Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Parent Rap With Luke Savage

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

We welcome back Luke Savage, writer for Jacobin and the cohost of the podcast Michael And Us, just in time for this ep inspired by Judge Judy! Bart gets in trouble, but it's no longer "boys will be boys" under Judge Constance Harm. Somehow that all leads to the use of fiberoptics, tethers, and pillories in this very wacky ep that ends Mike Scully's era as showrunner. Listen now before your night terrors begin! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

this podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more i heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's familiar with BOC. I'm your host, Bob, Mr. Never Spank Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today in the same room. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and I promise I'll pay attention after wrestling, okay?

And who do we have on the line? Hey, Luke Savage, and I always pray throwing cinder blocks. And this week's episode is The Parent Rap. Hey, Cora, I heard science is working on a donut that actually burns off calories. How's that going? What? This week's episode aired on November 11th, 2001.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. Monsters, Inc. beats Shallow Hal at the box office. Metal Gear Solid 2 is released for the PlayStation 2. And on the sixth season, 71st episode of Judge Judy, a woman alleges she was assaulted by her child's father on Christmas. That's the episode description I found out.

I was like, what aired on Judge Judy that day? That's darker than the view of Christmas we get in this episode. No sorry i'm thinking of uh children of lesser clive yes yeah i apologize where homer is passed out under the tree with soiled underpants yeah yeah but uh i did not see shallow hell in the theaters i did see monsters inc i saw shallow hell later on like dvd it's it's fine it's all right i i saw both of them in theaters and I have an embarrassing story to tell you about Monsters, Inc. So this was the era in which before the movie there'd be like a slideshow with like Muzak playing in the background

and they forgot to shut off the music during Monsters, Inc. So I sat through the entire movie fuming thinking I can either kind of tune the Muzak out or leave the theater, miss the movie to get them to fix it i i sat through the entire movie with the music playing that's hell in front of the movie soundtrack and

i never saw it again since then oh wow oh geez meanwhile shallow hell viewing experience went swimmingly yes the classic jack black comedy no sound problems at all there that uh what the last shot of it is jason alexander's tail wagging through his pants right i think so last shot of it yeah and of course metal gear solid 2 if you were a gamer like that was the one you'd been waiting for all year even though grand theft auto 3 really overtook it in importance that year uh mgs2 i had been waiting every second for that to get to come out but i had to play it on a friend's ps2 i didn't have a ps2 i had to see see my friend show off all the ways you could uh shoot up a watermelon like look the dynamic chunks of these watermelons

there i still never played metal gear solid but uh at uh at the time i would have been playing GTA 3 on a PC and I just remember it had all these frame rate issues and like on the horizon, it always like be like loading as you moved through Liberty City or whatever. People would just appear like ghosts out of thin air and like playing it on a PC was a living hell because there was that mission where you had to fly like the RC cop or whatever around

the building site and I don't know take photos or I can't remember what you were supposed to do and I think it was just like designed for console because it was like almost impossible to do on a PC I don't know if I ever finished it those games barely held together on the PS2 they just barely functioned because they were so complicated so what we were just there for the swearing and in the strippers and whatnot meanwhile Metal Gear solid 2 was a technical marvel like all the stuff they could pull off on a ps2 like it still looks good today and uh you know also luke it's funny you mention uh gta 3 because both it and mgs2 had to do very late changes after 9-11 in gta 3 they're like you they you could have flown an airplane at one point and

they decided no you cannot fly an airplane and and in mgs2 the giant final battle is supposed to be in manhattan like a thing crashes in new york and you're supposed to have a big fight they had to change it you can see you can see all the storyboards for it online it was like the world trade center figured prominently into the ending of that game yeah they they had less than two months to change that up like it's it's nuts yeah but mgst you know luke especially since i know you're you've been playing all the souls games you you i think you'd really respond well to metal gear especially uh it's politics i think you would like nice i'll uh i'll check it out. Yeah. Luke, as a member of Michael and Us Nation, it shocked me to learn that you were getting into the From Software library with Sekiro because I stopped playing that about five

hours in and that's where you started. And I was so afraid, but you made it out the other end and I had even more respect for you. Well, thank you. I mean, it was a living hell. I mean, I didn't, I knew that those those i knew that their games were hard and i mean i actually i did i think i did it in kind of reverse order i've i mean i played uh i played sekiro and then a couple months ago i finished dark souls the first one i did the remastered version and i'm

looking for it i can't play bloodborne yet because i don't have um because it's it's a playstation exclusive but uh elden ring i'm looking forward to um but yeah i mean i started sekiro and i mean i i mean it took me there's like i don't know like you know 20 minutes into the game there's like the first samurai general he's like a mini boss and i mean i was probably stuck on him for like several days uh you know it's it was it was a living hell but uh like i i can now basically without like warming up i can beat beat like any boss in that game. Like they did a DLC for it and their boss, boss rushes like gauntlets,

I think they're called. Yeah. They're, they're super fun. And having suffered through so much of that game, I can now, I can now like basically do it standing on my head, which,

which feels great. And dark souls, which, you know, is also a pretty difficult game. Felt like a walk in the park. Yeah. You can level up, you can heal 30 times man but yeah uh luke savage we haven't had uh you on in a in a little bit so welcome back yeah i believe uh yeah it's great to be here last episode with luke i think was uh grift of the magi back in uh 2020 so it's been a bit though because it happened is that a pre-pandemic

episode no i don't think we were in like the first one now we're in the the third one who's counting yeah yeah but yeah me me and bob big fans of the the michael and us podcast you do with will sloan like i was just listening to your one on matrix resurrections which was a film i enjoyed uh bob leso uh but i i really liked hearing you and will parse it out especially through like a critical of capitalist lens as well yeah i mean we've really been we've been really digging these films that are kind of like self-aware blockbusters it's something that I've really picked up on recently in relation to things like Space Jam and New Legacy. We did an episode on the Lego movie recently as well.

These movies that, you know, have these massive budgets and are owned by like large, you know, sprawling corporate, you know, entertainment conglomerates, but almost build that fact into the movie in some way. And what was so amazing of The Matrix Resurrections, what was so strange about it, is that Lana Wachowski almost seems to have built like criticism of, you know, the sprawling Matrix fandom

and the fact that it is now the property of WB into the movie, which I feel like I'm still kind of marinating on it uh it was a really interesting film although i think you know our dynamic was similar to uh to you two's in in that i think will enjoyed watching the movie quite a bit i kind of did but i still think i think it's more interesting to think about and and kind of like talk about than uh than yeah i think watching it it just felt like a kind of like you know pretty par for the course matrix movie yeah i had more fun listening to like five podcasts about it than i did watching it because the conversation was fun and hey if it can spark that much conversation it's not a bad movie i just didn't really enjoy it and i i enjoy these uh very meta movies but after so many of them in

a row i'm ready for movies to just be exist in a vacuum to not be about the fandom or the legacy or the actors in them just have a story on its own it's a fun new idea i came up with yeah imagine that uh well uh so luke do you recall if you watch this episode in this uh that aired eight wonderful weeks after september 11th Yeah, so I definitely saw it. And I wasn't sure if that was the case until right at the end. It's funny what kind of can trip your memory, but there's a line towards the end of the episode where the Judge Judy character sentences Bart

to several years in juvenile hall or whatever. And for some reason, my brain recalled that line exactly. But I wasn't sure if I'd seen the episode until then. I mean, so this would have been like I would have been thick into my watching The Simpsons every day phase. I probably mentioned this on a previous episode. But when I was a kid, The Simpsons was actually on like Canada Public Broadcaster, the CBC at five every weeknight. So I used to watch it, you know, an hour or so after getting home from school, I probably would have seen this episode when it was first in, uh, in syndication. Okay. So not fresh off of September 11th, like, uh, if you, as,

as we watched it in the American broadcast, we were ready to laugh again. And I have some production info about this. Uh, so technically it's the last production episode of season 12, although it aired in season 13. And the story about this episode, how it went to production was it was the end of the season and then they needed an episode. They just didn't have any ready. So Mike Scully, the showrunner, and George Meyer, one of the funniest writers on the show, basically get in a room and crank this out over five days. And the rest of the staff has admitted yes it was a very easy week for us because they did everything i i love matt selman jokes of just like when you're doing a rewrite on a thing written by your two bosses you just go like

that's all great boss no need to rewrite that and you just go home early that day and because of that it reminds me of uh behind Laughter, another collaborative script that was written very quickly, very, very punchy. Also reminds me of Cape Fear, another end of a showrunner's run episode where it's just really all like off the wall, crazy. It destroys characters. It kind of burns the bridge behind it just to tell a bunch of great jokes while the showrunner leaves the show. Yeah, the Sideshow Bob episode of Cape Fear is one of the showrunner leaves the show yeah the the sideshow bob episode cape fear is one of the all-time best of the series and part of it is of just like this just fuck it attitude of just like no it's just funny if sideshow bob does this like why doesn't he just

sing the entire hms pedophore like yeah it's a very first drafty thing not also not worrying about like emotional climax or or integrity of character just pure joke machine which this episode is all about yeah it's uh i it is reminding me of the things i like most about the scully era as the mike scully era ends what i didn't like about the mike scully era is that it would often throw any character out the window of just like, ah, who cares about like feelings or whatever. They also shat on Lisa all the time for caring about things. But what I liked most in, in our entire exploration of, of the Scully years, which this is now reaching the end of, is that when it was time to tell a funny joke, he usually could be funny and you would laugh at a

good line, which this episode is full of. You know, it's funny. I've still never seen the actual film Cape Fear so that I know when I watch it, I'm going to watch it like as if the Simpsons episode came before it. I had that exact experience when, you know, I mean, I must have seen A Streetcar Named Marge like a dozen times. And I finally like watched a couple of years ago, you know, the original like Streetcar Named Desire film with Marlon Brando in it. And I was like, oh, it's just like the episode.

