger Myers throwing it at John Viti's head, too. I'm just going to mention every time in a classic episode there was a joke similar to something now. They're on trial. Well, and then, I guess, too, this isn't not like Pucci, the pitch for these characters. And these characters are, I guess, I don't know. I mean, I guess I was young when this aired, I was still 22.

So I might have been in touch with youth culture, but these feel it more like 90s characters to me, especially with the big cat in the hat hat that scamer has, I believe. Yes, yeah. Scammer and Z-Dog do come from the more 90s poochy school of things, though I'm sure in 2004 when this was written, they were still selling things in a similar way back. Yeah, and these could also be executives that are out of touch and still drawing from ideas that are five to eight years old.

Yeah, and scarfables, like, I mean, that's just like it's luncheables is kind of put their parroting to. I mean, we've already hit this in our society now. The satire is dead. because we have Mr. Beast's feastables. Oh, God, that's right. They are called feastable. Yeah. Man.

And, you know, Mr. Beast implied in there his name is scammer, but he's not as direct calling himself scammer. Yeah. So we do have, I mean, we didn't need to create Mr. Beast. He was created in a lab, but he's a real guy, in quotes. He's real and that he's a human being. But no soul is present. If your society produces a Mr. Beast, like, that shows you have reached the end. Like that is proof of decline.

Did you see he's got a book coming out? No. I'm just wondering like what could it be about his life. His life from birth has been trying to become a YouTube star. That's all I know about him. I believe it's written. Oh man, I should have this front.

I believe it's written with James Patterson or a James Patterson type. So he is co-writing a mystery novel with a James Patterson type guy. And it is about like actually the type of things you like Bob, a death game, a murder game type scenario, except it has the Mr. Beast branding on it. Yeah, I'm seeing this is out.

It's called the Most Dangerous Games with an S. And it is co-written with, James Patterson. So why do we need to involve Mr. Beast? Because he ripped off Squid Game and made a bunch of videos about it. Is that why? I believe so, yes. Well, and I only heard about it because it was getting headlines as it is predicted to be a huge flop because Mr. Beast fans don't read books and won't buy this. Maybe this could be their first book, although it is 480 pages, so that's going to be a big first book for your average Mr. Beast fan. Well, James Patterson is not known for like super simple. Well, I mean, He's an airport novel guy, so I guess he is known for easy readability.

Yeah, just like populist thrillers. I'm sure there is some value there. I've never read a James Patterson. There's a lot of them. They're all very, very big. Is he also the one who wrote with Bill Clinton a book, too? Yes. I believe his book with Clinton is called The President is missing,

and it made me keep thinking of the President's neck is missing. That's right. That's right. I also like that Skinner actually had heard of Scammer and Z-Dog, only because his normal grocery store went on strike. That's a great joke. I love how observational that is. you go to a different grocery store sometimes you're like oh i've never seen this kind of snack

cracker or this kind of soda it's just it's a fun little fact of life i think they're rediscovering it's always nice in these mid teen seasons to see when they like rediscover like oh this was funny when we did this with like mr burns or like remember that we used to do these kind of jokes with skinner and yes it does sometimes lead to things i keep noting of you did this joke 12 years ago but they did I like them remembering what was funny about characters that they had given up on.

Yeah, yeah, this is a good Skinner joke and we have Lindsay Nagel here with another executive, right? Yes, yeah, it's the male executive combo guy. She usually only teams with him. Well, I can't say it was officially Lindsay Nagel, but the ones who ruined Krusty's show in the sideshow Bob episode

is like, have you thought of Dave Chappelle? Right, right. Like, this guy is kind of like the guy with that, not Lindsay Nagel in that episode. Right. And they're here to pitch Skinner on the scammer in Z-Dogs scarfables, which come out of machines that include neuroturruptors that pacify a child's judgment center. So they're just drawn to it immediately. And when Skinner asks if they're nutritious, they say, that's none of our business. Yes. That is great, though a real thing you just hear all of the

time now about anything. Yeah, I can say that in my high school, when I attended from 1996 to 2000, I'm old, there were Coca-Cola machines everywhere, snack machines. everywhere. And looking back at it, I'm thinking that should never have been on the table. Also, the food that they were serving was not healthy either in the cafeteria, although the most popular item every Friday were fried cheese sticks. It was like the talk of the school, oh, today's cheese stick day. Did you bring money for cheese stick day? And I'm thinking about it. We were just ravenous over fried cheese. Yes. It was a sign of status in my high school lunchroom if somebody like brought extra money with them to buy one of those cheapo good humor

chocolate eclair ice cream bars. Like, whoa, you stopped by the ice cream table to get the chocolate declare. Wow. Yeah. And I remember like in high school, again, this should not have happened. There should have been some intervention. For, I don't know, a very long time in high school, my lunch would be a 20 ounce bottle of Coca-Cola, not Coke Zero Diet Coke Coca-Cola and a hostess apple pie.

And that was my lunch. It is, yes. I mean, to think of like the full fat or like Coke regulars, like those are just, you so many more calories. Not that a diet drink is full of things that are not good for you either. I'm not pretending me. Diet Coke has its own problems. But man,

just the calorie count on a regular soda, it does to my 44-year-old eyes when I see it now, I'm like, that is an insane amount of calories. That's why, frankly, I mean, I stop drinking soda or pop,

as they call it, up here, around 2004, because, again, very little money at this time of my life. And I realize if I'm going out with my friends to get like fast food, I can save like two or three bucks by not getting a soda with my meal. And that's a lot if you make very little.

If you're making $5 an hour, that's a lot of money. So I just, out of cheapness, I stopped drinking soda and then I lost the taste for it. And now like every, I don't know, three to five weeks, I'll have a regular Coke somewhere, like at a movie theater or something like that. And it's great. It's amazing. But I cannot stand Coke Zero or Diet Coke. I can taste whatever kind of chemical sludge is in that.

And my body immediately reacts. Like at a restaurant recently or at a movie theater, my wife got a Coke Zero, I got a Diet Coke. The second I sipped it, I was like, this is yours. This is not mine. And I wish I could drink that stuff. But I'm so happy now that we live in the Salter Revolution and we have been for, I don't know, about a decade where, God damn it, I wish this would have been around when we were growing up because now you can have delicious seltzers that have zero to five calories in them. And they are just as fulfilling and refreshing as a can of Coke or a can of Pepsi if you're demented. No, I love the Seltzer world we live in now, too.

As somebody who, the only healthy thing I did at Bart's age was not drink soda because I just did not like the bubbles. I am okay with bubbles. For some reason, I still have a mental block of like, even if my husband's like, oh, do you want a Sprite? I'm like Sprite, that's soda. Give me a LaCroix. And it's like a zero Sprite. Isn't that different from a LaCroix? LeCroi might be even more carbonated.

But yeah, it's like, you're going to hate me for this, Henry. I don't know how I remained real thin for all of my adolescence in early 20s when I was. just drinking so much soda, eating fast food constantly. Maybe I just wasn't like eating between meals. Maybe that was the only food I was getting. And that's why I was able to maintain an emaciated figure. But that was just my life. And I'm glad I cut out soda at that point because I know a lot of people,

soda is a hard thing for people to quit. It's like cigarettes. It's just like instant sugar, instant calories, instant feel good. And especially if you grew up drinking it, you attach it to like happy memories. I also am like jealous too because we both played a lot of the same game. that led to a sedentary or a more sedentary life too. And yet, yes, you stayed thinner, though. You're in better shape now than in your 20s, right?

Yeah, I'm in the best shape of my life now because I'm taking it seriously as I'm heading deeper into my 40s. And so, yeah, in high school, we had vending machines. And I was thinking, what was going on in grade school? And I have distinct memories because in my grade school, it was a private school, but there was very little money because it was like an impoverished area that I grew up in. So there was no, like our private school didn't have a church. We had church in the gym. They built the church a bit later, like as I was leaving that school before going to high school.

And there was no cafeteria either. They couldn't hire cafeteria workers. They couldn't make the food on site. So their solution was every day of the week, we will order food from a different fast food place for you. And you can put in your order in the morning. So one day was McDonald's Day. One day was Taco Bell. One day was Arby's and so on and so on and so on.

And this persisted for like, I entered that school in grade four. And I think after grade six, that program was over. And I was like, oh, man, why did they get rid of that? I love getting McDonald's during the day. And now that I'm an adult, I'm like, well, that was very unhealthy. Like, you're getting kids to eat fast food every day. You think of that training kids in a way, too, yes. To think about happy meals really is something other than what I have nostalgia for. I'm like, oh, that is evil. Like, that shouldn't have existed. I loved every happy meal I ate as a little fat boy. But I think about it logically. I was like, that was wrong.

Those shouldn't have happened in a good society wouldn't allow these to exist. Yeah, I recently bought a happy meal with my wife to get those one piece bunch bot figures. We just wanted to go, frankly, I just wanted to go just for a laugh, just to say, like, we're going to order happy meals, we're going to eat them, and we're going to pull out these, like, barely worth it figures, and they're kind of neat. And I was surprised, like, wow, a happy meal

is still like three or four dollars, and it's a shocking value, but it is all about training the kids, like, associate happiness with this food. This is a loss leader because we're getting you in the door to make you a McDonald's addict for life. Does the taste of our salty, oily fries make you

you think of your favorite toy? Good. Yes. And to this day, like, I love McDonald's French fries, and I think that it was the training I received as a little kid.

And so when I'm at another place, like a random bar, I'll be like, oh, these tastes just like McDonald's fries. They're great. And I'm poisoned in that respect. Yes, asking about, like, what's in it thing,

which also, in our next clip, I have the Lisa talking about what's in it. Like this, fortunately, I wish this wasn't becoming in a way, like, adapted into a mega issue lately. is as part of the Maha movement, which I even saw like AOC give it some level of got to hand it to them when it's like, well, no, you just, you have your own health things you can talk about.

Don't take their label. Kids aren't eating enough raw beef. Yes. And they need to be having raw milk. That's my impression of RFK. Thank you. Yeah. In his case, too, it's like what they get rid of is the M&Ms will still be sold at your kids high school.

It just won't have like three dyes in it. They're bad, apparently. Well, and also, another reason the Maha movement is a joke is that... Should we define what that is? Make America healthy again. Thank you. Just in case you don't know, and it is led by RFK Jr. A walking scab, let's say.

Yeah, as part of the Trump White House and his branding, I've had to see commercials of it shoved in my face at places. It's gross. And that, yes, in the Maha thing, another reason it doesn't work is because you're going to have to tell a business to not do something profitable at a certain point. And Democrats often don't do this, but no Republican would ever do that, ever. And so it wouldn't change. They will never get Americans more healthy because they couldn't stop a business from selling shit.

I mean, it is like part of the cruel parody that we live in that the leader of the Make America Healthy Again movement is a walking ghoul with a deep fried vocal cord that is looks on the brink of exploding at any moment. An extremely red man who, I'll admit, has like a fine physique for a man his age, sure. And I'm sure it's all entirely natural. And there's no drugs or anything helping him with that. Sure. And this is coming right before.

I mean, every first lady has to have an initiative. And I understand you want to make it look like you are not just a figurehead or the wife of a figurehead. And Michelle Obama's was all about making school food healthier. And of course, there was a lot of backlash to that among conservatives. That was, of course, Islam and Chicago. at the same time what she was pushing, of course. Yeah. That was when it was bad to make America healthy.

Now it's good and it'll be bad in a couple more years, I think. I guess one final thing. The real problem is, and this has always been an issue, it's that healthy food is way more expensive. Fast food is way cheaper than buying the pieces for a salad and making it for yourself. I know when I was like very, very poor in my 20s, my meals are mostly like, I have, sorry, a $2 jar of sauce and a $1 box of pasta. I'm going to like add many things to this to make it last for a very long time.