Yeah, I didn't get around to watching the Scorsese Cape Fear until maybe 2007. And then it was kind of distracting, but it also made me think I'm glad they didn't take Sideshow Bob too far down this road. He could have been a much more disturbing character, but still have not seen streetcar the original uh the original movie yeah i i watched that one a while i i definitely watched those two in the 90s but i didn't watch the original cape fear until the aughts i i watched the 90s one which fortunately i think i was too young to understand just how creepy they made uh robert de niro's character to up it for the 90s you know i at least love the extreme punchiness of this also that like george meyer that's also when he's at his best is just like being punchy

and pissed off and having to write something like it's just very funny the idea that they like lock themselves in a room for four days just to like write it is also just a funny uh vision to me i oh you know what else i uh Luke, I wanted to compliment you on your Jacobin article on the Simpsons after Plusiversary, reflecting on where the Simpsons stand at. That was a very good article. Well, thank you.

Yeah, I mean, so that was an article that I think came directly out of conversations that we've had on Michael and us because I was really trying to think through, I have been trying to think through these, you know, what does it mean when, you know, corporate entertainment properties kind of achieve sentience or self-awareness? And I feel, and I mean, also what, you know, what does it mean when they've been kind of degraded from the original, you know, from the original product so much. And, you know, unfortunately, with The Simpsons, you know, we've now got Disney, you know, creating like special holiday to mark,

you know, two years on Disney Plus streaming service. And we got Lisa Simpson in the same room as Buzz Lightyear in The Mandalorian, you know, singing an ode to the company that boasts about its rising share value. Like that's where we're at with things. But yeah, that was a pretty interesting one to think through. And I have to say, after watching Simpsons Plusiversary, you know, it's been a long time since I've seen anything

from season 13 of The Simpsons. But, you know, it was pretty refreshing, even though we're not dealing with top tier Simpsons at this point. Oh, God, believe it or not, Luke, the Plusiversary short is the best one of those they've made. It's better than the

Loki one. Yeah. And better than the Star Wars one. Yeah. So that's top tier. I watched both of them too, and yeah, I agree. You're right. It was the best. The system works. So actually, guys,

I have a little history on Judge Judy, just for folks who don't know about the very popular, insanely popular American TV judge. I know her best as Judy Justice. Yes, that's that's her new the new branding of her. But for 25 years, she was Judge Judy. That's Judge Judy Shineland. of her but for 25 years she was judge judy uh that's judge judy shineland uh and she really was a real judge before becoming a tv judge uh and here's uh he she is an interesting woman that you can see why she very quickly became a tv star uh so she got her start first as a new york lawyer uh first working in corporate and then as a family court prosecutor uh and then in 1982 she was appointed judge not elected an appointed judge by ed koch

to family court and yes yeah which is why this episode being set in family court is to the roots of judge okay one thing to know about family court is it's not a jury-based court it is just the judge rules and just says well this is what you're going to do and she was known for her tough or harsh sentencing being very curt and abrupt also and and telling lawyers to shut up and was very opinionated let let's say. And that, of course, doing that for a decade got her a lot of, you know, she was infamous or famous, depending on how you felt about her in the New York area.

And so it culminates in 1993 in a LA Times profile on her in early 1993, which would then lead to her appearing on 60 Minutes for a profile by late 1993. And wouldn't you believe it, the second the TV producers see her on that, they're like, that's a star right there. This is a TV star. We can build a whole show around this. And that show would become so popular that it really overwrote the People's Court

as the go-to TV court show reference. Yeah, it's interesting. really overwrote the people's court as the go-to TV court show reference. Yeah. It's, you know, it's interesting. Judge Wapner retires in 1993 as she's getting famous. Like this is the, the end of people's court leading into that.

And as an aside about that original article. So I decided to read that article, which is about 30 years old now. Uh, and it is really of its time like i had a time when bill clinton was talking about super predators and joseph biden was talking about super predators and that's this in general like weirdly like thinking like no this is liberal stereotyping of making what you know these vile monsters out of usually in a minority in america it's so gross to read now

like the article begins with describing this vile in their description crack mother trying to profit off the system with her crack babies and the judge judy is the only person in the way of stopping all this like it's been a long time since I've heard the word crack baby or the term crack baby. Yes. It makes you think, oh yeah, you're just dehumanizing the person. It's insane.

Like they don't name, I mean, it's possible they don't name the person in the article because like, well, this is in court and you don't want to like, but there is no care for the person that they're talking about. Like they care that judge, it is about portraying judge Judy as the,

the only person who's trying to clean up like the filth that is New York city, which is just like disgusting to read. Like here, let me read you this quote from it about that crack mother in the intro. I'm just reading from the text here. Can we do anything about this woman? Asks judge Judas Shyneland, her voice taught with anger.

I know she's on the street, but can we stop her from populating half the planet? Oh, boy. Yes. This is getting even worse. There's some eugenics worked into this as well. Also, the article does have the classic phrase that would become her catchphrase, as would be mentioned or played off on in this episode. Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining, which that's in the story. Here's how it is in context in that story.

Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. She yells at a teenager who claims he began peddling drugs after a death in his family. Nobody goes out and sells crack because grandma died get a better story which uh boy that's uh i like how this story sets up the idea that the like the federal government is like famously generous when it comes to helping poor people and we have to stop them we're too nice oh that's her biggest thing in this like she has a lengthy screed about how there is a kinship adoption system which is how grandparents adopt usually a grandparent adopts the the children after something happens to the other parents and then you get you know a government stipend 300 whole

dollars a month in 1993 she is very certain that this is being entirely misused by welfare cheats and she wants to close it like she's like let me tell you a story i met a woman who said that she used all that money not to feed her kids but to buy a house in puerto rico that's wrong we need to like so it very much is the clinton era welfare reform bullshit talk too it's crazy like even when they gave people food stamps like you can only buy food with that we're not just gonna give you money there were restrictions about you know what you could buy of course you can't buy alcohol or whatever but if you try to buy hot food you better put that back you heat up your own food you poor

piece of shit i i mean this article is like insane to read it now like this is in a liberal la paper like this la times is not known as like a conservative rag but it is so about this little woman who is feisty and fiery and the only person who's standing up for like just telling people like hey you're stupid stop lying to me which again like to read this thing about her mainly working with ethnic minorities and calling them all stupid all the time yeah and on top of that there is a certain real cruelty of just the idea of like this woman got obscenely wealthy off of her indifference to the suffering of others and the humiliation of poor people the humiliation of poor people but after this article

though it makes her very famous it's why remember when that milk family was in the news about like the the cnn profile on this texas family that's like inflation going crazy milk is so expensive yes my family needs 15 quarts uh every three days to live i am certain that producer was really doing that story to try to pitch a reality show and that her appearance on 60 minutes was the same deal of like hey couldn't this lady be a star and so she in her courtroom she also worked with an african-american man named bailiff bird who she would take with him to the tv show and would be her bailiff for for the entirety of the show's airing for 25 years but yes they decide like, let's make this the Judge Judy show. Like it is.

She retires from the court. So that's also what's hilarious in the 60 Minutes profile on her. They're like, what's it going to be like in 10 years from now? And this is how they ended. The interviewer goes like, what's it going to be like in 10 years from now in this system? A lot worse. Oh, great. Boom, it ends.

You know, there's never a famous judge that's a good person. They're always evil. They're famous for being evil. There's no, like, oh, the great judge who understands crime and has compassion. No, there's never any famous judge who's like that. Also, when she says, oh, it happens ten years from now, it's like, well, I'll be eight years into my television star role, and I'm not doing shit for nobody but me. But, yeah, so she takes on this job. She retires from being a judge.

And the short version of how judge shows work is that basically they get small claim stuff of just like an argument between two people. And then they fly you out to Hollywood and they say, all right, if you give a legal agreement that says she can be the arbiter of this and whatever she says goes then we'll put you on tv and we'll give you up to five thousand dollars of remuneration depending on what judge judy decides and actually at least one couple of pals was caught

ripping this off of like they just said if we make up something i bet they'll not only flies out to hollywood but i bet one of us can at least get a thousand bucks we'll split with the other and they got caught but they already had the money they judged judy couldn't take the money back so she got fooled by these people but i mean what's the appeal of the show it really is that just like in this world where you feel rudderless and there's no control and especially if you're watching daytime tv you want to see like well at least there's somebody doing something it's it's a real like crab bucket show where it's like someone is worse

off than me and they're being punished for it finally this woman is yelling at them until they're and and yeah it is a prolific amount of content she made like yeah new episode five days a week new episodes they are done in such a way that you can just film a shitload in one week and just be like, there, that's our whole eight months of it. I would say the episodes are in the over a thousand, I believe. Yeah, and I think she only worked a few months out of the year when she was doing Judge Judy. Yeah, so she was in one interview with Jimmy Kimmel.

He asked, how much do you work like a week a month in this you're like five days a month it averages out to like just now who's lazier judge judy or poor people exactly exactly like but that's not a good work ethic no i know but uh and that she got that way off of humiliating poor people on television uh on in news reports and and that she was like this crusader of like common sense when really she's just like no i just cashed out and became a tv star on top of that she's a very conservative woman as well oh really yes quite quite conservative uh and yeah so judge judy even in the pandemic still kept going though they did have to limit uh the background cast of

characters like they couldn't have the audience anymore. And it would end when her deal with CBS ended. And so what she do, even though she's almost 80, just starts a brand new show called Judy Justice. And that's on, it's an Amazon show. It is an Amazon show.

Thanks Jeff Bezos. And there's one last bit about her that came out after her show, our last show ended which is that uh one of the top level executive producers on it uh like highest level dude on it randy duthit uh was quote had multiple allegations leveled to duthit by 16 former judge judy producers that ran the gamut involving workplace drunkenness sexual harassment harassment, body shaming, ageism, ableism, anti-blackness, and misogyny. So could you believe that one of the top guys on Judge Judy was a super racist, hateful person? There were so many of these judge shows based on the success of Judge Judy,

which we pointed out, but just a huge show in syndication. Just everyone's watching it like judge mathis judge joe brown judge mills lane like all these shows popping up between like 96 and 2002 maybe they're just like every show if you're up too late or perhaps unemployed you'd be seeing one of these the sentence will be right back welcome to the kingdom The Simpsons will be right back. Welcome to the kingdom. Are we there yet?