But if you're like buying like peaches, are you crazy? Buying pickles? Are you insane? Yes. Yeah. The components for a salad are much more expensive than the components for a box of craft macaroni and cheese. Yes. Yeah. Well, actually, speaking of ingredient, you certainly don't want to read the back of the box of a craft macaroni cheese that you're eating.

This is where Lisa tries to warn people in our next clip. Chinna crisps, Amazonkers, Lala found like my kind of snacks. Oh, Dolly Lominate. Look at these ingredients. Hydrogenated petroleum oil, monosodium poisonate, partially de-weaponized plutonium. Machine makes a good point. Don't be a follower. Be a snack swallower.

One of many times Hank Azaria has had to play, let's call it a rap man. Yes. He is their go-to rap man on the voice acting crew. Yes, as we definitely saw this year, when Bart became a rapper as well. Yeah. I mean, he is MC Safety, the leader of the caution crew, right?

Yes, yeah. And I love him as MC Safety as far as that goes. But when I was listening to that, I was like, right? Yeah, it's Z Dogg is the white one, and that is Dan Castlemeta doing that voice. So, yes, it's a... He's more of a surfer, dude.

And it's funny, I guess because Hakeazeri is doing this scammer voice so often in this episode, A Pooh has nothing to say when we get to a scene with Apu. Yes, and I'll tell you, there's three deleted scenes in this episode and none of them

have Apu in it either which I was shocked by I'll just say it now. I was like there must be a not funny at all to even include in deleted scenes joke that explains why Apu is fat. Yeah yeah I was wondering what was going on there but with this scene I feel like I mean they're trying to exaggerate things

for the sake of humor but with these vending machines in schools they weren't inventing new products they're like kids like Coca-Cola here's Coca-Cola here's Mountain Dew drink it you like apple pies you like Cheetos you like Andycaps Hot Fries they're all in the vending machine. Yes, I think too, this feels learning that George Meyer was involved in some level of figuring out this episode.

This feels like a George Meyerism that it's specifically about how, you know, he is kind of a hippie type guy and that, you know, this is more of a 90s thing. But it was continuing to there too. But like Drinks like Fruitopia or Sobe, like there was also branding of this is lefty or progressive coded foods. And then you see it's like, it's just the same slop of sugar and corn all the same. Like, oh, I'm drinking a healthy frutopia. And then there's, I don't know, 60 grams of sugar in it. Yes, I say this is one of the duped masses Lisa's warning here. Like, I would drink Sobi regularly around this time because I was like, well, this branding, though, looks like a healthy drink.

And then it's like, it's all sugar. It was probably like 190 calories. Each, like, bottle of orange sobi I was drinking back then. And it was only because Odd World was. was advertising it to you, right? It was the Xbox branding. Right, yes. Was the OG Xbox owner, it must have got me as well, yes. Next, it's a new hour of the Simpsons. Welcome to the break, everybody. It's Henry Gilbert here, hoping you're enjoying some

healthy snacks while you're listening to this episode of Talking Simpsons. And, you know, me and Bob are always hard at work on the season 16 and season six episodes. we've been covering all year long on Talking Simpsons, and it's only possible because of the support of listeners like you at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Not only does your support help this be our full-time jobs, but also you get tons of benefits for being a supporter there too, including no ads like this one.

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you need to sign up at the premium level at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons because $10 a month get you all the ad-free early exclusive bonuses that are at the $5 level. And then you also get basically three extra podcasts a month because that is our What a Cartoon movie podcast that you get for $10 a month where we cover an animated feature film as in depth

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that one. You want to check out all that stuff and get a new one each month for just 10 bucks a month. And again, you get all the ad-free bonuses that you get at the $5 level to as well. If you sign up for an annual subscription, you get 10% off. So please check all of that out for yourself at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Though, and you know what, I haven't played this jingle in a while, but this calls for it. Lisa warns everybody and then they shove past her, so this does count as a take that Lisa's beliefs. That's good. And we also, they're not naming every product that's available in the vending machines, but Ralph is eating everlasting cop killers, which is nice.

I like that. It's an extra layer that his dad is Chief Wickham, too. That's good. I miss that one. They came up with some good. I was so focused on the itchy and scratchy sign gag in that one that I forgot to look at all of the dames of the candies and sodas in this episode. The jingles are cute there that get all the kids to listen. And yes, we see that Bart is just as addicted as the other kids.

You know, I feel like a season 27 episode, they would have just done every kid gets fat at school from this instead of just Bart. Yeah, it's weird that it's just Bart, but also I think the episode is recognizing like the episode where he takes karate, which one is that? Oh, yeah, when finders failed. Thank you. Yeah, it's recognizing, oh, Bart's body, he's like naturally fat, his character design, as are most of the adult men and boys in this world. They have the inverted light bulb. And you see Bart being active so often.

I rarely think about this, but that Bart is. In the standard opening, it's made a joke in this episode. But the standard opening, he's always on his skateboard. So you do think of Bart as an active kid. But if you just look at his guts for a second, it's easy to see. Like, Bart is actually kind of chunky. Yeah, yeah. It's easy to forget because everyone is shaped like this in this world.

And so Bart, he is five cents short, as ZDog tells him. And so he sells his skateboard to Willie. And Willie's happy that he's going to be the center of it. all eyes are going to be on Willie for a change. And then Willie falls down a lot of steps. He's not as hurt as I thought he'd be. This is a fun gag. I like how it alternates between him falling down steps and also expertly skateboarding

between the floor space between the steps. I mean, again, Willie, don't forget listeners, despite his own shape when you don't see his nude torso. He is a bodybuilder. Like, he is shredded, Willie. So he should be all righted like skateboarding, right? Yes. And I like how he doesn't even have a colorful insult for the kids.

he just calls them bastards when he hits the bottom of the stairs and Bart gets his skateboard back. Yeah, that was when Bart sold his skateboard, when I first was re-watching this, because I do recall watching this one because I tuned in that night to see the re-debue of Family Guy and American Dad. So it was appointment viewing, which Simpsons was being less of then. I was working a job back then, so I didn't always have my Sunday nights free. It was a registered job at Blockbuster Video at the time. But this one, I rewatching here, I was like, wait, but I know Bart's on his skateboard later in the parody scene, the opening parody, and then he gets it back at the end of this joke. I was like, oh, okay, there.

That's careful plotting. Yes, yeah. The animators paid attention at least. So we cut to the dinner table, and Bart's addiction continues there. Bard, I spent all afternoon stuffing tuna fish into that steak. Have some. Oh, thanks. The vending machines at school feed me now.

Oh, so I've been replaced by a machine. Oh, March, no machine could ever replace you. Why, you're the... Or could it? Ready for some lovin? Why did I give her a gun? But I repeat, no one is being replaced by a machine until all the kinks are worked out.

Well, until that day, I'm still Bart's mother, and I don't like him stuffing himself with junk. I love Marchbot. It's a great distraction from the scene that Homer just, envisions this dark future for himself. And we should point out, Margebot is terrifying before she has a gun. She's literally a killer robot, even without a gun in hand. In Homer's fantasy, it implies they regularly have sex.

He has sex with that scary Margebot, I think, too, until she gets the gun. They have some fun cutaways in this time. I wonder if, I'm curious, when we get to season 17, when they're writing it, knowing that family guy is back, do they pull back on them again, that they know that they're airing next to family guy or do they stay the same, I wonder? Also, I mean, at this time hearing no one is being replaced by a machine until all the kinks are worked out. It's funnier than ever these days. Yep. They didn't mean what it means today, but can't help but think of it. And I like this montage. I notice there are no jokes in this montage. It's just a bunch of creative angles and expressive

animation that show Barts munching a bunch of food, drinking a bunch of sodas, getting bigger and bigger. You know, this is the era of Algin, musical montages, but I also like this one because not that it's like an inventive song they pick. Al Jean, I think we've established that we believe. He picks these the most obvious song in some cases because the obviousness is the joke, not because he's a hack. Yes, yes. There's a bit of irony to the song choices here.

But that the Stephen D. Moore and his team, like, this is laid out to the song. I would guess this was not a song that came in after color animation. I think that... Yeah, yeah. It feels more like a little music video than, oh, it'd be funny if this song was just randomly playing in the background. Like Bart bites down on a chocolate bar to the of the song.

The song is, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, the one-hit wonder song by the Ohio Express from 1968. Yeah, a terrible name for a band. I'm sorry, nothing good comes from Ohio, including me. Though you'd want to take an express out of Ohio if he stops as possible, right? That's how I escaped. They wouldn't stop playing that song.

It was really annoying. And you would know this song as a Simpsons viewer, of course, because this was what Homer was listening to when he could have been watching the moonland. Right, right, yeah. 68 song Moon Landing is 69 so it lines up and the only negative I have on this one really to complain about is that like it's a double beat to have this musical montage followed directly by a long musical parody of the opening too yeah yeah I mean I appreciate the animation and the camera angles in this montage in this montage but I like the jokes in the second montage a lot better because it's playing with a set piece you've seen a lot the Simpsons opening it's very funny to see that Bart is not writing at the child He is just at the machine. Yeah, it's essentially most of the truncated Simpsons opening, but the joke is because Bart is now very large,

he is not able to do what he usually does or he is doing what he usually does and causing a lot of destruction. Like cracking open the sidewalk. I like how the show has to wait a very long time for him to emerge from the school doors. His excited waddle out of the place. It's very funny and overweight to design his bigger neck. Like, they can only Bart, like most of the characters, are very simple designs. You can't mess with them too much, but this is a funny, overweight bark design, too. And because Albert Brooks is in this episode, it is, sorry, Jacques's first spoken line in 15 years?

Yes, yeah, I have a two-second clip of that from it, too. There you go. So if you're waiting for the return of Jacques, there he is. When that happened, I was like, oh, right, Jacques is in the opening all of this time. and I never register it. In the portion that they never show you anymore, Bart weaving between all the people. That feels like the most often cut of them.

Like it's the one that survives the least. But, you know, I say it feels like that, but I need to go back to the Real Jim's video analyzing all of the openings because I think he says what's the least seeing the scene from the full opening. Yeah. Bart is cracking the sidewalk.

He's bending light poles. He smashes into both Marge and Homer's. Yes. And landing on the roof of Homer's car ejects Homer from the car entirely. It just pops him out. And that's where the family lines up for their couch gag, waiting for Bart and Bart waddles in. And that is where we get the sound of him having the heart attack, which Homer first thinks is him having a crush. But that's the opening sound of the episode we have. Yes. I love a snide reference to do the Bart man. I guess Homer is aware that is something that Bart is known for and that will get him back on his feet. And Bart is trying to do. do it a little right. He's not just wiggling in pain. He's like moving on the ground some, isn't he? He's just writhing. I don't know if he's trying to do the Bartman because I guess, so the only instructions we get into the Bartman is move your body back and forth and side to side. So he's kind of doing the Bartman, but we need more explicit direction from Bart in that song.

Everybody, if you can do the Bart Man. Yeah, it's a bad learn to dance song. I stand by that it is also Michael Jackson saying, do the Bart Man. I think he had darker intentions with that line in there too, He was just gloating in front of us About his dark secrets I love telling the story again That I read about Maybe we should follow up If we ever

We've interviewed Jeff Martin before But I learned this after we did Our interview with Jeff Martin He specifically hated that song And he had like written his own song That he couldn't use in the album Simpson sings the blues And he's like

My song Is a better do a dance song Like it's a much better Instructional stupid pop song Jeff Martin wrote Look at all those idiots? Yes, he did. Yeah, apparently he also had a pitch for a song about Bart teaching you a dance. I forget the title of it, but if it's out there, but that was in one of the Sings the Blues oral histories that's out there. Yeah, he might have a demo of that floating around somewhere. Oh, man, yeah, you know what? I have his email. You know what? He's got millions of dollars and lots of free time. I think he'd reply. Though I remember when I asked him, at listeners, if you never heard our one about the yellow album, it's full of great stuff. I asked him about that. He has a credited song. that too, the 24 hours

a day Apu song. Oh, yeah. And he's like, I think he said he remembered writing it like in one afternoon and never thinking about it ever again and has no other memories about its production. Yeah, that was a great episode by the way. Check out everybody. Our episode about the L album. So yes, while it is not impossible for a

10 year old to have a heart attack, it is obviously extremely rare. Honestly, for anybody under 20, this is more of the middle age writers of the Simpsons worried about their own health fears. If you have maybe like a congenital disorder or some kind of kind of other condition, maybe if you're a kid. There are other risks for kids who are away, like diabetes, hypertension, things like that.

It is not good to be that heavy of a kid, of course. You know, it's interesting. They don't have Bart suffer any social issues from this. Like, nobody mocks him for being fat at school. They don't mind any of that out of this situation. Yeah, there could be a bit more because, again, an act three, we go in a different direction. That's not really about weight loss or nutrition. And maybe we could have filled in some of these gaps.

and so Bart's is nearly dead at the end of Acts 1 but when we come back for Acts 2 we get Bart's diagnosis Doctor little kids aren't supposed to have heart attacks They're supposed to skin their knees and poke their eyes out And be smothered by cats Well Bart had a heart attack And it's his own damn fault

These dark spots and his pulmonary arteries are molded milk balls His liver looks healthy That's a wad of laughy-taffy Now when Bart goes home he's going to have to follow a program of strigdine and exercise. Damn it, I will not bury another patient. Doctor, you're a pediatrician. Yeah, but my head's been somewhere else this year.

That reminded me that he is a pediatrician, or that's how he's introduced. And immediately after that, he is just the all-purpose doctor, but I guess they're remembering his roots. It's also them noticing, I take this as an apology to us, as that we have noticed this season, Hibber's been really bad as a... this season. This is why they think in two years,

we can just kill off Dr. Nick, like we just do every bad doctor joke with Hibbert now. And I mean, Hibbert has been killing patients all season too, I think. God, just in the same night of TV is the Roofer one where he tortures Homer the entire episode. Yeah, I forgot that was the same night. By the way, welcome to a celebration of May 1st, 2005,

happening across three months of our network. This is how we celebrate May Day is this, talking about three nights of cartoon. Or three cartoons in one night, I should say. Okay, so yeah, Bart, also they let Marge do the Charles Nelson Riley here with her pearls. Yeah, it's very good. Then Bart goes home, and this is where we have another, like, Gene admits on the commentary. They were doing less itchy and scratchy at this time, but I think they remembered, like, wait, we could do an itchy and scratchy that ties into the story for once.

We haven't done that in a while, have we? Yeah, I guess the joke was getting a little stale because TV was getting more violence. So it was hard to have an ultra-violent parody of what violence was in the early 90s on television. I do like this one a lot because it is so complicated. Yes. It's not just a one thing that's scratchy. It's a series of things that escalate. It's a very well-written itchy and scratchy cartoon, I will say.

Yeah. If I could have one nitpick about it, it would be that the one line of dialogue of itchy saying, come on in for the... I was like, well, that's not needed. It could easily be indicated without dialogue. That was a little odd. But, I mean, ultimately, there's a lot of stuff happening in this cartoon. and ultimately is it long con by Itchy to bury Scratchy

with a stick of dynamite in his body, so it will blow up his entire family and bury them in a masquerade at the end. It shows that Itchy is more about, like, hurting innocence beyond just Scratchy at this point. Yes, yeah. And weirdly enough, so I was watching this on the original DVDs, and often if you hit pause,

it'll bring up a deleted scene or a still image of something. And I hit pause during this just to take notes, and it brought up images of Russ Cargill from the Simpsons movie. I don't know why. I guess it's to show you that Albert Brooks also played him, but he's not even been introduced in this episode yet, so it's very odd. Wow, that is strange. That's almost up there with the strangeness of seeing pictures of Matt Selman in his costume, quote unquote, Juverine.

Yes. Yes. That's his name for it, guys. I'm just quoting him. You know, I think you're right, Bob. Yeah, there was a marked decrease in itchy and scratchies after Kenny started getting killed very graphically in South Parks, I think. Yeah, yeah.

And we're like in season nine of South Park by this point. So we're used to seeing children being murdered on TV. And even South Park dropped that pretty early on. Yeah, I think definitely by this point. No, they would have just brought back Kenny because we talked to the PSP and PSVita. We've talked about how the PSP episode, I believe, was the one where they killed off Kenny for the last time for a little while in the Terry Schiavo episode. But then they brought him back and just didn't kill him anymore after that. Yeah.

I guess they would like every once in a while. I'll kill him or reference that part of the show's history. But South Park started off with a really regular formula that you can see reflected in the movie where it's like, okay, chef is going to sing a song in every episode, and also Kenny will die in a new way in every episode. And I think they got kind of tired of that pretty early on. And not that I'm a regular South Park viewer, though I check in every now and then, but I do know a decade ago in the Mysterion superhero stuff that was also part of the second video game,

that key to that is Kenny's cycle of death and rebirth. Yes, they bring it in when they need it for a story, I think, yeah. Bart has a great laugh at this without realizing he is part of the joke. Bart, how can you laugh at that? You just had a heart attack. Yeah, but what does not kill me makes me stronger. Wow, that was a lot of words. I need some energy.

Hey, hey, kids. Heart disease can strike anyone, including heavy drinking, chain-smoking clowns. That's why I had the doctor install a zipper. Oh, whoop, oh, whoop, uh, huh? A zipper stuck! Oh, I should have gone with a button fly. And referencing Ancient Simpsons history, season one, that Krusty has a pacemaker.

Right. And bringing back to the zipper club line from Triple Bypass, too. Yeah. I think they're referencing Jerry Lewis, who referred to his own pacemaker in that way. Yeah, yeah. I also think Krusty's bleeding is almost more or as much blood as appears in itchy and scratchy.

Like, he bleeds a lot. Yes, this is a lot of blood for a non-inchy and scratchy kind of scenario. It was his fault for playing around with the, uh, whoop, like the slide whistle gag with Mel. I'm surprised he didn't normally he would blame Mel in these situations, but he only blames himself here. Also, yes, also a joke from triple bypass is whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger. And that not being sure.

Oh, you're as weak as a kitten. Yeah. Nancy is very funny as Fat Bart in this episode too, I think. The way, which goes, oh, that was a lot of words. Was really funny. Yeah. I'm enjoying these hefty Bart deliveries. And Marge is bringing home some heart-smart food for Little Bart in this next scene.

And Bart has never seen cottage cheese. So he asks like, what is Cade Hay cheese? And she hands him a big piece of cauliflower, which he takes a bite out of, which he learns he is allergic to, which it is a food allergy that's real, at least according to, like, my minimum amount of research. Though cauliflower, rice cauliflower is part of my regular diet now. I eat a lot more veggies than I used to. I'm a big fan of just a bed of riced cauliflower with other things mixed in, like peas and carrots and other steamed things. Actually, I try to have no corn in that. It's like peas and carrots and broccoli, that kind of thing.

Okay, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm a veggie fan, obviously, because I don't eat meat. But also cottage cheese is a part of my diet pretty regularly now that I'm an old man. I've come to really enjoy cottage cheese. You don't think, like, Bart thinks that somebody already digested it. No, no. It's just like a little extra protein to add to, like, a small lunch I'll have. I have, like, very boring meals during.

the week we have weekend fun where I can eat pizza and drink beer and stuff. No, that's why you take the fun pictures of food like pizza or the beer when it's the fun times, when it's the sometimes food. No rules weekends. I mean, also it feels like this does feel like dieting comedy writers saying like, you want to me to have cauliflower, but I was allergic to it. See, I should just eat in garbage. A great Marge lame line. It's graffiti you can eat. Yes.

Was this your nightmare, Henry, being given a vegetable plate? At Mards age very much so, yes. yeah. I mean, like, yes, I've had through, I believe my palate has grown up a little bit in the years since then, but I did just have like, the taste of a vegetable in my mouth

usually just tasted wrong, like to me. It just wasn't, like, I guess I would have said the word yucky then, but it was just like, I had a real sensory response to it that was certainly extreme and probably ate it more. I'd have gotten used to it, but yes, I just did not

like vegetables then. Do you think it's also because of the chemical sludge that we were all fed, where you're like, oh, I want the sludge. Oh, well, sure, yes. I knew I loved the taste of the sludge and sludge that tasted a certain way. Yes. Yeah, weirdly enough, like, I loved vegetables as a kid because I would mostly just, my mom would be cutting up vegetables like moms do. I would get like a handful of vegetables and eat them. Weirdly enough, I did not like salad until I was like 18. I thought like, oh, I don't want to mix them all up.

I just want to eat them on their own. So I had my own issues that were very strange and inexplicable. Now, if I go out to a place, you know, when I was a kid, if we went, went out to a nice place that, you know, had a salad course. I would just not touch it. And I'd feel a certain amount of shame of it. Like, now if I go in that situation now as an adult, I just eat to the salad. Like, it's not a problem.

Usually I will ask for like little dressing or specifically like not a heavy dressing. I don't like a heavy dressing. Even though that's the unhealthy thing I could pick. Yes. And I think we've moved beyond that as a society. I mean, there is still ranch. But I feel like everywhere you go, there are healthy dressing options. Like whenever I ate salad, the salad dressing I use is like 30.

calories per tablespoon and I don't even use that much. So it's pretty easy to find healthy salad dressing just to gussy it up a bit. I definitely feel for Bart here when he's trying to diet and now social media, especially Instagram, it can make it look like all your friends are going to a milkshake festival when you're trying to eat healthy. Oh, sorry about all the milkshake festival picks, Henry. No, no, no. I am going to pickle fest a few days. So you'll see lots of pictures of pickles. Hey, I've done it too. You've mentioned and I actually saw this as a, hey, remember two years ago in my feed thing, but like, part of when I go on theme park vacations is when my husband and I splurge on like desserts and stuff. I want to have

like every churro flavor at Disneyland or whatever. And so then a lot of my photos are me just eating snacks at Disneyland. Like those are my Disneyland memories. You know, I would recommend if you don't want to make yourself look guilty, you can just take a picture of the food without you holding it. That's true. Yeah, usually food in hand mid-bite, I think, in half of the pictures. Yes, I think people like just pictures of the food itself, and they'll believe that you were there. That I'm not stealing those photos from somebody else.

I remember there was one picture, because you're bringing it up, I don't mention this, there's one picture of you. I forget where it is Disney World, but I think there are six desserts around you. I want to say that was when we went to the Beauty and the Beast-themed restaurant at Disney World. And, yes, they had multiple, at least four, it might have been. yes, that my husband and I both wanted to try. So yes, that was on my birthday. You're a birthday boy.

That's not a get out of jail free card for garbage. There are fewer rules on your birthday than there are on weekends even. But I would say in a situation like that, you don't want to be anywhere in that frame. That's true. I'll take this to heart. And my heart's full of malted milk balls. I'll take it to that. We'll believe you were there.