No. Are we there yet? No. Simpsons Talking Watches, now only at Burger King. Just $2.39 each with the purchase of any value meal. Cool your jets, man. Mmm, burger. Collect all four.

And our Big Double Cheeseburger is just 99 cents. With two slices of melted cheese and two juicy flame-broiled patties. It's more than a quarter pound of beef. Hurry offers end soon. Welcome to The Break, everybody. I'm sure this podcast will come back right when we're done watching wrestling. And a big thank you to our guest, Luke Savage, this week, the co-host of the Michael and Us podcast that me and Bob really enjoy. You should check out that podcast as well as all the cool stuff Luke does,

his writing on Jacobin, his book. Check it all out, Luke W. Savage on Twitter. Any of you who enjoy this week's Talking Simpsons podcast, you should know you get here next week's episode right now. If you are one of the many great subscribers at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, me and Bob are able to do this as our full time jobs because of supporters at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. You not only get to hear every Talking Simpsons a week earlier than on the free feed but you also get two monthly exclusive podcasts you get to hear talking futurama and talking of the hill of us going through those simpsons adjacent television series one episode

at a time each month we're in season three on futurama and season two on king of the hill so check those out and a ton of other exclusives we covered every episode of Mission Hill The Critic also our 10 favorite episodes of Batman the animated series all there at patreon.com slash talking simpsons but if you want something really nice through your fiber optics then you need to sign up at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because you get a premium once a month podcast that is definitely worth your time in addition all the five dollar things i mentioned there's the what a cartoon movie podcast where me and bob cover an animated

feature film super duper in depth just like we do the simpsons of that often means talking for over five hours about an animated feature film last month we did south park bigger longer and uncut the 1999 zeitgeist capturing animated musical this month we're going back to 1940 with pinocchio the disney classic and next month you'll get to hear us talk about who framed roger rabbit all of those sure to be super in depthdepth and there's a giant pack catalog of over three years worth of what a cartoon movies i'd say over 230 hours of what a cartoon movie podcast at your fingertips and a brand new one each month if you're a 10 subscriber at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so please consider signing up today visit that website you'll learn more about it. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. So, Luke, I know your co-host Will is big into Judge Judy.

What knowledge of Judge Judy do you have? Yeah, well, yeah, and it's a shame Will couldn't be here. But I suppose, you know, if this episode aired, you know, a few weeks after 9-11, I was probably old enough to know that Judge Judy wasn't just a documentary of a courtroom. But I'm embarrassed to say that when I first encountered it as a child in the 90s, I was like, oh, it's really interesting that they have this show where they just like, you know, like like have cameras inside a courtroom. It's interesting to see how the you know, how jurisprudence works in practice. But I mean, don't ask me how, but I've seen a ton of episodes of Judge Judy. I mean, I feel like if you were alive during the 1990s or the early 2000s, it was just part of your kind of ambient cultural experience.

I don't have a single, I mean, apart from maybe an episode of Michael and us, I don't remember. I think we've talked about Judge Judy. I don't ever recall like, like willingly sitting down to think, okay, time to watch an episode of Judge Judy. But I've probably seen hundreds of them it's a very entertaining show though it's also like it's like as i mentioned in the history it's just so it feels so much darker to me now i'm just thinking about this woman became obscenely wealthy like worth half a billion dollars wealthy and that her starting

point was being a family court judge yelling at minorities and calling them like lazy and stupid. Well, here's my theory. You can't take it with you. And you know what? Tick tock, Judy, you're about 80. 80. Yeah, but she's in great shape, though. But yeah, I also want to dig into one other thing. So we have Judge Judy. She's not known for creative sentencing this came about in the 90s we talked about this on talking to the hill the episode jump and crack bass so if you've heard that this will be redundant but in case you haven't the judge michael chickenetti was an ohio judge who got a ton of attention for creative sentencing in the mid 90s some examples of this i

found were so a man who committed child abuse was sent to his school in a dog outfit to talk about child safety uh during blizzards he ordered defendants to his school in a dog outfit to talk about child safety uh during blizzards he ordered defendants to clear snow in a nursing home a man caught with a loaded gun was sent to a morgue to see corpses uh a young man who stole a bicycle spent 10 days riding a bike to support a local charity things like that with new ways new fun ways to humiliate people turned uh sentencing into a bit is what what he said and that's what he did so this was a trend that was happening and he's the guy that was the most popular michael chicken eddie it's like how everybody became a prop comic after well in in watching the episode you know i was trying to think of like you know what's like

what's one like serious point i can you know i can i can bring to this like what is the meaning of of judge judy and i mean i think like i think the meaning of it, you know, I was reading the that L.A. Times profile, that old L.A. Times profile of her, which was talking, I mean, I think in quite favorable terms. I can't remember what year that was from. It was talking in quite favorable terms about her actual career as a family court justice. It looks like before the show went on the air. And, you know, I mean, she was she clearly made a name for herself being kind of just needlessly cruel and sarcastic and kind of punitive to people. And, you know, I really don't think it's a coincidence that as the American justice system became more punitive in the 1990s, 1980s, 1990s, you know, as the Clinton administration, you know, embraced not only means testing of social policy and welfare policy, but but moral means testing, you know, embraced not only means testing of social policy and welfare policy,

but but moral means testing, you know, when it started attaching work requirements to welfare, you know, when Bill Clinton, quote, unquote, ended welfare, as we know it, and that kind of thing, you know, when parents would have to go to parenting classes to get, you know, social supports and that kind of thing. I don't think it's a coincidence that as the, you know, the justice system and its culture in general was kind of, you know, reconfigured and rearranged to be more openly punitive, you know, you had as a form of entertainment, you know, somebody like Judge Judy, whose whole thing was just like, you know, what were those cases about? I mean, it sounds like in real life, you know, she was, you know, real life family court, a lot of those cases concerned, you know, much more serious things real life family court a lot of those cases um

concerned you know much more serious things but on the show i mean like from what i remember 80 or 90 percent of the time it's like uh bob borrowed uh you know henry's car and uh you know henry scratched it up henry claims that bob actually gave him the car so he's not on you know it's just like these petty it's just like these totally petty things, but she just like berates people and humiliates them. And she's so kind of like moralistic and sarcastic. Like, I don't think it's a coincidence that, uh, you know, that sort of affect became like a form of entertainment as the actual system was like becoming more and more like that in practice.

Well, that LA times piece, like it's all about like her distaste for crack mothers they use the term and and like she has a whole screen against welfare cheats like she's she's very much of the time and i think too you know it's it's not i don't i also don't think it's a coincidence that all those judge shows popped up like her show debuted the year after the oj's like okay yeah it was about a general american anger towards like this person got this black man got away with something we the justice system needs to be refit like it's too nice like obviously isn't it insane to even say we thought the american criminal justice system was too nice it lets people get away with too much stuff. But really, the moral of the story was a rich person got away with something.

Yes. That's what you should have taken away from that case. Yeah. A rich guy could afford the could tear apart the justice system that is mainly meant to punish poor people. That's all. Yeah. But but I don't I and that Judge Judy was number one, but there were a million judge

shows like, yeah, and that she stayed so popular for so long. I think it's just that she, a lot of judges came and went. Judge Joe Brown has been on a long time too. But she, her ability to stay, I think is because she is, she is that entertaining. Like her cruelty is fun. It's a fun, a fun song and dance. And, you know, I guess probably it's good she got out of the, that cruelty can just be done to like people who would just go to small claims court about like a hundred dollars

or whatever, instead of about, you know, the horrible child abuse cases. Like, I think it's probably better she's out of that system. I always had the same question about Judge Judy as I did about, you know, Jairus Springer or Marie or any of those shows which is like obviously they're paying people to be on these shows all of those shows you know anytime they aired they would always have like a little like advertisement like here's a number to call if like you have a case that you want to be dealt with or whatever and presumably they just pay people you know large sums of money but i was

wondered like who would volunteer for this it's like you've ever seen an episode of any of these shows, it's like, like, like who? I mean, Judge Judy was like, far from the worst one, like, obviously being on Jerry Springer or Mari is far worse. But I could I could never figure out it probably is like, unfortunately, a comment on like, just how desperate some people are for, you know, especially in the in the 90s, like how desperate some people were for money you know especially in the in the 90s like how desperate some people were for money because you know it was a lot harder to get it was a lot harder to get welfare so people were forced to do um for forced to go on judge judy a description of how the judge judy system works and how this show was produced did reveal to me of like well the appeal of the people is like one you might win money back and she'll give you like up to five thousand

dollars so it is a game show to an extent and on top of that even if you lose you get an all expenses paid trip to hollywood like they pay to fly you to hollywood and you get to stay in a hotel so i mean it is kind of a free vacation and of course the judge judy show the reason she's so rich it made many other people very rich is it is a cheap as hell show to make yeah like you can pump them out all in an afternoon those cameras aren't moving no yes the exact same setup one set no actors you're paying the most you're paying a person to be on the show is like three thousand dollars that's it like yeah it's it's a great i could be wrong but i i think i read somewhere that she uh she only works

like like a certain number of weeks a year like she's basically takes like like half the year or more than half the year off because they just cram all the recordings into like a couple of months or something and then she just like goes off and is like a multi-millionaire for the rest of the year they they're endorsing michael bloomberg just taking her time to do yeah yeah i think i think she's not about that I think she stopped. I forgot about that. I think she stopped recording in 2017, but they had enough episodes until 2021.