Okay, I'll remember that. I'm sure I'll be in a theme park within the next year. So I can put it into practice. Hey, you're going to be in Vegas in two weeks. That's true. That's a city that's a theme park. That's true and it's all food stuff. I suggested this to the doughboys and I think they've thought of it before anyway, but like that,

they could literally, I joked with them about how, you know how Joe Rogan wants to like set up his own podcasting industry in Austin, Texas? They could move to Las Vegas. Doe Boys could because every chain restaurant that's in America has a thing in Vegas. So they could just only review those all year long. What a life. What a short life. I at least told him, hey, you guys just rent an Airbnb for a month in Vegas

and just eat the garbage for a month. That's your whole year of podcasts, of the eating podcast. And then we'll bury them, unfortunately. It's really my plan to get rid of them so we can get all their subscribers. That's the real plan. Are we even in the same market? I'm sure we have Doe Boys listeners out there.

Sure. Don't tell Nick and Mitch our plan. So, yes, Bart witnesses the milkshake festival where free milkshakes for 10-year-old boys is part of the offer there too. Was it drink your own weight in milkshakes and win a milkshake? And I love the milkshakes, but I do not have them. I have not had one in the longest time because even I have something in the ice cream family, like milkshakes are like one of the worst metrics. Like it's just so many calories in a milkshake.

Even compared to like two scoops of ice cream, it's so much in a milkshake. Yeah, yeah, I don't go to milkshakes. Very rarely will I get a milkshake. I think we went to a speakeasy in Milwaukee, I don't know, 2024, 2023, and they specialize in boozy milkshakes. And that's like the last time I've had one. But generally in terms of like sweet dairy-based or just sweet treats, Vancouver has a ton of gelato places, a ton of great ice cream places. And like throughout the summer, every weekend I'll get a scoop of something somewhere. You know, it's hard to get a gelato without saying it in the Homer way.

Gelato. The most indulgent milkshake I have ever had. And this was, I feel like the last time I had it would have been like. five, six years ago, at the Portillo's chain, the Chicago beef and cheddar chain, Italian beef sandwich chain. They sell a milkshake that is, okay, already huge chocolate milkshake. Then, mixed into it, a giant slice of chocolate cake. It is the chocolate cake milkshake.

Yes. The one I had is a speakeasy called Don's TV and Repair. Obviously named to be something else you go inside or you go to the secret speakeasy underneath. They were all Nintendo themed milkshakes, basically, video game themed milkshakes. They might have changed the names of some of them thanks to like potential lawsuits. Oh, no, there they are. So I believe I had the Yoshi's Cookie, which is a milkshake with an ice cream sandwich just as a garnish. Wow.

Oh, that's fun. That's fun. I went to the Alamo draft house while I was in San Francisco last month. And I was tempted by a boozy milkshake. But when I saw the calorie listings next to it, even though I was on like birthday cheat week. There I was like, no, I really, I can't do this. Yes. I totally understand. And then after I got back from that trip, I thought, I have to start eating better. And a motivation from my wife, too, like, I have to start making better choices. This is when I was taking a lot more trips and having

a lot more fun meals. And then Bart does another thing that I think is well observed of people who are on diets, probably Simpsons writers who have been on diets, which is, you know, you tell your loved ones, oh, yeah, I'm eating better. And then you've hidden snacks. everywhere for your garbage. I'm going to call myself out here, potentially problematic, but I loved the show my 600 pound life. I've no longer have access to it, but I thought it was fascinating. Maybe it's a bit exploitative.

I don't know. People are getting help. It does reveal how addictive food can be in ways I was never aware of. So I respect it for that, but I see these kind of behaviors on that show. Like you're hiding food. I found out that basically food delivery apps have made significant damage to our society. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

It's basically like, sort of like gambling apps. It's like, okay, if you want to gamble, you have to go to the sad room full of smoke and other sad people. Or like, if you want to get the disgusting food, you have to go out in public and say, I'll have the most disgusting food, please. And everyone in the restaurant will look at you. Yep. But now it's just like, leave it outside the door. You at least had to get your butt in a car. You could do a pizza delivery order, but you'd had to get your butt in a car to go to get the new fatty fat meal at McDonald's.

Yes. The fatty fat meal. Yeah. And I mean, there's a problem if we were like two critical. of ourselves, but I feel like there is a value in some shame. Yeah, I haven't seen those shows. I've lived them. But no, it can be very hard. It still is something like, you know, I've heard from people who are on GLP's like OZMPIC, OZMP style drugs, to not use a branded term, it's GLPs. Those apparently do help with the food noise. And that is like,

even when I have been at my like, healthiest and lowest weight, it can take a lot of willpower to just, or you just have to break your patterns. This is just personal experience I'm talking about here of like, you need to forget that you used to like, well, I'm just sitting here. I may as well eat garbage while I'm sitting still. I can eat trash. It just becomes like a reflex.

Yes. And I'm sure the Simpsons writers have talked about this a lot themselves too. Yes. Yeah, like Bill Oakley said that he gained like 70 pounds or something working on the Simpsons. And he immediately lost it when he left. Same with Mike Reese. He said he was so unhealthy. And I think Jeff Martin,

One of the many oral history he's done. He said that he remembered his time working on seasons two through four as watching all of his friends get fatter. Yes. And it's, I mean, Mike Reese is now a slender man, let's say. I see him all the time in those rugby shirts. He's looking very svelte. The caricature of him on the show is of a fat man.

That must drive him crazy. And it's like, you already, when he was thin, he was being told my friends like, oh, you're the basis for Mo, right? Then when they draw him in the show, they're like, oh, you're fat. And same too with like, isn't also Marty? Sherman is supposed to look like him too.

Yes, yes. I think that's Mike Reese post-weight gain as a little boy. And again, I feel for them it's hard. It's a struggle. Stick with it. And don't beat yourself up as much if you fall. Don't then let it just be an excuse to keep falling. That's another thing I would tell you to.

Like, it's every day is a new day. You start back over. But this is where the Simpsons decides it's time to parody Shots Shank Redemption. Yes, which had they done before? I don't think so. I don't think they did what? It's Rita Hayworth in the, movie? Yes, yes. The second Bart pulls back that pinup, I was like, is this a parody? And then the

rain falls, the candy falls like rain. I'm like, oh, it's Shawshank Redemption. Got it. Yeah. Once I see a thing is behind a poster, I'm like, oh, it's a Shawshank Redemption thing, like, which I saw before, I saw the parodies before I saw the movie on, like, T&T in the afternoon. I did see, I don't think I put this in any comments we read back, but I think people did say the some listeners mentioned that they thought the warding in the seven beer snitch was supposed to look a little like the Warden Clancy Brown

plays in Shawshank Redemption I think. Interesting, okay. They might have been just on a general Shawshank Redemption like indulgence at that time. And then Lisa is worried and when she turns to Homer, this is like the first time they hit on the idea of like

well, Bart's just being like Homer in this case here too. Like Homer is the bad actor. He's learning these poor eating habits from Homer who's like in the bed with all of the milkshakes and he's like, get a picture of me with the milkshakes, Lisa. It's good animation of him trying carefully to pull the milkshakes towards him

without spilling in the bed too. Lisa thinks, oh, maybe mom's the way to go on this. And then when Bart arrives at home the next day, there are a lot of cars parked outside. I distinctly saw Patty and Selma's Jeep with the license plate manhater, but no line from them in this scene. Well, that's good.

Yes, Bob, I'm glad you say that. There is a deleted scene of them in here, actually. Hey, I gave you the perfect setup, didn't I? Yes, so yes. Let's hear the original version first as Bart dumps his rappers very obviously in a bush, and then heads inside for a surprise. Intervention! What the family?

Son, we're here to help with your... Which dicta-diddly diction are we going after here? Overeating. And if there's time, we'll get to my drinking. But there won't be time. I'm telling you, Bart, one vice-lead. to another, and then you wind up like me. So, jaded, the only thing that gets you off

is free-basing ground-up moon rocks. All this does is get me to normal. Ugh. Thank you, Krusty. Once again, you've delivered an important message wrapped in entertainment, and I'm so touched that all of you would take the time to eat my shorts, lamos!

Oh! Professionally trained child Snatchers, who are taking you to do. to a maximum security fact camp. In a classic men in white are coming to get you kind of scenario. It's a funny term on its own, but hearing Mark say, professionally trained child snatchers. Yes. Great.

And back, I believe the episode is the weed episode weekend at Bernsies. In that episode, Homer, they were not allowed to show Homer actually like puffing on the joint, like the actual process here. There's a close up of Krusty essentially smoking crack. Yes. Yeah. He shows you exactly how to light it up in one of the glass. tubes and smoke it, but it's moon rocks. I guess since it's fake, he gets to get away with it. Yeah, I guess so. I do love like, all this does is give me to normal.

Yeah, it's a very dark, Krusty joke, but what I remember from this episode. The only thing I've remembered from this episode was actually the very ending. I was surprised when this is filled with good stuff. And I'm glad to see that Krusty has recovered from his zipper problems, too, to be able to come here. Yeah, and now we're in Albert Books Town. And there's a lot of impressions. of him on this commentary by Dana Gould. Also, he does the great Albert Brooks, but everybody's doing a Tom Gamble. Yes, yes.

They see how he's scum. I love the mocking of Tom Gamble. I love Dana Gould's perfect. Albert Brooks, too. It actually did fool me from his first line. His second line, I knew it wasn't him, but it actually did fool me. Yes. It's good.

It's good. And this is Albert Brooks returned to the show ever since you only move twice, correct? Yes, yeah. He's been off the show for almost a decade at this point. Yeah. And there's a story in the commentary. I forget who says it, but they're not especially clear, but it might have been when he was recording this episode

that they told him about the movie, and Albert Brooks said, oh, this is their part in the movie for me yet? Or something like that. And that's how they got him into the movie. Yes, yeah. I remember that too on the commentary. It was interesting to hear that because I came into this thinking,

oh, I bet he was around for the movie, like in the early scripting stages. And they're like, hey, since you're here, let's have you back for an episode again it's been so long since you've been like the guest character in the episode but no it was the other way around like Ian Max Stone Graham just wrote

a character that could be a chance for Brooks to return and then when he's there they're like oh you know you could be the villain of the movie and then he turns into like the main villain of the movie though also they have a story about like how bad a bad production story I think it is

Is this about the movie? Yeah they mentioned how in the movie and we'll talk about it when it gets to it. You better believe it. Sounds like they animated a lot of Russ Cargill to like finished animation and then decided you talk too slow. Let's completely re-record everything with you in an hour and reanimate all of it with a brand new character design.

And yes, you can see Russ Cargill's original design as a Burger King toy. Yes, right. They couldn't change the design in time for that. And that's just one of many, lots of wasted pencil mileage stories. Something tells me Disney is not giving them. that much leeway to basically scrap, I don't know, an hour's worth of animation and work for seven years on this film? Honestly, I hope so because I think that kind of leeway they had with the movie, you not only

tortured the animators on the first movie, but also I think it led to them being less confident stuff. I hope Matt Selman has more confidence in a joke to keep things. I think he does. I mean, we goof around on Al Jean a bit. I respect his contributions to the show, but one of his major problems that I can identify is that he lacks confidence and he really should have confidence, especially if he's a showrunner of a show for that long, but with him not necessarily running the movie or having

as much power as he did, perhaps it will be a better movie that will show confidence, like the confidence that we understand who Millhouse is, for example. For just one example. Yes. Oh, you know what? The deleted scene, the deleted scene for the intervention. Yeah, it's crazy. They only have Krusty, say the intervention line.

There's tons of people there. You do an intervention scene in a comedy to have multiple characters say funny things. I have to think they made these cuts. to make space for Albert Brooks later. But yes, there's two other really funny lines in it as they first turn to Abe and then Patty and Selma to make their own pleas to Bart. This time will get to my drinking, but there won't be time.

Son, you've got to shape up. Don't you want to live to be as old as me? Hell no. Boy, makes a good point. Take it from us, Bart. You got to keep your weight under control. Yeah, that's why we smoke. It's the only thing that's.

keeps us in people clothes. I like the idea of people clothes. That's great. Yeah, I guess when you get Albert Books in, as we all know, and they say on the commentary, he takes the script as a suggestion and goes off in his own direction with his own material. In this case, though, he was not recording live with another actor like Dan or Julie. He was being recorded in his house. They have an improv-y style scene at the end, but it was not recorded with another actor. I love the line of Patty and Selma saying, that's why keeps us in people close.

People close. So good. And also the name's like, you know what, I wish I was dead too. It's a good idea. Hey, you know what? Cigarettes are bad for you, but if you have a zero-calorie addiction like coffee, it really suppresses the appetite. Bob held up his coffee cup there. I held up my coffee mug. That's great.

Oh, and you know what? There's a funny drawing of Bart stuck between fence posts, too. I do like that as he's carted away. So, yes, we head to see our guest star of the episode. And this is, I was like, wow, this is a long third act. It has to be because Albert Brooks takes up so much space. Yeah, he took over. The third act is about half the show.

Mr. Mrs. Simpson, I'm facility director, Tab Spangler. United States Marine Corps retired, but not tired. Guess how old I am? Come on, take a guess. 47? I hate when they're over. Even on the nose hurts. Wow, he's just a kind of weirdo Bart needs.

Mr. Mrs. Simpson, your boy's going to need one. one thing. Tough luck. Don't you mean tough love? Tough love. Of course. This has never made sense. The sign shop guy lied. Stanley, you didn't question the word luck. Now look what we got. Thanks for the correction. That's part of the honesty.

Sir and I just want to leave you with a piece of advice. Become emotionally dead. Leave your body. Make lots of friends. Wake up, baddies. Stop dreaming about butter. Dream calories. are real calories. He is a fun, different from his previous characters to a degree of like this is a fitness addicted older man.

Yes. And I mean, I don't like where this goes. I want to stay at the fat camp, honestly. I think we're missing a lot of material here. But one thing that should have happened is Marge saying, well, Mr. Spangler, how much does this cost? Yes. I'll tell you later, Marge. It's kind of a scam on them there, I think.

I just don't like the idea that now the problem is, oh, the Simpsons. can't afford the fat camp. I know it's a cartoon and it's very silly, but you would have negotiated this first, and that's why where this goes feels very contrived to me. And also I feel like Bart at Fat Camp with Kent Brockman and Apu is going to be much funnier than a bunch of jokes about how European tourists are snotty. Yeah, they need an act three complication that happens all the time at this era.

And in this case, they were like, well, something needs to change Bart's mind that's so extreme. And then I think they're boxed into a corner of like, well, then let's go back to the family has to make sacrifices, like in Dog of Death. And then what makes them do that? Then they find a way to like German hostels. And it's just there's so many steps that like I think the Simpsons House becoming a hostel. That can just be in a B plot in a real episode that doesn't need space for Albert Brooks. It's coming in way too late. When it pops up, I was like, wait, what?

This is the hostel? I don't remember that at all. I thought it would be a one-off joke, but that's like, oh, we keep coming back to this. And we have a very long scene with Homer singing, too. Yes, yeah. Two verses. I felt that at times, too, when I wasn't enjoying exercise. Now, again, exercise has become a daily normal thing for me, but that become emotionally dead, leave your body.

Like, on the treadmill, I've thought that sometimes. I'm watching one piece, so I'm distracted from how much I'm sweating and why my heart rate is up to, like, 173. Ooh, boy, man, yeah. 155 is usually my highest heart rate I get to on the thing. Though, yes, this is where we see that Apu, Rainier Wolfcastle, and Kent Brockman are there. Now, they've done fat Rainier Wolfcastle ones before

that we're usually about... Right. Them reacting to, like, you know, tabloid news stories of Arnold Schwarzenegger is a fat guy now, things, I think. He's researching a role I'm playing a fat secret agent. Yes, because I think Stallone gained a lot of weight to play somebody in Copland. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think of Christian Bale is like, he's gotten fat for several movies. Yeah, playing Dick Cheney, right? Yeah, man, yeah, he got fat for Dick Cheney. And before that, he got fat in American Hustle. And then, as well, he was rail thin in two movies, the machinist, and was it the fighter, the boxing one that got the Oscars, I think.

That sounds right. I know the machinist. Yeah, the machinist. That one I've seen. I think his diet was one apple a day, literally. Like, that was what his diet was. And it was actually incredibly dangerous for him when he got that skinny because he had to immediately film Batman begins and put on, like, superhero weight.

And your body shouldn't do that. It shouldn't go in that extreme direction in three months. I assume that Apu is fat because of stress at home, but they have no explanation. Yes, he's. Upu is not allowed to time. talk in this scene. So Apu is always around. We just never get a third joke because there's no time. And they all get chained up to the chubby chaser, which does have a joke for Kent Brockman, as he's whipped, he's eating kettle corn in between news stories, apparently.

Yeah, because Albert Books are like, I'll gently whip you and you tell me why you got fat. And then that's his excuse. Bart is being whipped and it's legal enough, as he learns here. This is where the second deleted scene is, what for another different good line. of Albert Brooks here. You state your name and tell me how you got so heavy. We were going to go with the standard treadmill, but that was three grand. The chariot was free.

Well, I think it was free. It was outside someone's house. Good line. Yes, for some reason, there was a chubby chaser chariot outside someone's house. Or maybe it was customized to be the chubby chaser. We won't know, ever. You know what? I like to imagine that it was at somebody's house who has it for,

he's a chubby chaser in a positive way, in the sexual term of the chubby chaser, I'm going to say. I feel like in the Kink communities now, there's probably a nicer term for that than Chubby Chaser, I would think. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's because it's very cutesy. Maybe it's stuck around. You know, I did watch, you mentioned the 600-pound life. I did watch one like MTV one-off special about three overweight people in their 20s, like I should say morbidly obese people in their 20s.

And the most interesting one in it to me was a gentleman who was at least 500, probably even 600, huge guy. But his problem wasn't loneliness. It was that he was in a gay, chubby chaser community, and he was getting all of the affection he could watch, but he was worried of like, this is great for my sex life, but this is not good for me, but will I lose all of the guys who are interested in me

if I lost all this weight? So he was running into a lot of feeders? Yes, yeah. They showed him of like going to, you know, clubs and even like conventions or big get-togethers, and he was a very popular guy at that. And it was just, it was interesting for me as he came in with my own weight struggles to see like, oh, this guy's problem is not loneliness, but like, oh, I'm getting too much sex here.

This is weird. Well, in all of my 600-pound life watching, I watched a ton of it over the pandemic because I think Hulu had it all. I noticed my wife has noticed too that in a lot of these relationships, there is like the weird skinny partner who holds on the power because they can actually leave the house. Like a lot of it just feel like abuse where it's like they're the enabler who feeds the other person. Oh man, that's rough. That didn't seem to be in this one TV show specific case that I saw. That wasn't that problem. That's what really starts showing up in a lot of those reality shows is you actually see like the horrible relationship dynamics that make a thing happen,

how somebody has a weird addiction or huge weight issues. Yeah, and a lot of these couples, I mean, just based on the logistics of being that large, a lot of these couples have not had sex yet. And that's their big plan for when the weight finally comes off. Like, we're finally going to have sex. Whoa, wow. man, boy, you can do like, you can't do everything if you're a 600-pound person, but you can do some things. Sure, sure.

I mean, but I think there's like safety issues at a certain point. Oh, sure. Like heart problems can pop up. And also, I imagine that like, you've got to search for that thing after a while. Once certain folds and lumps start flowing over the crotch area. Yes, yeah. Not to be distasteful. No matter your equipment, I would think there's probably some searching that has to happen in that case.

Yes. Yeah. Hey, anyway, we were talking about that surprising B-story story here. Yes, what is the family to do while Bart is at Fat Camp? Jim and Kimmel, look how much they're charging for Bart's treatment. That free-loading Fatso? Marge, could you cut back on your makeup budget? I already use crayons for lipstick and fireplace soot for eyeliner.

So that's where my soot went. This Fat Camp can save Bart's life. We have to find a way to pay for it. Maybe you could ask Mr. Burns for a raise. Even better. I'll ask him for my job back. I know how we can raise money. Youth, I hate them.

Secondly, how much is costed for stay night of one? How much it's got, Wolfgang Schmuck? Let's see here. I can offer you $50 a week. $50? What about all the water you guys will waste with your bathing and showering and washing your clothes? Yeah, we don't...

It's not a problem. Smelly Germans, these jerky, smelly Germans. Surprise they're not French, but this all goes back to the story Al Jean tells on a commentary, which I believe inspired this act where Al Jean, possibly at Harvard. It seems like it was a story from his past where he ran into a German exchange student who just did nothing but complain about America and the president, probably during the Reagan administration. And Al Jean's big comeback is, well, you guys had Hitler, so you don't really have a leg to stand on in this argument. I think that's a little disingenuous, Al Jean. Come on.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, hey, it's an easy argument winner against a German. sure, but, you know, even back then it was like, well, okay, that was 50 years ago. What are you guys doing right now in the 80s or 90s? And now we really, I mean, though I guess what, at the time this is recording, like a far right group in Germany is rising up again, I think. Sure, it's happening all over the place. But also, 2005 is not the best time to say, these snotty Europeans, I think they know so

much better than us. I think this was, we've been reminded a lot of the freedom fries at the time of this recording. But yeah, we're recording this on 9-11, by the way. Happy birthday at 9-11, 25 years of smiles and tears. And 21 years ago, like, yes, you're in no place. When they have the scene later, the German complaining about America, you really have no leg to stand on there. I'm just like, guys, I'm sorry, we are so lame, we deserve it all,

and then some of just critiques, we deserve it. Yes, give us hell, Germany. I also love that Marge uses crayons and soot for makeup and husband. Homer's just like, so that's where my soot went. Like, he's mad about that. Yes. Marge living a very pathetic life with her improvised makeup. And Marge's exclamation of Jiminy Kimmel, it reminded me that that Jimmy Kimmel Live had been on

for two years almost at that point. I forgot that it's that old of a show now. You know, I never really like the show or the guy. Maybe I just associate him with the man show too much, but I respect him for being, like, I guess, a little stinker, especially in the face of conservatives and repulsions. Republicans and the president, but I never really thought he had the charisma to run a talk show, but the joke's on me. It's been happening for 25 years. And who knows, by the time this episode comes out, he might have been executed alive on television by President Trump, but. That's true.

Hey, I'll take him over Jimmy Fallon any day. Isn't it going to be sad if Jimmy Fallon is the last one standing out of them? It's going to be real sad. I'm stealing this from our pal, Will Sloan. I heard him say this on the Michael's podcast, but it's like, these are not even that cutting of things. Jimmy Kimmel's jokes are the just the standard ones you would expect, or at least in our circles of like, yeah, here's the reasons Trump is bad. He's a giant evil pedophile. Like, these are the easy jokes to make. But then you do have to say, like, boy, it's really shitty that these easy jokes are the ones that actually are literally being censored by the government right now. That's insane. It's the kind of jokes that you roll your eyes at if you saw it on social media,

like, oh, some boomer posted this. But yeah, there are now serious repercussions. And even though the South Park guys are currently doing their own kind of boomer style posting through it when it comes to Paramount and Skydance. I'm like, well, hey, they're right though. Yes. They're still right. Even if naming the show South America is pretty cringy to me, I'm like, well, you're annoying somebody with this. And God bless you for not being a stinker in the bad sense. Yes, yeah.