Yes. When she moved to Amazon. So, yeah. Yeah. She makes her show just like you guys make yours. You're always a couple of months ahead. And, of course, the character of Judge Constance Sarm also is voiced

by their uh the simpsons sunday night cat pal jane kasmarek yes actually malcolm in the middle season three starts the same night yeah it's perfect perfect timing wow like we we've talked about this a bit luke but have you given a uh watched much malcolm in the middle because it does it actually feels like a very rare show nowadays about an actual like poor family that is living paycheck to paycheck in a in a show oh yeah I mean I haven't seen it I mean I probably haven't seen it since like the mid 2000s or the early 2000s but it was occasionally on tv on one of the like three or four channels uh that I could get in rural Ontario growing up and uh yeah I mean I thought it was uh thought it was great. I haven't seen it for 15 or

20 years, so I don't know if it holds up, but I expect it does. No, we did a whole episode on it. I mean, I couldn't believe in one of the earliest episodes, Jane Kaczmarek's mother character, she loses her job. Malcolm asks like, well, can't you get unemployment? And she's like, no, because I work 38 hours a week so it technically wasn't a full-time job i was like wow what what show what regular major sitcom today would have a character talk about how fucked over they are even working a real job for the real amount of time yeah i mean like the classic move for like family sitcoms is to like have the family be encoded like culturally as like, quote

unquote, working class, but then like they just like they live like upper middle class suburbanites or whatever. Like, you know, it's picking it low hanging fruit, but there was like the sort of like right wing version of home improvement that Tim Allen made after called Last Man Standing. We're like, yeah, he's supposed to be this like salt to the earth every man and he he like works in some like outdoors store that sells you know canoes and and like you know like yeah like boating equipment like he doesn't even run the store he just works there and yeah they have this like palatial suburban house and so often on american tv and just on tv in general like class is just portrayed as like in these cultural terms and it has

nothing to do with like the actual struggles that you have. If you don't have a lot of money, like those are very deliberately erased. It's about owning a truck, not how, what your paycheck is. Yeah. That's right.

It's about owning a, like a $50,000 truck that you drive around your gated community. But, but yes, this, this episode, well, first it has a really fun couch gag of the family jumping off the painting and into the boat painting that's always next to the couch. Jumping into the water of the painting and then emerging on the couch. It's very creative. More creative than the chalkboard gag of, does anybody read these anymore? You can tell they're very tired.

This was over 20 years ago when they're like who why are we doing this kind of gag so much work to do yes like literally over 20 years ago now this episode that we consider new simpsons is 20 years old and yeah the the episode uh begins kind of like remember the start of season 11's guess who's coming to criticize dinner homer also is driving the kids to school and is playing music that the kids think is lame uh but in this case i really this joke the more research i did on this joke the more i love this joke me too me too so so uh well here let's let's hear about how weddings are nice in our first clip you marry me ph Bill? I got the wedding gown, Bill. Cause weddings are nice.

Oh, let's never miss a school bus again. That was the Fifth Dimension with Weddings Are Nice. You know what else is nice, Marty? What's that, Bill? The KBBL Prize Posse. Damn dirty ape. If our wampum wagon spots your KBBL party penguin, you'll win $40! Did you hear that, Pengie? $40!

Hey, there's the wampum wagon! End of line, boys! Look out! The... the zooming! If we're late for school, we'll miss our free federal breakfast big deal it's just saltines and fig paste ew saltines a great joke about children needing a free federal breakfast to live on that's what a great joke as you do research on the song wedding bell blues like that joke is 10 times funnier because yeah oh sorry Henry but like this is my job now so I thought okay I have to know what Homer is singing because I'm sure

when I saw this before I'm like yeah just a funny song he's making up the lyrics too but no it's he's singing a real song but he's making up his own lyrics that are the opposite of what the intent of the song is is that correct Henry yeah okay the song song wedding bell blues sung by the fifth dimension and this is from 1969 it's the woman mad that bill won't marry her like i've got the wedding gown blue i got the wedding bell blues why won't you marry me bill but then homer just turns it into weddings are nice and and somehow bill and marty know the song is weddings are nice and they call it that like they get it wrong too like that's what's so i laughed so much of that joke because homer they seem to have the same wrong title that homer

has and as as disc jockeys yeah i i took it to be this we're digging really deep into this joke it's our jobs though of course we're justifying this but i took it to be also a joke and that they tried to clear the song but they couldn. Because if you listen to the background music in the actual song, the background music in the show is just a sound alike. So I feel like they tried to clear it and they couldn't. So they made up their own song that turns out to be a real song in this world that just has a different title. That's great. Also, in the spirit of how punchy they are in this episode, Bill and Marty just play the wrong sound effect. And they just shrug like, whatever. Like, we played it we did the wrong joke whatever we got

to move on to the talk about the prize patrol like i just love their shrugging like damn dirty apes like what the oh well just move on homer really could chase that wampum wagon with the boys in the as passengers he doesn't have to chuck them out of the car i guess they're just added weights i guess i like the conceit that he has to have like a little like penguin mounted on the car to win 40 dollars like he's been driving around with this like in anticipation of like the freak chance that you run into like the radio station's wagon uh driving around town or whatever and then uh and then he does and it's destroyed his antenna it's so heavy it's bent downward like yeah they kept the blue oyster cult medallion a surprise though yeah he he probably begged for more or he stole it off of the guy who ran the

wampum wagon yeah yeah saltines and fig paste that's uh you know we've learned more and more about how uh depressingly necessary free lunches are in america at public schools like i uh i live near a high school and during the lockdown like they literally there was a car out front with the free lunches of like if you need your lunch you got to come drive here and we give it to you and drive off. I was like, boy, this is depressing, man. I also felt bad. Like, just give. Obviously, we couldn't just give people $10 to buy their own lunch.

You got to make them drive to the school still to pick up that free lunch that they obviously need very much. I didn't realize I was a poor kid growing up until later in life when I thought, you know, other kids paid money for lunch, but I gave over these little tickets. I wonder why that was like, oh, I was very poor and they were giving me free lunch. That makes sense. No disgusting fig paste for you though. No, no. Uh, bad pizza usually. Oh, wait, no, it's saltines. That's so disgusting to allow. Another thing I love about George Myers writing is that he hates cops. It's always great. He makes fun of them as like big fat losers who just beat up people. So that's what's great about Wiggum in this episode. I'm surprised that this character of Cora never came back because she's really funny.

I feel like they're setting her up to be just the one note character that could return and just do her what? What? Yeah. Because what I love, it again feels i'm viewing this through the lens of like guys making a joke about writing comedy but wigum is giving her the setup for like a joke on cheers like it's like george went would say this to carla on the show like hey you know i heard there's a donut that makes you lose weight while you eat it and then carla would say back

like well you're gonna have to eat a lot of those Wiggum or something like it's instead of for a joke and then instead instead of a punch line that a deaf waitress just goes what yeah I guess he was like uh never mind he was expecting an Alice Stiles zinger yeah that's it's a great joke about not writing a joke but I guess Wiggum just sits at the donut counter all day he should just be drinking the jelly itself but he instead refills it you refill the thing with jelly each time this this made me laugh probably more than anything else in this episode is when he keeps asking the like lady at the diner like he asked her like i hear that science is like working on a donut that helps you burn calories and i just love the idea it's like very subtle but like

the idea that like because she works at a diner like she's like an authority on all things donut and she's like gonna be up on the latest like cutting edge donut news like haven't you heard about it yet come on yeah he's well wigum is very hopeful that finally eating donuts will make him lose weight and and then the boys then get in a cop car which scully mentions that this was inspired by his own childhood cool friend who did steal a cop car a cool friend who went to jail because he stole a cop car that was idling outside of i think a donut shop he said it was a duncans in boston yeah in the massachusetts area which that is so perfect like how and the scully mentions like how embarrassing that had to be for the cop to not

only admit that his car got stolen, but while he was eating donuts, like the most stereotypical cop thing that could happen. Well, you know, we know because of GCA, that's like at least two stars stealing the cop car, right?

That's right. And then Dana Gould tells a similar story that his, his non cop brother did that to his cop brother and stole his car as a prank, which I have a feeling his cop brother didn't arrest his non-cop brother. The gag that they are reading, the Miranda Rights teleprompter, and then it says parenthetical punch in belly. Like, that's such a great joke. I didn't need the commentary to tell me George Meyer wrote that joke about police brutality. And also, again, a great joke of like when Mila is saying, you know what? I've got a crazy idea.

And Bart's already in the car. Like, again, just so funny. They love that rain baggy. Yeah. You wonder, what do the cops call those little baggies they put on their hats to keep them dry? And I think later in the episode, doesn't this this joke don't they return to this riff again when chief wigum arrests them and then he's like trying to read them their miranda rights and then he's like you have the right to remain he's like has to look at the teleprompter he's like silent that doesn't

sound it doesn't sound right yeah i love the idea like it's so funny like taking the gag even further to like no no he actually needs the teleprompter because he can't remember even to this day Miranda writes he can't yeah I they also torture Ned which they make him hula down his pants while his arms are in the air which I can't be the only one thinking about uh you know Ned's massive hog on the other side yeah I I'm sorry i just can't they were trying to make sure if he was truly a stupid sexy flanders yes every every time it gets to the downstairs reason of net i can't not think about in the ma death episode they did the joke that he had like a 14 inch penis like it's just i i can't forget it was the too far moment. I was like, no, you can't. I can't forget that Ned has a gigantic penis.

I just can't. Which episode was it that originally introduced the idea that Flanders is like jacked and has a giant cock? Because there's like the famous thing where they're skiing and he's got like the tight like suit on. But then I'm also remembering in like in a streetcar named Marge, you find out he has a six-pack. Is that where they first introduced that? That's it. Although I think maybe Groundskeeper Willie did it first with Radio Bart. I don't know if Radio Bart came first.

I can't remember. But he's the first one who ripped off his clothes. And you see that he's just absolutely jacked. Yeah. And so when they already had the joke that Ned is super jacked then by season 10 or 11 they then have to like well we've we've already done the joke that he has washboard abs like well all right i guess uh he has a huge dick there there we go that's the next level to it barton millhouse get bothered by officer sniffy and then uh they decided that they didn't want bart to litter

actually for real steal the car they have to make it an accident to get him a little more innocent. But thinking more of how punchy this is, they almost drive into a giant latrine of hot soup. A latrine? Or, well, what would you call it? I think you mean terrine. Terrine. Oh, sorry. I was thinking of a giant toilet full of soup.