And that you get to see that it does actually hurt his feelings. Like, it actually does piss off Trump. That's why he literally tells the new owners of CBS to, stop paying Stephen Colbert. I'm very certain that's why Stephen Goldbeer doesn't have a TV show anymore. And again, Stephen Colbert was doing the same like, you know, normal

Democratic voter comedy on the show, which obviously was too much for Donald Trump to do. He was not doing the edgy 90s, early odds comedy that we love him for. He was doing like, oh, this is something I'd see posted on Facebook by an older relative. I mean, he did a lot of like

Putin and Trump gay comedy as well. But yeah, Jimmy Kimmel, I have seen some interviews every now and then. He's not like bad, but yeah, he's better at it than Jimmy Fallon, and he also is definitely ready to bite the hand that feeds much, much more than the servile Jimmy Fallon, for sure. When March did that joke, I was like, wow, why is she doing that joke? He doesn't have a TV show yet.

No, he's two years into, well, he did have TV shows before it, but... Right, right, man show, other things. And this is where there is the third deleted scene, and it's a lengthy one. here that just so for the audio version listeners can know, this involves Homer imagining a peanut, Lucy Peanut style stand where he tells people what time it is in his fantasy, just so you can know what he's imagining in this cutaway here.

So that's where my soot went. If we can't cut back expenses, maybe we can think of a way to increase revenue. Increase revenue, eh? What time is it? Time to give me your own. wallet, jerk! Ah!

March, do we still have that shotgun? I have an idea that doesn't involve shotguns. What kind of gun doesn't involve? This is a terrible idea. First of all, there's no S in hotel. Secondly, how much is it costed for stay ninth of one? Sorry, I also like the last bit there of like the original line was there's no S in hotel, which is a good line too.

You know what? probably more fun to watch animated, but they already had a distracting Homer fantasy scene. So I think the Margebot was the stronger one. With a gun in it too, right? Yes, yes. Also, yeah, another fantasy with a gun.

Another fantasy with a gun. I do like, also in the scene, it is funny when Homer says, what kind of gun does it involve? Lisa has a funny reaction to it too in that silence. But yeah, you can see it's another lengthy fantasy. That was like a 40-second scene.

And again, they want to have all the Albert Brooks they can in this, so they got to get straight to Lisa pounding the hostel sign into the ground there. I feel I've talked about this too much. I've stayed in a hostel once abroad, Bob, have you? You know what? I never did it in my life. And now definitely too old. And also, I have a job that pays very well. Thank you, patrons. So I can stay in a hotel like a big fancy pants. When I last and only stayed in a hostel, I was 32, and I did feel too old for it, to be surrounded by college-aged backpackers, though this was in Kyoto, Japan. It was very nice hostel as far as hostels go, though you definitely were feeling the like

the bunk beds that are set up in here, those I slept on just a two-level bunk bed with a stranger sleeping above me. Though I think because of location, there were some Europeans in there, but the ones I mainly remember were more from like Baltic and Russian or similar areas than Germany or or France there. Yeah. Yeah, I guess my experience with that was basically crashing

on a bunch of people's couches or floors. And also at anime conventions early on, when I went to, like, so many anime conventions in the early odds, and often it'd be a bunch of people and I was completely okay with sleeping on the floor. That was my bit.

Like, I love sleeping on the floor. I cannot imagine doing that now. I should have looked this up. Had the hostile horror film come out at this? I think it was 2003. I know it was like a reaction to the perception of America. No, this is 2005.

Wow, yeah. We are on the brink of more torture porn. Yeah, actually, I went to the January 2006 was its U.S. release in September early 2005 for its festival release. I didn't see any later hostels, but I did to see the first hostel in theaters. This is shocking to me, Henry.

I know, I was. When you're like, sometimes you're like, I don't like scary movies. An older boy brought me to it. No. Oh, I see. That sounds like it was a date. It was not a date. No. Your mom was not there, correct?

My mom was not there. Thank. No. God. Okay. By 2006, I was seeing movies. This was actually like five months before I moved to Berkeley when I would have seen it. It was an interesting film, though, as a political statement about, like, yeah, everybody in Europe fucking hates Americans. And it's about how American tourists are shitty. Though it's also is kind of, it's like a more, slightly more horrifying version of the Pleasure Island a bit from Pinocchio.

It's also that too. Several North American tourists get honey trapped into by sexy ladies into a hostel. And then it turns out they are all just being set up to be drugged and kidnapped and tortured to death by rich Europeans who want to hurt Americans. Right, right. It sounds like I would dig the intent there. I don't like that style of horror very much. It had all right politics for the time, at least in the international sense. Now, would you believe, Bob, that Eli Roy.

Roth directed film produced by Quentin Tarantino has some violence against women issues in it. Shocking news. And, you know, he's ended up in a very dark place. And that is making a remake of the Ice Cream Man, horror movie from the 90s. With AI. Yep, with AI. Yep. Yeah. And meanwhile, I think most of Quintan Tarantino's film planning these days takes place from his home in Tel Aviv, I think, right now. So, yeah. Hey, he's got something in common with Tarantino all these years later. Yep. I do remember a good scene in that hostile movie where one character, is able to get an edge on his captors because it counts on the Americans not knowing how to speak German, but this guy actually did learn his second language. And when he begs for his life in German, it actually pisses off the guy torturing him because he's like, oh, I can understand what he's saying.

I don't want to hear that. I didn't pay for this. And it stops his torture for a time. So if you're going to another country, learn how to beg for your life in that language at least. No head to ask for the bathroom or where the hotel is and also please don't kill me. Order beer, please don't cut off my fingers. Which happens in that scene too. Again, in my memory, it's a fine movie for its time. If you're doing a podcast about films that typify the aughts like Michael and us, Hostel isn't a bad one to cover, but obviously you don't got to hand it to Eli Roth these days, I don't think.

But okay, so Hostels, yes. This is where we then go back to, oh yes, there was also Fannie Pack comedy with which you're mocking the Germans wear their fanny packs. Sorry, fanny pack's good. I'm a pro of fanny pack. Now, Henry, when you go to Disneyland, you have like five fanny packs on like, all like bandoliers around your body.

Well, I will admit that it's not just about a, I think it looks cooler, or it's not as infantilizing to wear the fanny pack across your waist. But I do like the cross-body way of wearing the pack, like where it's across your chest or back. Okay.

That is a fun way to wear a fanny pack. I have essentially a male purse. I strap across my back, and I've had it for a very long time, and it's great. Oh, yeah, no, those purses are, hey, ladies know what it's up with those purses. It's very useful to just have a bag with you. I'm glad we mentioned the mail purse, because now I have the freedom of carrying at least three kinds of mints on me at all times. I think I've noticed that some people I've heard males have just used, they just say purse now even.

They don't even like put the qualifier on anymore. Yeah, I mean, we've come a long way, and I think I've told this story before on a podcast, but I've told every story before on a podcast. That's why you're here. I remember I got a messenger bag. In this year of 2005, I brought it to school, college, in this case. I was an adult man. And a friend who was usually very nice to me said, hey, nice Efsler bag.

And the Efsler rhymes with bag. So that's where we were in 2005. A messenger bag was too feminine. Yeah. It's crazy. When you see things set back 20 years ago and they don't have men calling each other, quote unquote, fag. Like, it's not, and I can say that.

but that it's not accurate to the time. That's what American males said too often back then, unfortunately. By the way, this is a woman who said this to me. Oh, damn, man. That's how deep that slur got into our language. So they decide they're going to do a hostel for specifically only German that's in there. Maybe they also realized, too, making fun of the French, it's like, ah, this is happening too much. Like literally they were feeling the pain, Alginon specific, of inventing the term cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

Maybe that's why he's like, let's do the Germans. not the French. Yeah, I feel like the French too easy of a target and also the Simpsons. A different intent was being given to that joke that was never there in the first place.

Then we cut back to the Fat Camp where Bart is not present but the adults there are going through the mental process of from Tab of shovel ice cream into a garbage can as a way to say you don't need this.

And what's the vanilla saying? No, I'm not that old. He's obsessed with his age too. And hey, these are some corny jokes with Rainier Wolfcastle, but I like how in the era of the governor in 2005, we are calling back to the original idea behind Rainier Wolfcastle as a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the early 90s. And what is he do in his movies? He has a lot of catchphrases. In his movies, by the end of the 90s, he wasn't doing the catchphrases as much. So if this was

1999 and they did this is like, ah, this is like a throwback to 80s jokes. But when he became the governor, part of his political speeches was often still using catchphrases again. Yeah, and we loved it. And this is around the same time where the Simpsons movie also decided, well, the audiences won't know who Rainier Wolfcastle is. It's got to just be Schwarzenegger. Yeah, that's a fact that I bury, and every time I remember it, I think, God damn it. I always forget Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man, is a pivotal character in the Simpsons movie.

He has become the president in it. Like, that's a main plot point of the film. And they just added bags under the eyes to the Rainier Wolfcastle design. Like, I hate that move so much. movie. Hey, in two years, we'll be complaining about that for eight hours. Yeah, yeah, and you have to pay for it. Yep. There's no other way about it. Meanwhile, Bart's not there because he is drilling a hole in the floor to suck the vanilla ice cream out of the garbage can bottom. Like, Bart's at a real low point here as a fan. And this is a tab like kicks away the chair, right? Yes, Bart does get pretty

hurt by this, but I like that he says the line, like, he tells a story about a boy who failed. It's like, I shouldn't have called a sentence of story. Anyway, the boy is you. Yes. That is good. And this is all leading to the guilt trip that tab is laying on Bart. A great expense to him, by the way. Yes.

I guess that is, you know what? The parents are wondering, where's the money come from. It's like, this is where the money comes in. Like, he's doing a lot of focused only on Bart stuff here. It's going in a different direction because now the point of the show is look at what the sacrifices your family have to make because you're big fatty. That is not normally the case when someone is overeating or has like addiction to food. They're not inflicting like financial ruin on their family because bad food is very cheap. So it's weird that it's going in this direction.

I wish it would have stayed with Bart perhaps learning a lesson about eating or having like sort of an anti-moral where Bart learns nothing and just is able to like fool his parents in a certain kind of way. And here Bart or he gets a new addiction that's not food related like an alcoholic who becomes addicted to gambling for instance. Or a Barney who becomes addicted to coffee brief after he kicks booze for a bit. But yes, Bart, after a long silent drive out of. of the need for drama, Bart is dropped off at the front of his house. Very shocking revelation. German backpackers. You see, son, every family has to make extra income when they send a child like you to a place like mine.

You're lucky this is just a youth hostel. We had one family who had to take in dry cleaning. The chemicals kill their dog. Well, that's what they told us in the lawsuit. I don't see a dog living past 14 anyway, do you? Hmm. They can't see or hear of. right?

We're not the ghost of Christmas past, Bart. They could see us. If I were invisible, you think I'd waste my time with this belt shirt combination? Excuse me, we're looking for Mr. Mrs. Simpson. I'm sorry to say, this is their son. Oh, so he's the strudelsucking Globenheimer who has bankrupted them with his expensive treatments.

Strudel sucking Globenheimer. You need to think about that. That's what the human race thinks of you. Ah! Problem number 35 with America? No universal health. Health care. Number 36, no metric system. What is this? The time of Charlemagne? Answer me. Answer me now. Oh, my God. Come on. Let's look for your dad. And if we have some time, maybe we'll look for mine.