No, okay. I'm sorry. It's a terrine. Yes, yeah. to give a giant toilet full of soup no okay i'm sorry it's okay yes yeah and and and also promising young athletes like that they're they're just being sold trophies like that's a great gag too uh yeah so many great gags in this first uh act the hobo getting the trophy and saying finally some recognition like that's such a funny funny line too and he's got he's a typical hobo with a bindle so a 1920s hobo god just every great joke here but but yes the boys are arrested in our next clip all right you two are under arrest

for joy right you have the right to remain um uh silent that doesn't sound right. I love our court days. It's about the only thing we do as a family anymore. Hey, Carrie. Hey, Lisa. Your Honor, please don't send my son to juvie. He's basically a good kid. He's just weak. Morally and in the upper body. Please let me slip through the cracks.

Well, you look like a good student. What were those glasses? And I suppose boys will be boys. Case dismissed. Well, first, you pointed this out on Twitter, Bob, and you're right. There are some distracting extras in the background in this walk through the courthouse.

As they're walking through the courthouse and establishing scene, there is a a kirk van houten looking lawyer talking to a family and the two children are so distinctively drawn that they appear to be somebody's original characters or perhaps like a layout artist's children or something someone is drawing something into the show they they have never appeared before it's not like jimbo or like jimbo's in the front it's so but it's not one of the other like bad kids we've seen before like it's it's brand new kids i'm i'm

beginning to think it yes i think you're right that it's like somebody's kids looked like that and they they drew them in there and i i do want to talk about uh judge slater briefly because he is sort of recharacterized in this episode so this character i think in this episode he is officially made uh black because this episode he is officially made black because before that he is a white or yellow skinned character in the simpsons world uh before so he was introduced in crusty gets busted as judge molten and then he was in another episode after that but uh when bill oakley and josh weinstein were writing uh margin chains that's when they called him judge snyder because they didn't know he was named because uh hutz goes

oh no we've drawn judge snyder and that's when he became snyder from that point on about how he ran over his son repeatedly but yeah he's been around since uh season one but he's just been a stern judge here they show him to be like a like far too easy on a criminal's judge and this is how bart gets away with it every how bart has not gone to jail yet for all of the things he's done because he always tricks judge snyder oh and also i noted that jimbo jimbo is with his mom and it is the consistent design of jimbo's mom that we first saw in season six is pta is the pta disbands uh but i love hearing a little white child in millhouse beg like please let me slip through the cracks like that is a great great little comment on on america's justice system as

well and and just a great line of like you look like a good student what with those glasses like just a ridiculous line uh and so as it's bart's turn he quickly puts on a cross and just keeps brandishing it at Snyder. Drumming his fingers on it. That's so great that Snyder is like, clearly he's a religious guy who's like, oh, this Bart, he's religious. He learned his lesson.

Yeah, yeah. But again, in a very ridiculous moment, his vacation begins mid-sentence and leaves before he can prosecute Bart and like right before he's about to do it, like which is so wonderfully ridiculous. And in comes Judge Constance Harm. All rise for the Honorable Judge Constance Harm. Silence in my courtroom! Grand Theft Auto?

It was an accident, ma'am. Don't spit on my cupcake and tell me it's frosting. What did she say about cupcakes? According to this, your father was driving you to school? Then where was he when you stole the police car? Your Honor, I was chasing the KBBL Party Penguin Prize Patrol. You abandoned your son to win $40? And a Blue Oyster Cult Medallion. Cool. And that was more important

than keeping your son out of trouble? Your Honor, if I may sing a little bit of Don't Fear the Reaper, I think you'll agree that... I'm familiar with B.O.C., but you have got a boy here who is crying out for adult supervision. I couldn't agree more. Perhaps some sort of court-appointed babysitter or au pair. Sorry, Bob, that crow won't caw. It won't.

I hereby order you to be tethered to your son. Tethered? Tethered. Report to room five. Room five! You know, they don't really exaggerate the Judy character that much, but I like the idea of someone responding to her quips. Yes.

No one ever responds to her quips in the show. She just shuts down conversation with them. Yeah. Everybody. Yeah. It's great. They're like, wait, Walt. What?

Yeah. And obviously Jane Kaczmarek playing like another feisty authority figure on Malcolm in the Middle. So it's great casting. And this character would come back a lot. She appears seven more times in The Simpsons. She last appears in 2010. Yeah, it's great.

She was in the show like eight times total over 10 years. I have to think Kazmarek like moved out of Hollywood or something, or maybe they got tired of her character but that seems less likely i just it's shocking like also i always forget they they are no longer together but at the time jane kasmarek she was in a tv power couple with bradley whitford they both he got cast on the west wing at the same day she got cast on Malcolm in the Middle. So, yes. And she's, you know, a West Wing liberal type, if we're going to just name the politics of all the people we're talking about here.

But yes, though, I believe they. I like I just like I like how in this clip she and Homer bond over Blue Oyster Cult, which is just like the funniest band they could possibly have chosen uh for this scene uh well and yeah you know on the commentary they uh they think that they did this joke before the more cowbell sketch on snl they are wrong like i i'm not saying they ripped off the more cowbell sketch because i think they're just of the same age and all of them always thought about like yeah don't fear the reaper is a weird song isn't it that's funny but it was probably written before well if this is like if this is a production season 12 episode

was that sketch like april of 2001 or something it was actually april of 2000 oh 2000 so never mind 19 months so yeah the the more cowbell was right before which now you know i listened to don't fear the reaper many times before hearing the more cowbell sketch now all i hear is cowbell listening to it it ruined where the song i our friend scott gerner joked about how when he met the guy who wrote the more cowbell sketch that got him into he met him and told him like yeah your sketch influenced me to like be a comedy sketch writer and the guy told him like everybody tells me that like literally it's apparently the most influential uh comedy sketch of like the 90s b or the aughts because everybody saw it was like i gotta write a

comedy sketch as good as more cowbell this is not a relevant question to you know our discussion of the simpsons but am i wrong in thinking that don't fear the Reaper is kind of like the only well-known blue oyster cult song. I think that's the only one that I know. I think there's that song they did about Godzilla. Man. What? Yeah.

I don't, I don't remember this. I can't think of another one off the top of my head though. No, I mean the don't fear the Reaper, especially it's, uh, you can,

I think they've made a lot of money because they accepted like, oh yeah, I make fun of this song. We'll cash the check every time you want to make fun of this song. No, they definitely had a song about Godzilla. Because a girl I had a huge crush on in high school, I hung out with her and she played this song for me. Well, you're never going to forget that. No. The classic high school babe, a Blue Oyster Cult chick. It didn't work out.

But yeah, so on the commentary, they seem to think they did it beforehand, which I mean, again, I don't think they're ripping it off. Though also, they're all friends. Like, George Meyer is good, good friends with Jack Handy, who was like, and the other head writer of SNl for a long time so they're all pals but yes the the room also i just love on that the little gong sound they always make or the uh the the the bell sound when it goes to like cuts to room five that's also just such a great kid too and this is when homer uh finds out his wrist is too fat now and he's

gained a lot of weight in his wrist and and him running out sobbing is funny enough but that it drags bart out with him yeah and there was uh so on the commentary mike scully mentioned that there was a real life uh sentencing of a child had to be sent like tethered to their parent but whenever i tried like every configuration of google search terms for that but all it brought me was stories of child abuse yes so i couldn't find the actual case if you're out there and you know put it in the comments or something because i really like to know like what were the circumstances behind this you know i had that same horrible event happened to me too bob and i had to i searched like parent chain to child

and it was like headlines of like uh abusive parent chains child up in basement i was like no i don't no that's not fun that's not the research i'm trying to do here uh but you know it as a as a as a conceit for for a tv episode it actually reminds me of an episode of south park i don't know if you guys how familiar you are with south park but there's that episode where i think cartman misbehaves they go to like a pioneer village or something and his punishment, if I'm remembering rightly, is that he has to get like tethered. Oh, no, it's hold hands with butter the whole time. They're just yeah, it's the accountability. Butters won't let go. And then Cartman like drags him to like some like amusement park or something. And then like somehow they end up like dangling from a traffic light or something stories of uh just like chain gang escape type stories are just people chained together it's like

it's a it's a classic uh storytelling device yeah what was the uh the adam sandler damon wayans movie was about uh was on that same subject the two guys chained together and also the uh the chain gang movie the uh oh brother where art thou that one too yeah but and and i think the animators do a really good job of keeping the physical sense like actually of how much slack it needs to be obviously the tether has to grow and shrink in length through the magic of fiber optics yes it could be whatever length it needs to be for the joke uh but yes as the uh the next scene begins to me it does feel out of character that lisa is praising this cruel and unusual punishment doesn't it feel weird lisa is just there to give facts about the story lisa really lisa's really in favor of this like

alternative sentencing like creative punishment which i mean this seems like very like simpsons post season nine, because like, why would Lisa like Lisa? Lisa should be a critic of all these things. Yes. Yeah. Later she says, oh, it's actually working. Yeah. She's Lisa is very pro that. But but the I can see why she thinks it's so good in this next clip. This punishment is so cruel and unusual. Can that judge do this to us? Creative sentencing is common these days. That's why Bill Clinton is our new mailman.

Dang magazines. Well, maybe it'll be fun. You'll get to spend more time together. Make sure your father takes his mood medication. I'll medicate you. Honey, you know, this could be fun. Race you to the kitchen, my little tetherball. You're on, rope-a-dope.

At least he can sit, like, right in the throat, just clothesline. Just like, that's one of the most violent things they've ever done to Lisa. That's a real slap on the wrist for Bill Clinton. Yes, yeah. Well, I mean, less so than what he gets in real life actually for uh you know and we still have to see him on fucking uh like the the master class ads and all that he still gets to do that i thought i thought at the very least we wouldn't have to see him anymore you know it's it's only gossip at this point but actually last

week uh politico had a story about, you know, they have like the morning playbook and there's a lot of like fun political gossip in there. And apparently the Clintons are actually looking upon this moment for some reason as, you know, they're seeing signs that this is like a moment for a big public comeback. And hilariously, one of the clues, one of the reasons that they think this is the case is that the new season of American Crime Story, which deals with the impeachment proceedings and Monica Lewinsky is kind of she and Linda Tripp are the main characters. Bill Clinton is played by Clive Owen. It's, you know, it has some interesting moments. I've actually seen the whole thing. I would say on

balance, it's not very good, but it sort of passed through, you know, culture last fall, and people didn't really pay attention to it. And because of the mixed reception, the low ratings, apparently the Clintons think, hey, time to Leroy Jenkins it and come back into American life, which if I was advising them, I would say, just take the L, take the L and quit while you're ahead. I still think Hillary's eye in 2024. i think she thinks she's got a shot you know i've taken her class on perseverance and it really helped me become a bigger loser so showed you how to triangulate towards the middle and finally and finally get things done

no i but homer mood medication joke that was a darker one than i remember too like you literally like he's got a fist in marge's face he's gonna punch her like i'll medicate you like he's it's all homer is very close to beating marge here you could tell it's like uh who cares who homer is anymore this is a funny joke yes yeah but he he's desperately in need of this medication or he will kill his family he will become a family annihilator well of course as we learn later about homer in in this next clip, he isn't sleeping very well. Today we're going to talk about predicates and predicate nominatives. Boring! Mr. Simpson, I'm trying to teach.

Come on, these kids are never going to use that stuff. Will you please just go back to sleep? Fine. Fine. All right. Now, who can pick out the predicate in this sentence? What's wrong with him now, Bart? Night terrors, ma'am.

Cobras! Cobras! Well, you understand, I mean, in Eight Misbehavin', Homer was bitten by cobras and robots filled with venom at the end so he has the right to be afraid of uh of cobras he's been tortured by cobras a lot you're right yeah it's but what a funny just the a man sleeping on the floor chained to his son screaming cobras like it's it's not so much about the character of homer but it is a funny visual

i have to give it that also that homer like kids are using predicates they use it every day when they speak you know but also though the next scene where they're playing baseball why is skinner the umpire he only says safe like there's no no other reason that skinner is the umpire could have been willie it could have been uh mr It could have been Mr. Largo. I don't know. Willie would be funny. He'd have a funnier voice. And Homer telling him, Bart, like, shut out everything but the sound of my criticism as he's about to hit the ball.

That's a good gag, too. And then Bart hits a home run, runs very fast. He drags Homer behind him, which, like homer has to be 240 pounds bart drags him with ease through all of the like broken all the broken glass and garbage on their uh baseball diamond is so great too i love a lot of people uh they put it on the commentary and i was there on the news groups people were very mad at this bloodied uh horribly wounded homer asking for a hug uh i think it's very funny now because rarely is that much gore drawn to the characters in such detail you know i complained about the scabby knee in children of a lesser clod but i'm fine with this bloody homer like it's fucking hug me and then he just collapses and screams more about

cobras it's so and and but yes Bart and Homer bond together. I guess they have a deal of like Bart does the Bart goes to school in the daytime and then he goes to work with Homer at night. Don't know when they sleep at any point during this well we saw when Homer sleeps. Oh that's true yes yeah. But yeah it's

I don't know this little scene of them together is cute to me That's my boy. Come on, hug me. Cobras! Cobras! I thought I would hate working nights, but it's so peaceful. And there's no one here to squeal on me for shooting mice.

Can I ask you something, Dad? Sure, boy. The town keeps getting bigger. Will there always be enough electricity? Oh, son, you know that's none of your business. Gee, is that our house? I don't think our house has a steeple. Oh, yeah. I forget things sometimes.

I mean, they play the sweet music, but it is troubling, everything he says. Yes, that's true. I like Homer's answer to the question, will the town ever run out of electricity? Because it is like the kind of patronizing answer that like like certain adults might give to that question from a child but it's also like like i think there's like an insight into homer's character there too because it's also like he he actually doesn't know and is probably troubled by the question himself you know i can't tell you yeah i i also love the what a great line of like there's no one to squeal on me for shooting mice meaning that homer has like you know you hear these stories of like the railroad hobo

kills time by just shooting rats by the garbage dump. And that's what Homer just does. The thought of Homer in his nuclear power plant, just with his revolver in hand, just blasting mice everywhere. Like it's so, it's horrifying. And then Bart is just there like to watch him do it. That Homer forgets things sometimes is a bad sign about his mental health. But the way he says it, I forget things sometimes.

It's sweet. As is them just sitting on the edge of the cooling tower. Like they're on the front porch or on the dock instead of like, you know, a hundred stories high or something. They're very high up. But the fun and games are over as they see there's a downside to it as they clunk their heads together this is a really throwaway line but i love how throwaway it is really you like skateboards which is the most stereotypical thing to know about bart and homer is shocked by it uh he's finally learning about

his son and then also great animation about when they clunk their heads together they both eat their ice cream cones at the same time and a lot of this uh you know being a child at a bar while your dad gets drunk is taken from dana gould's life the writer and comedian who had to hang out at a lot of bars with his drunken father and play pinball and pass the hours and and as dana gould is so good doing, he took that child abuse and turned it into comedy gold. Yeah. It becomes even more of a story in Homer the Moe, the

upcoming episode. Yes, Bart can't come into the bar. I need a beer. I hit my head, Moe. One beer coming up. Hey, hey, no kids in the bar.

Since when? Oh, the heat's been on since them bush girls were in here. All right, all right. Come on, Bart. I'm cold and scared. That's my little slugger. Come on, Dad, let's go. Hey, knock it off.

These pants cost $600. Really? Yeah, they're Italian. Alright, hand them over. Moe, what the... Yeah, I rob now. That's the biggest sellout of Moe they ever did of him just like straight up saying, yeah,

I rob now now i point a gun at you homer and you give me things apparently that was an ad lib by hank azaria because he was just shocked at how low they brought mo yeah it's like yeah i robbed now i mean they've done every suicide joke they can with most of the like you know what mo shoots people like we've we saw him blast a guy for not using a coaster this is just just the next level for it. And yeah, you know, the mouth lip sync is so off on there that I bet it was a late one. The talk about the Bush twins is very ripped from the headlines. It was the biggest scandal before 9-11, where on June 1st, 2001, the twin daughters of George W. Bush both cited in in uh austin for drinking underage they were 19 who cares yeah and that was a big scandal in the news at the time they were party girls these party

and teens yeah i which i mean you know their dad was a party guy they're they're they're rich like fifth generation rich kids like of course they're fucking drunk all the time and and expect to get away with it and they did get away with it because literally nothing happened to them for that i mean every time i want to be depressed i remind myself that jenna bush hager is a host of the today show oh right is a very successful uh news reporter on tv yes and george bush himself of course now has a net positive approval rating with democrats yeah it's just great uh if only you know jake cheney was there to get a handshake on on january 6th why wasn't bush there too they should have thanked him for how much he cared about the integrity of elections you know they couldn't pay him enough to show up i think yeah cheney well obviously cheney was there

to help out his uh his daughter in in further helping her brand as a good republican i just i want to fucking drink hemlock every time this is how low the stakes were before 9-11 where uh women who are uh not children they're like almost drinking age ordering tix at a restaurant that's the biggest scandal yes and frankly i mean the drinking age is 19 in canada is that correct luke yeah and i think in some provinces it might be even it might be even lower and i think actually it's only 19 for like buying alcohol i think there's some weird loophole where if you're 18 you can like drink it but not buy it but yeah i've always found the like 21 uh thing that exists in a lot of american states like i mean it makes absolutely no sense it's like a cliche that that people say where it's I've always found the 21 thing that exists in a lot of American states.

It makes absolutely no sense. It's like a cliche that people say where it's like, oh, yeah, you can be drafted and you can get married or whatever. You can't drink. But it's true. It's totally absurd. And I remember, if you remember the Comedy Central show, That's My Bush, speaking of South Park, they were going to have the Bush girls as characters. But I think that's the one thing they weren't allowed to do like the kids are off limits even though they're not minors kids yeah it's like

i i even understand like i don't make fun of baron trump he's a child it's like fine but i mean he's huge he'll he'll crush you yes he's also he'll crush me in one hand but uh but uh yeah i mean the kids are off limits thing really does i mean with the trump children obviously there was a bit of an exception partly because it was you know there were lots of exceptions made uh when it came to trump but i mean also just because the trump children the older ones were like so public facing and like we're just you know ivanka trump was just like given a job like she's just like suddenly showing up to like you know international conferences and stuff but uh i think that like you know keep the children out of a thing is largely held i mean it really

is amazing like how little you hear about hunter biden i mean of course unless you watch if you watch fox news or something you probably hear a lot about hunter biden but there is like there has been like a total freeze out on the fact that like yeah joe biden's uh joe biden's son folks he's up to all kinds of mischief. You can see plenty of them online. Oh, if you know where to look. Here's one last thing about Jenna Bush. I found a headline from hell of 2018. Jenna Bush Hager talks to Michelle Obama about her friendship with George W. Bush.