Those are all great lines, and I'm going to give them to Albert Brooks. And I do like the character recognizing the very bizarre insults that an American put in a German character's mouth. And he goes, you need to think about that. Yes. Let it not be said that Albert Brooks isn't a very funny guy who thinks of funny. Like, he saw, that in the script and he's like, you know, a tab should comment on that that that's a weird thing to say. Yeah, and in St. Stringle-Sucking Globentheimer. Whatever. It's very funny when he says it. I like that this is on the, not just

on A. Brooks, but also the animators, they drew a memorable belt design on him and after he mentions it, when it cuts back to him the next time you see him, the belt is gone to set up him losing the belt.

Oh, okay, okay, interesting. And, yeah, the family has now become basically like scullery maids from like the 1930s. They're dressed apart. This evil German just happens to be right in an annoying way. What an asshole. It's the worst part about being right when you're annoying about it. You can't be right too early about things. You can't call things if you're right too early, like even if you're saying, oh, you don't even have to talk about 9-11 or current days.

You can oppose the Nazis too early in America. and that makes you a communist sympathizer, of course. You're arrested for early Nazi rudeness. And in this case here, too, it's like, I'm glad they at least say it's number 35, because I have to think one through 34 is all about the current military actions America's doing at the time.

Yes. But, I mean, I feel like they're losing the Bart overweight plot of it, and it's all about Albert Brooks, and they're killing a lot of time. There's an inch and scratchy cartoon. There were going to be two extended Homer fantasies, and now it is Homer singing two verses,

of 99 Luftballones. And he knows both verses. TAB is worried for a bit. He at least knows the first two verses. Yes, I did like, hope he knows the second verse. Yeah, I do believe these are accurate German lyrics to the song by Nina from 1983, which there is 84 English version, though I feel like even, I don't know, on oldy stations, at least back when I listened to music more, it felt, and of course 80s music is on

oldy stations now. You'd hear the English version more than the German version, but not. that there's a big difference between them, but I always prefer it hearing the German version. Yeah, yeah. I remember seeing the English version on pop-up video a lot on VH1. Oh, yeah. Like a classic, great, cheesy 80s video. An 83 or 84 music video is so cheap, usually filmed on video, too, like not film.

It warms the heart. Like, recently my wife and I watched a fake Reardale movie. Technically his first movie, it's called The Complete Al, and it is a real mockumentary about his life. but it's really just a way to show you all of the videos he accumulated by 1985. And just like a series of great old weird aisle videos really warm my heart. And then immediately afterwards, we went onto YouTube and watched 80s music videos for like two more hours. Oh, man, that sounds awesome. If I'm thinking of like his cheapest looking videos, I remember the Rocky Road video, I remember it looks very cheap.

That's his first, but it rocks. Like, I really enjoyed watching. What are they going to do with one cheap sets? Yeah. And also the meanness are, I think it is pronounced like your wife's name, but it's. It's spelled N-E-N-A. I think it is said N-N-A, though, not N-N-A. I mean, the song is a fun, it's not just a great song,

it also is full of, you know, meaning back then because they were a West German band singing about the, you know, Cold War death drive to nuclear destruction of the entire planet that was happening back then, too. So it was a fun political song, too, that would make it, like, if you have a film set in the past

during the Cold War in the 80s, you are legally demanded to play that song in the movie. Yeah, and if you don't like politics, just think about the balloons. Aren't they nice? Just listen to the German version and you won't know what it's about. I guess it did teach us that Luftballoons is the German word for just balloons. Homer also drops off the best, worst, to his Bavarian overlords as well. They're throwing money at him.

I will say this is also what they do in Dog of Death is make Homer dance quarters too. Oh, right. At the bar, right? Yeah, yeah, I forget. Oh, it's Buffalo Gals. That's what he says. Oh, yeah, Buffalo Girls, what did you go about? And then he starts crying. Yeah. Yes. Though Homer has to, you know what, they're wasting money unless they brought that Leaderhosen for Homer. He's wasting money on this costume here. It's a bad budget. And so this is where Bart realizes this is all my fault. And he decides he's really, for real,

learned his lesson at the end of this, you know, Ebenezer Scrooge-esque scene he's had. Tab seems to be going to I like the way he says someone I'm assuming it's him looking for his estranged father right I think he's looking for like a partner he says I'm going to get the car wash and try to meet somebody so just to make a friend

to make a romantic connection you know that leads to what I assumed happened when he finds his belt not to get ahead of it his belt is in a bed and I feel like he had sex at some point and took his belt off at the hostel which fortunately I

did not have to witness any. I don't know how free the love is in a hostel that you're sharing with folks. I did not have to see any intercourse happen. That's true. Yeah, I mean, I never did the hostel in Japan or anywhere else, but my last trip I've talked about this before. I did use the onsen, the public bath. So public nudity. Yes. Podcaster caught naked in public with other men. And we weren't making eye contact or we're all pretending we weren't there. Yes. That's what happened. That's good. That's good. Well, I guess you don't want to just look at the floor. You've got to be careful. The question is now, have I been in a room with more naked men than Henry? I can think of a couple.

Henry, I'm lapping you. You got to get going. I'll catch up. I'll get catch up. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. So yes, Bart not only decides he's going to change his ways, but first he is going to do a ton of vandalism. And I think it's Ian Max Stone Graham who says on the commentary that he's sort of referencing the French connection to, which in that one, Popeye Doyle gets addicted to heroin and then burns down the place he gets heroin from in anger.

Nobody remembers French Connection 2. Like, that's not even a Gene Hackman movie, right? He is in it. He is in it. The only reason I know French Connection 2 is I remember watching the Gene Hackman, I believe it was, is inside the actor's studio where there is a detox scene. His character gets addicted to heroin. I know that is the plot because they show a clip of his detox scene in the movie

and he talks about how much work he put into performing it well and all that. So that's all I know about French Connection 2. I see. And I guess the fast food chain Popeyes is named after that character, not the cartoon character, which is very odd because he's an unsavory sort. He uses like slurs in that movie, right? Yes, yeah, he's a racist cop. Yeah, the only times I've heard about French Connection lately has been hearing about the poor decision to cut out slurs, his character says, from the first movie. Oh, right, right.

And before you comment, I just read that this essentially apocryphal, the founder of the chain said this, but apparently there were plans to name it after the original Popeye. But that fell through. So they said, oh, it's another Popeye, the other famous one. Now I guess with Popeye, well, no, he's not yet exactly public domain, but very soon, I think. Then they can just do it without even having to talk to any King features syndicate or whatever, right? Yeah, I'm waiting for the character Castor Oil to come back into public domain. Oh, man. Oh, God, right.

Oh, the entire oil family can start showing up. I can't wait to make my own Eugene the Jeep ones. Now, I know Eugene the Jeep is a little later. I can't wait for that day. When you're 60, you can live out your dream. of making my own Eugene the Jeep content. Okay, so Bart, yes, smashes up all of these machines

and steals a bunch of money from them too. This is a good workout for Bart too. So I think this is kind of what helps him lose all the weight by the next episode. Yes, so it slips off pretty fast. I do like hearing as a line what I believe it's scammer, not Z-Dog, says, I'm going to cap a pop in your ass

as he throws sodas at him. Right. Clever. Clever used to the word pop. It is a Simpson's, writers being out of touch, but I think it's recognizing the executives who created this character are using like mid-90 slang. Yeah, just like in the hip-hop episode this season, they have the good comedy cover of, if this sounds out of date or not like current for 2005, we were doing it

to be funny and out-of-date. Yeah. It's bad on purpose. And so Bart not only destroys all of the machines, but also steals a ton of money for no consequences in the episode two. This is where Bart learns his lesson and makes up with his family in our second to last clip here. Art, what are you doing here? I've learned my lesson. Mr. Spangler showed me the true cost of my junk food addiction. But you're still fat. Not for long.

I'm saying goodbye to Scammer and Z-Dog. I've learned that even made-up corporate shills can lie to you. Did you hear that Foxy, the Fox Network Fox? When I raged against the machine, money poured out. Oh, boy, Marge, I know this is ill-gotten, but Can we use it to... To give these Germans das boot? Yevo.

Uh, please to have new facecloth, Schnell. Time to take out the Euro trash. Oh, no. To Disneyland, we will heap the scorn on Goofy. Apparently, a lot of German tourists at Disneyland, but I guess Algin was a frequenter of Disneyland. Oh, yeah. A bunch of young daughters still does.

They're older now. But I know he wrote scripts in line, at least one of them. Mom and Pop Art was written in line at Disneyland. And I think his youngest daughter was like 22 now or something. She was born during these seasons we're talking about. But, I mean, I've been to Disneyland quite a lot. I don't notice there's certainly international tourists there all over the place. I did notice more when I went to Orlando's Disney World that on the East Coast,

I was seeing more European. I noticed more European tourists there as opposed to on the West Coast, the ones I notice more are, if they are white, they are more often like Australian or Russian perhaps, and then also lots of, from many different Asian countries, many more Asians on the West Coast, which that just makes geographical sense. What's the shorter plane, right? Duh, like, yeah. Though definitely, the thing that bugged me the most of European tourists in Disney World were not,

maybe it's because I could understand them, but I really got tired of walking by British tourists for some reason. It was... Henry's long-standing feud with the Brits. I guess so. It was something about... If I was in a line and an American just said, like, why is his line so long?

That wouldn't bother me if I said, boy, his line's pretty long, isn't it? This line stretches on a bit, doesn't it? How dare you? Maybe also I was bothered because I felt like I knew, oh, these Brits are really here to go to the Harry Potter world

that's in universal art they. I bet that's it. They live in Harry Potter world. Though they can't, that's the thing, I learned that the universal, there's plans for a universal to open up in London or England. I don't think it's London exactly, but they can't do Harry Potter there. Another company owns the rights to Harry Potter. So the Harry Potter stuff can't open up in the new Universal theme park. So if you want to go to turf land, you got to fly to Orlando to go to the turf land.

Unfortunately. Who knows by the time you listen to this, where we'll find out what new actor has been announced to be in the new Harry Potter TV show. and disappoint us all. That was pretty funny to see that the Nicholas Holt actor that he announced it. And then like a month later was like, oh, actually a scheduling problem. If something came up, it was my pending cancellation. Though we already know you took the job, guys.

When is enough money enough for an actor? You can do tons of shit. Just you don't have to do Harry Potter. You can just say no. Yes, they give the Germans Das Boot. You know, when Bart said the thing about mascots, they don't make the joke here, but it's where it hit me. It is kind of ironic that Bart, by this point, since 1988,

has been a person telling kids to eat bad food. Yes, that's true. He was a Butterfinger spokesperson, a spokes boy, shilling for Burger King. I mean, I went to Burger King. I mean, my mom took us there, but I'm sure I was excited to get the little pack-in Simpsons figurines. Oh, yeah, yeah. Still on our shelves here at the condo.

And soon they'll be part of a new, sorry, when I say soon, in the timeline of the Simpsons, by 07, they have a huge Burger King deal for the movie. And currently at the time of recording, they're doing a jack-in-the-box deal as well for their munchy meal. Wink, wink. Speaking of Scammer and the Z-Dog. Yes. These things will kill you. Oh, and also the Ritz bits.

We were just talking about that in a previous episode. In the Roofer episode, they have a joke about how Bart was selling Ritzbitts crackers at the time. That's true, yeah. They were like smores, right? Yes, yeah. So Bart's getting as fat as you would from eating all the things. Bart, it currently is endorsing as a spokesperson. Yeah, currently you can indulge in the munchy meal, but I'm going to say don't.

What, it's like a double burger or a double chicken burger and then donut bites, right? Yes. I mean, there's probably worse food, but I mean, we've talked about this before. Jack in the box is all about stunt food. Yes, yeah. Oh, wait, yeah, and the munchy meal, sorry, it's not just fries or onion rings plus a double. burger, but also two tacos come with it too, right? Yeah, and it looks like there are curly fries in the taco.