Obama told Hager her father is a beautiful, funny, kind, sweet man, but added, I don't know that i agree with him on everything so wonderful headline great stuff yeah i remember when he gave me her fuel she gave him that little candy and it was cute yeah you know we haven't had a cute scene in a while i think maybe the the michelle obama's pr team realized that that was testing poorly and they've, they've pulled it back a little bit, just a little bit. Although, yeah, like even, even if those kinds of images have kind of gone out of favor, like that one, the Michelle Obama, George Bush one,

like the meme that it birthed is still with us, which like, I can't remember who was responsible for the original tweet, but there was that like, you know, probably like, you know, like Normie report or whatever, who had that that who like quote tweeted it with that caption like this is powerful i'm sorry but it is please don't post something snarky and uh yeah people uh people posted something snarky i mean not to go on too long about this but i believe i think really uh ellen was the litmus test like the most beloved entertainer can she hang out with bush and everyone was mad yep yeah and then from then on it was like that was when the dam broke on like

i think the people who worked for her and who were in a very ugly and toxic work environment i think they they are the ones who finally right you know what this george bush thing that's the last draw i'm going to the press i'm going to tell i'm going to tell all about what a piece of crap she is i i mean ellen's still just as rich as ever like it's really just like celebrity time out I'm going to the press. I'm going to tell all about what a piece of crap she is. I mean, Ellen's still just as rich as ever. It's really just like celebrity timeout. You go on timeout for a little bit and you come back. But anyway, so that next scene, Kent Brockman is doing a piece on Judge Constance Harm, which again, what a ridiculous name.

No person would be named Constance Harm. But though, you know, perhaps that's the name she chose as a further joke. Well, yeah, perhaps that, you know, that's as an adult, she maybe changed her name to that. But the way Kent Brockman presents her actually reminded me of. So the things that made Judge Judy famous. First, there was the early 1993 L times article and then 60 minutes did the follow-up piece on her in late 1993 which would lead to her getting the show by 1996 and a book

deal for 1995 uh listen to how she is introduced on 60 minutes as a person who like oh you've never heard of this person before if you want to get a fix on what's gone wrong with the American family and the American city, spend some time, as we did recently, in New York's family court, and be a witness to the ways in which law and disorder works or doesn't. Stay long enough, you'll see it all. The battered child, the crack mother, the 10-year-old mugger, the burnt-out social worker, the nitpicking lawyer, all of them sloshing through the well-meaning

swamp called the child welfare system. And you'll find presiding there Judith Scheindlin, Judge Judith Scheindlin. And if you find her a little bit shrill, a little bit testy, oh, she'd be very pleased. I think the subtext is, why can't we just kill all these people? Yes. No, I mean, again, there's not like an ounce of empathy for any of the person he said there. Like, look at all these monsters. Like, again, this is the super predator era of talking points about this.

Yeah. I mean, we shouldn't idealize, you know, the 1960s or whatever too much. But, like, you can see a clear direction of travel in like how poverty and a whole host of social problems you know were conceived you know during like lbj's great society compared to you know that clip you just played where like you know i do think at there was there was a period in like mid-century america where the breakdown of the family or whatever if that framing was even used at all would have been understood as like poverty precedes that like you get the social disintegration because of these like material things and those can be fixed and like by the 1980s and 90s like you know after the i mean the like neoliberal duopoly of like

reaganism and clintonism that polarity becomes completely reversed where it's like oh yeah we have all these problems and they begin and with like families which are morally defective and like parents which are morally defective and individuals who just like behave badly. And so instead of having like a welfare state, instead of having social programs, instead of having economic redistribution, whatever. Instead, we're going to put all our resources into like the state being as punitive as possible. And we're going to we're going to whip all our resources into like the state being as punitive as possible and we're gonna we're gonna whip people into line i mean it really was a remarkable transformation in only uh you know three or four decades now i mean you hear that speech about like the well-meaning swamp like that's them saying like see we give these people too much money as it is and it's just a bunch of well-meaning people letting it easy like a 10 year old mugger like with the implicit in that

it's like fuck that kid like that 10 year old mugger should go to jail forever like that i and i just can't believe like you just people just said like the crack mother it's like god damn man just like that and of course implicit in all that description by that guy like you're not imagining a white person like this is not white people they're taught especially when he says like inner city new york like he's the coded language is there too and also when you talk about the welfare system in an enemy fix implicit in that is saying like because these non-white people are misspending your money on on fit on basketball shoes or whatever it's just like fun and just the dog whistles are horrid in that but anyway that's so you can see how they set up judy judge judy right there just like see finally

somebody is taking it to these people the these people anywho yeah i uh of course here the racial aspect is taken away in the simpsons that is is not there. But I do love that she says, like, I blame Mr. and Mrs. Never Spank. And then Kit goes, uh-oh, we'll have to bleep their names. You'll bleep nothing. What a great line. He thinks she's naming real people who could sue them for libel because she said blaming Mr. and Mrs. Never Spank. I really laugh at Marge's joke about, look how high and firm her breasts are. That's a great joke.

And then that comes back later in the show, that firm-breasted judge. That's so great. Though in real life, Judge Judy is a mother. She's married twice. Actually, that's another thing, too. While she was a family court judge, her husband was on the New York State Appeals. He's actually a very high ranking judge so and of course again she was not in an electable position the the 93 article actually points it

at like well you know mayor dinkins might actually take her out now because she's a ed kocha appointee it's like oh so she's just like a political favor uh position as well uh where she can never be taken out unless she like uh gets bad press or whatever and yeah also uh that yeah sorry this then is where homer is told like oh bart might even be in the honor roll if he can control his night terrors homer replies well that's a pretty big if on he he accepts he will never not have night terrors and now it turns into homer being horribly awful to bart telling him to pee in a bottle and later be witness to him having sex which i just love is like i don't even oh we have the bottle somebody tell me i i do like him trying to calmly explain to the judge we were just trying

to have sex in front of my son that'll happen later but yes the him and homer wants to have sex and this is the too far for him like he's he's lost so much by being tethered to bart now he can't sleep with marge that that marge marge also is she's like okay i'll make out a little bit but you know what we got to stop right here and homer's like oh why he sees worse on the animal channel and this slap fight i like it's almost like a they live fight because once uh bart starts whipping homer's ass i start thinking there's a lot of ass whipping and then they do an insert shot of just an ass being hit the whip he's whipped so many times just went by they even it's really painful and bob you have it as your background picture marge coming into the room where they're saying like i can't take

anymore she looks like she is about to kill bart and homer and it's just such a great just like cheat like bart and homer like oh my god mom has lost it and she's going to stab us both to death gets her butcher knife hidden in the bathroom for some reason. Her bathroom knife. Yeah. Also it feels extra wrong that when Homer strangles Bart using a cable instead of his hands for some reason that feels worse than just using an instrument to do it.

It does seem like I'm watching actual abuse now. And so Homer is freed but he's not as free as he thinks. That's right. It's me, Judge Harm, through the magic of fiber optics. Hey, how about that? Quiet, Tubsy.

You violated my order. But Constance, it only happened because... Hey, hey, if I want a cock and bull story, I'll read Hemingway. Don't be mad at Homer. I was the one who cut the rope. Are you threatening me with that knife? No! Wait! I'm to blame, Judge.

You see, I was pressuring my wife to make love in front of our son. You're gonna laugh when you hear this. When suddenly... Well, I thought Dad was the problem. But apparently Mom is no prize pig herself. It's a miracle poor Bartholomew isn't robbing banks and chasing Sweet Lady H. Well, I thought Dad was the problem, but apparently Mom is no prized pig herself. It's a miracle poor Bartholomew isn't robbing banks and chasing Sweet Lady H. I'm a latchkey kid.

You are not. Quiet, little girl. Even Lisa. Yes, again, pressuring my wife to make love in front of our son. What a great line. It's great how Constance Harm is trying to, you know, increase the quality of her quips but she writes a dennis miller style clip and nobody understands it yes yes uh and that pregnant pause there that they just have of like it means nothing yeah i guess the sun also rises is a story about a matador so that would be a cock and bull story i would assume that's the reference but uh

now that i've read i've read some heway, but I have not read that one. But yes, I also love the magic that Constance just exists inside the cable. Like it's a little screen inside. In her judge's robe. Yes. Yeah. That it is thanks to fiber optics, which again, ridiculous. But they on the commentary go like, what?

So she's just sitting at home in a robe in front of a camera i prefer to think that it is a very smart ai representation of constance harm that is uh replying to her and then reports back to harm she's in the server verse with all your other favorite characters right put there by by leg yeah lg rhythm not ali they then are being sentenced. And this is where this is a good extra turn because the whole episode could just be Homer and Bart together. But I think it's smart that they're like, no, the third act is bringing in Marge into it. Because we know Homer sucks and we know Bart's a jerk. Marge, though, isn't a terrible parent.

And that they make it that it's her pride that prevents her from doing it. Like in this bit here of her little exchange with Judge Harm. I almost said Judy. You two need to wake up and smell the java. And the first step is to admit that you're bad parents. I admit it. Oh, no, we're not bad parents. Yes, you are.

Just say it. No, I won't. And frankly, Judge, I think you're a bully. You do, huh? You're so busy thinking up crazy ways to punish people, you can't see how much I love my kids. Um, Your Honor, I'd like to be tried separately. I don't mean to be disrespectful, Judge Harm, but we are not bad parents. And there isn't a tether in this world with enough fiber optics to make me say we are.

She's such a butthole. Shocking moment from Marge. Another hated moment. But she's brought so low that she says the b-hole word. It is funny hearing Marge say butthole. But what a great line. Like, there isn't a tether in this world with enough fiber optics to make me say we are like that's a great line yeah it's that marge won't like she her pride won't let her do it homer uh admits like

he's like i admit it and he's correct to admit that he is a bad parent and he should admit it but again it's judge judy i like that she finally gets told that she's a bully, which also that's that's in the 60 Minutes piece, too, where they talk about how like there are no appeals in family court, which I was like, that's kind of fucked up, isn't it? Like becoming a family court guy. Henry, watch out. You know, they especially they're against fathers like that. I do wonder.

We've said it before about the some of the divorced writers on the show. I wonder if they're getting a little, with the Judge Judy family court stuff, if they're getting a little of the rocks off in that regard there. I wonder. You know what? This reminds me, Bob. You've told me before the recording. They invent this character, but they reference Judge Judy many times in the show before this episode.