I don't know if I miss reading this image, but it seems like there are. Hey, but it's a small price to pay to get a plastic cup with a picture of a treehouse of horror character on it. I do like the drawing of the evil crusty. I've seen the pictures of it. The evil crusty doll strangling the jack in the box jack mascot is funny. That's good. I'm looking at it now.

Yeah, it calls back to that classic bug-eyed walleye drawing, so I'm for it. Though out of all the scary marges they did, they went with sexy catwoman marge. I'm surprised that it's usually witch marge. Yeah, yeah. I think that's witch Patty and Selma are on it. Maybe they didn't want to have all of them be witches on it, I guess. But, yeah, it's... Oh, also, this was weird on the commentary, too.

For some reason, they brought up how disappointed George Meyer was at eyes wide shut. That was also funny. Yeah, yeah, I guess because he was really talking it up before the movie released, and then they would, like, nag him about, like, hey, George, how about that eyes wide shut? eyes wide shut and he would say, shut up. I think it's been re-evaluated. I think people like it now. They had too much to live up to as the final Kubrick movie.

His first movie in 12 years is one with like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and I felt like it was like advertised to us as, oh, this is like you're going to see live sex between these two celebrities in the movie. It's like you're seeing a live sex show between the two most attractive celebrities currently available. I have seen it posited by people that it was an amazing. move by Stanley Kubrick that near the end of his life, he wastes two years of Tom Cruise's career filming that movie forever.

Yes, but he didn't realize Tom Cruise will be young forever until now. It's been a minute since I've seen eyes wide shut. I, of course, have the 4K behind me here. Of course, you're a pervert. We know this. But yes, I haven't watched it in a while, but yes, I do think it's had a, certainly a recent reappraisal as people learn about how the club is not dissimilar to real-life clubs, the rich and faithful.

are part of, as we've learned. Well, we're all looking forward to Digger, or at least I was until I saw the trailer. Yeah. And I thought, this is a guy who thinks he's funny, and those are my least favorite kind of performances. I don't think the Cruise man's getting his Oscar.

He's been thirsty for off of this one. I don't know when he's going to get it, and I just watched, he wants his own color of money, which is how Paul Newman finally won his Oscar. Now roles are reversed, and Tom Cruise is the one thirsty for an Oscar after a bunch of nominations.

And so, yes, the Germans are given DOS boot. The Euro Trash is thrown out. They all leave. This is where the episode could end, but they have a whole other minute of Albert Brooks. They got to take advantage of it in our final clip here, which after he gets his belt back, which that's where he finds the belt that was drawn earlier

and then was not drawn out of him. Closure. Folks, you have three weeks left on a nonrefundable weight loss treatment. So if anybody else in the family wants to use it, use it now. But who else needs to lose weight? Maggie, Grandpa, I seldom seen half-brother Herb? Why is everyone looking at me? I am not too fat.

I'm alive, aren't I? Mr. Simpson, you're suffering from PSI. Poor self-esteem. It's not I. Every sign is wrong. Oh, that's terrible. We've got a long drive ahead. You want to put off at a motel?

We'll split a room. Where will I sleep? We can worry about that when we're standing naked before the bed. My goodness! No wonder you eat. What are you eating now? Cheeseburger. You're a catastrophe.

Let me have half of it. I don't want it. I just want the cheese. I don't want the meat. I do want the meat. Here's a corner. Let me just bite it. Don't rip it.

Let me have the whole thing. You'll get some later. You're a selfish jerk. I've smelled it. It has to be eaten. But it's my burger. I'm driving. I'll kill us.

Fine. I'd rather die. You know, it seems like they are in the same room, so credit to the editor for sitting that together so well. Yes, when I heard it on the commentary, so that my most remembered scene from this from 2005 was that moment of over the credits, because by this point, I had been listening to the commentaries, and I knew how much Albert Brooks was improvising, usually with the other actors. So back in the older seasons. So I also assumed that like, oh, this is fun. It's Castellanetta and Brooks are in the same room and improvising over each other.

Then I hear the commentary. My beliefs are shattered. I was a fool. I thought, yes. Hey, they had to go to his house this time for some reason. And I really appreciate the shout out to Herb Powell, which I guess Homer still acknowledges, but they don't really talk to him or see him ever. That's probably because Danny DeVito hated doing the show a second time.

We've covered that in our brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes episode. Yeah, it's interesting that in all of the time he has been, been like a star to millennials because of his hundreds of episodes of Always Sunny in Philadelphia that they never had him back until last season. Okay, he was on one phone call joke like 10-ish years ago. But then in the fake last episode, Bart's birthday, he actually appears on screen and it's also Danny DeVito. And I thought maybe, oh, is Danny DeVito like him and Brooks not friends anymore?

No, they're buddies. They appear. They do interviews and appearances together at tons of things. Like, so it's not that either. Yeah. Yeah, I just remember the phone call. I'm sure we talked about the Bart's birthday appearance, but it was her pal saying, Homer, it's your half brother, I'm broke again. And then that's it. They just talked up on him. Yeah, it's, well, because it is funny of like, you have Danny DeVito who has stayed famous and funny these 30 plus years since you first had him on the show. And you've barely taken advantage of this. Like when he is a very funny voice. who would do lots of funny things, I would think. I mean, they don't like having a rich brother-in-law, a brother for Homer to count on. Like, I think they wrote themselves into a corner there, too, I suppose. We will not be waiting that long for Albert Brooks to return.

He comes back in six years for season 22's 500 keys. So we'll talk about that in 2032. Get ready. And now he's like almost every two years kind of guy. Like, we just talked about him at a not unlike Tab Spangler character at that men's retreat one last season. Yeah, and a kind of a bad episode, unfortunately. Not as funny as this one.

With a worse, poorly executed third act bit about all the men are gone from town. What do we do there? Yeah. I mean, he still has a couple of fun bits in there, too. Maybe he was just around for the reshoots of Emma. No, wait. No, it was Emma.

The James O'Brooks movie. Now I can't even remember. We all loved it. Which one is it? Have we all seen this? It's not Emma Mackey. It's the lady whose name is like your last. name. Ella McKay.

Ella McKay. Thank you. Okay. And I saw that movie. It clearly had a big effect on you. But Albert Brooks is good in it, though it also did make me think like, right, Albert Brooks is, he's 79 now. It was the first time I really felt like Albert Brooks is old

when I saw that movie. Yeah. He's always sounded like this. I mean, his entire family has like Bob Einstein, Super Dave, he had a really crazy, raspy voice too. Yes, yeah. Larry. Oh, ma'am, I did not be doing that with the frog in my throat I've had today. I should have. Podcasters are.

cannot talk like Super David. It'll wreck our throats. Albert Brooks, though, still, I still think he's a funny guy. Still being a funny dude and he's one of the better parts of Ella McKay, probably just because he's ad-libbing and being just a warm, funny guy. Yeah, naturally very funny

and I'm sad it took him so long to come back, but it's great to hear his voice because he is such an instrumental part of early Simpsons and then some of the greatest moments like with Hank Scorpio. I mean, Cowboy Bob is not a mega notable character unfortunately, and we just saw the return of him. in the season. But hey, Jacques, very funny character, a lot of great back and forth with Julie.

Yes, it's just like, I really don't have familiarity with our books outside of the Simpsons. So he is just a welcome presence whenever I hear him again. Have you seen Defending Your Life? No. Oh, man, if I were to suggest one, that's a really good one. I know lots of people like, you know, real life or the Road Trip America one that I've also, I've only seen once. But I've seen, I watched the criterion for defending your life in the last year. And it again reminded me, which I'd seen a bunch.

one of my mom's favorite movies too. It's a great, great movie. Like, Bob, Merrill Streep's a really good actor. I don't believe you. Yeah, defending your life is a lot of fun. I have seen that one movie he's in where his character keeps saying, I have to find Nemo. And I forget what it's called.

I just saw that for the first time recently. Oh, finding Dory, I think, right? Oh, that's what it is, yes. It's where he kept saying that in that movie, but whatever. It made a lot of money. You know, it just has the act three problem most of season 16 has, but one of the better 16 episodes, I think. Yeah.

Yeah, I would say, like, very funny throughout, not just Albert Brooks. There's like an old-fashioned old golden age spirit running through this episode. Again, though, like Henry said, they lost all confidence in Act 3, had to make room for Albert Brooks. And I don't like the economic situation being the climax of this episode. I wish it would have stayed at the Fat Camp. Funny things can happen at Fat Camp. This may sound crazy.

They made an entire movie about it called Heavywates. Yes. Now, I mean, they just did a Fat Camp thing with Homer the previous season. I'm remembering now in that flashback episode. Though also, as we talk about double beats, I have. had to remind myself that in a few episodes in the season finale, Ned also rents out his house to people to earn money that happened to end up being porn stars. That's the plot line.

That's what's happening at the season 16 finale. Yes, it's the one after the Catholic episode. But yeah, I was like, oh, but you have another renting out the house episode in the same season. It's not exactly a hostel, but it's not a hostile. Save the hostel for a better episode. I think that could be a better episode. Yeah, wait until they invent Airbus. B&B, and then we can have our hostile episode.

A good Bart over-eating jokes. And yeah, like you said, back to basic stuff of like itchy and scratchy scene, parody of the opening, an actually good and planned out musical montage to a classic song. There's a lot to like in this season 16 one. Yeah, I like this one. So that is the end of Talking Simpsons, this episode at least. And if you want to support the show and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and without ads, please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up at the five.

level and when you do, you'll access everything that we do ad free. If you don't like ads, well, that's the way to hear the podcast ad free. And on top of that, you also get access to our very vast back catalog over nine years worth of full-length episodes about shows you like, like Futurama, King of the Hill, Mission Hill, Batman, the animated series, and The Critic. And that $5 level also includes a new episode of both Talking Futurama and Talk King of the Hill every month. So sign up today at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. Henry, what is happening at that $10 level? That is where you will find our monthly What a Cartoon Movie Podcast.

It is our premium podcast that we put out each month for our $10 and up subscribers. It has all of the bonuses you get from the $5 level Bob was talking about, meaning ad-free. But also, it's like getting three extra podcasts because we go crazy in depth into an animated feature film or a live action film based on a cartoon as well. We do that too, which is what we just did last month. as we entered into the Halloween season with the Adams family, the 1991 adaptation of the comic classic. And this month, you're going to hear us talking about

Fern Gully, the last rainforest, another early 90s classic that has partially to celebrate the life of Tim Curry, who is very good in that movie. And those are just the most recent ones of almost eight full years of what a cartoon movies that we have done hundreds of hours,

So many cartoons we have covered from Disney, Warner Brothers, Studio Ghibli, Pixar, Sony, so many. DreamWorks, it's all there in the back catalog just for you. If you sign up at the $10 level, and if you go at $10 or five, don't forget that you get a discount if you go up to the annual renewal level. And so I've been one of your host, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Blue Sky and Letterbox as Bob Servo. And my other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast, all about old video games. and you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retro knots

and sign up there for a bunch of bonus stuff as well. And Henry, what about you? You can find me on Blue Sky and Instagram as Talking Henry, where I'm certainly posting photos of me eating treats at times too, as we talked about as well as other fun things. And don't forget that you can follow the official account of this podcast on both Blue Sky and Instagram at Talk SimpsonsPod. At Talk SimpsonsPod.

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Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 6's A Star is Burns and we'll see you then. Take a picture of me with all the milkshakes. Well, everybody gets in there. Okay, we're all in? Hurry! They're melting! Hmm, maybe mom's the way to go.