Yes, at least twice. In Day of the Jack and Apes, Krusty, he taped over all of Sideshow Bob's appearances on his show because he had a thing for Judge Judy at one point in time. And then in Beyond Blunderdome,

Bart wants a picture taken in the Batmobile, but Marge said she wasted an entire role on a man she thought was Judge Judy. Yeah. Judge Judy and Judge Harm

coexist in the Simpsons world. I guess, you know, it's like how Lucius Swede and Don King exist in the same timeons world i guess you know it's like how uh lucius swede and uh don king don king exists in the same time too yeah same deal or like how on on the sopranos like all of the characters are obsessed with goodfellas and it's like fucking half of them are in goodfellas yeah they should be like hey you look just like the kid who gets shot at the card game chris like oh you never you know i never noticed that yeah so yes the uh the shock uh the shock cut is that harm seems to be listening but then is actually decides to put them in stockades movable stockades like they they they're not

held in place but their arms are now or their hands are now right up around their heads and they can't move anymore now i have a vocabulary lesson for everybody out there uh it's actually called a pillory oh and on the uh commentary they call them stockades but i believe they are in pillories okay so there you have it in case you're wondering what that thing is it's a pillory that's why when people say oh you're you're really pillory me today like yeah they say it all the time sorry luke yeah it's like a very it's like a very common punishment in the middle ages i think That's why when people say, oh, you're really pillory me today. They say it all the time. Sorry, Luke. It was like a very common punishment in the Middle Ages, I think. Which I guess is also the commentary they're making of like, well, yeah, this type of punishment is medieval.

Like it's fucked up. Like we had moved past this. If we have any experts out there, I think a stockade is immovable, but a pillory is something you can walk around in okay all right it's the mobility that makes a difference and then great animation on them trying to wash the dishes without moving their hands and their next their heads like marge marge using the brush in her mouth and then using it and then homer just swinging back and forth with the uh with the drying towels it's great they do point out that they can um change their clothes while they're in these things who knows how the bathroom works well as as the time moves on in the episode their hands

can get even farther and farther out of it as needed for a joke yeah the joke on lisa's part which i'm gonna give this the take that lisa's beliefs jingle as she tries to tell Bart to fix things and Bart won't even reply to her. Take that Lisa's beliefs. Do you think it's fair that you're always getting into trouble yet mom and dad are being punished? No, it's terrible. Well, why don't you do something about it? After Wesley. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't believe what I am seeing.

Dr. Bonebrake just married Rumbelina, and they're already wailing at each other. When are you going to start taking responsibility for your actions? Because I felt like it. You're not even listening. I know you are, but what am i oh haven't we been humiliated enough not yet no today the judge wants you to bend over so people can spank you from their cars well that explains the sign yeah i love that that explains the sign

yeah yeah i think you played that clip hen, because there was wrestling in it, right? I did. I did. We were in the Attitude Era, correct? So yes, this is late 2001. The peak of wrestling has passed. It's going down ever so slightly, but pro wrestling is still very big in the US at this time.

Though what they show on TV is more 80s style wrestling than 2001 style wrestling. Though so many wrestling weddings have happened a million wrestling weddings this is uh is apparently a an accepted wisdom in the in the realm of pro wrestling is that ratings always go up for a wedding if you do a wrestling wedding that gets interrupted by somebody and a fight breaks out or somebody gets thrown into the wedding cake instant rating success and that it it really appeals to women apparently that is the accepted wisdom in the pro wrestling world so this is no crazier than any other i mean the men and women don't hit each other as much these days but otherwise this this wrestling wedding pretty similar and uh and actually on the dvd this is the source of the

first of two hidden deleted scenes that can only be accessed on the menu do tell is there more with rumble lena and dr bone break actually yes so in the first deleted scene we see more of the wrestling match bart has a funny comment that rumble lena is wearing her mother's wedding dress and then the preacher gets involved in the fight and beats up both of them and i think whoever animated that or laid it out they knew pro wrestling because the preacher does a reverse hurricane rana aka a poison rana which is a hardcore wrestling fan move in 2001 if you knew about it's basically doing a head scissors but from behind and you flip the guy over that sounds hard to animate so i'm sad that they cut it yes

yeah i don't i wonder if they just had the note of like we don't want to see more of this this female wrestler being beaten maybe that could be it but sadly sadly it got cut that's that that's the first of two that the second one's even bigger of a deleted scene but uh also it looks like homer and marge were putting the same baggy clown pants that homer found so fitting when he was trained to be crusty the clown but i just love that wiggum says exactly what they're supposed to be doing and that the sign just says it that's such a great joke too and so yes they all get spanked uh including whipped with a, it looks just like a regular whip, but I love that it's an extension cord that Nelson is using and no extent that's

against the rules. Did he steal Jimbo's buckle? You're right. Yeah. He's ranking on his core, dude. Yeah. That's a deep cut for you Jimbo belt fans out there. And so then see Homer and Marge contemplating what they're going to do, how they're going

to stand up to that firm-breasted judge. This is where the second deleted scene is, and it's big. So they're in bed together. First, there's the deleted scene joke about Homer and Marge trying to have sex, but they just can't figure it out with the pillories on. And so then when they decide they're going to break break out of it they animated an entirely different way that they got that they break out of their uh pillories they actually get in the car homer is in the driver's seat marge is chained to the tree outside and homer is pulling on it like it's pulling a two a loose tooth out and he drives and first flings Marge across

the backyard and into the garbage can and then he tries it again and it succeeds the second time but he crashes the car. So this is a full color animation? This is full color animation. It's like a minute long and it's not even in the

official deleted scenes. It's hidden in the DVD menus. so if you're wondering and george meyer wonders it on the commentary why are they taking the bus to get to the next scene it's because of the original animation they wreck the car in trying to get the things off so there you go they fully they cut that and that means the ned scene was like a late addition to it interesting yeah well we'll get to it soon but the bus scene i took that to be the joke is uh they uh well they put these disguises on but then they took public transit while wearing their burglar disguises and it's

funny that's pretty great too yes but in the actual episode it is there they decide that they got to get free again there's so many great just like smash cuts the smash cut of homer shoving margie's head towards a buzzsaw is so great they're saying i want goggles too that's such a great line and uh homer nearly kills marge in this next section my table saw to violate a court order well we tried all those other tools. Gee, I always like to help you, Homer, but I don't want to be an accessory to some sort of shady doings.

And it does raise a whole host of ethical questions, such as... Woo-hoo! Now, time for Operation Judge Get Back At. if that costume shop knew we were using these burglar outfits for real they'd be furious okay she lives at one ocean view drive let's start skulking that line about the burglar outfits for real they'd be furious that's another of my like favorite line i love that's just such a silly great line and but yeah homer almost kills marge in this and again it's a great joke but homer's arms are fully out of it yeah out of the the stop the holes he's up to his shoulders in it it's yeah but it's why i really laughed at ned coming down to see what the noise was like ebenezer scrooge in his sleeping cap and

he's holding a single lit candle but the candle is actually used to break the lock on the pillory it's like an important plot element that the fact that he's he's holding a candle like it's the 19th century and then they've destroyed all of his tools too like to do this which uh yeah and so yes homer and marge they're working together they also after that surfs up hair scene they need Marge to have her hair under a cap the entire time or else you'll be thinking about like, well, her hair really healed fast in between these scenes. And I always love when Homer forgets the plot

and he sees the milkman and says, I should be a milkman. And Marge has to remind him, no, this is what the episode is about. Because Homer becoming a milkman would be the shittiest episode. So he loves the idea. He's pitching another episode as they're doing it.

What would you do with that? It's such a great idea of a bad pitch given in a writer's room of like, Homer's a milkman. I also think that George Meyer has long admired houseboats because there are so many houseboat jokes in the history of this show this is just the newest the most recent one i mean speaking of cape fear this third act houseboat yeah that's entirely on a houseboat the sea captain often is in a houseboat he tries to sell them a houseboat like there's uh they say like oh if you live at sea there's no rules like there's there's just something attractive about a houseboat to george meyer i wonder you know with all of his millions he's gotten off of being a simpsons executive producer you think he owns a houseboat i mean i i guess really there's a line between houseboat and yacht

like what's what makes uh it's just a yacht you don't leave right i think so yeah judge judy definitely does not live in a houseboat. No, no, no, no. She's she's she's yacht life, right? She's got the yacht life one before she got famous. She just she lived in a rent controlled place in Manhattan. That's where she lived in because that's where she was a New York judge, a place that presumably no longer exists because of policies implemented by various politicians. She's's endorsed or that maybe it is one of the last rank controlled places and she's just subletting it to a relative or something she's got to be a landlord oh 100 yeah i mean you sure she's gotten very rich off her tv show

and i'm certain she owns like probably like 10 blocks of hollywood at this point like uh if ever i move to la i'll have she'll be my fucking landlord also speaking of reused jokes or recurring jokes there's a bit about them being mistaken for two men making out by the cops the movie has a similar joke oh yeah what with the policemen making out yes march thinks he's cornered at the hotel by two policemen, but then they start furiously making out and going into the hotel room together. So this is funny of just the reflection of like, those two longshoremen found love. Like, Wiggum's happy for them.

He's very happy. So in their plan here, Homer and Marge, it's almost as bad as George H.W. Bush's plan to hang the two bad neighbors sign on his own house. Yeah. But I like the mislead into them making you think they're going to put a different word on that banner there's only one word for a nasty super witch like her what a great i also as they arrive there

homer looking in the window and being like look at her in there washing her body like he's he acts disgusted but he's actually peeping on her in the shower like it's and again they already called her firm-breasted homer is enjoying this look i have a feeling but yes so they put up the big meanie sign and walk away this is when they get cornered by a dog-like uh seal named poncho as we find out now i've got a secret bit of information about this seal oh uh i'm sure no one out there knew this i looked into it so on this uh on the credits there is a voice actor credit for jess harnell now if you don't know who he is he is the voice of wacko warner on animaniacs his most famous voice he does a ton of voice acting he's been doing it for over 30 years

he is credited on imdb as the voice of poncho if you watch the show listen to the clip it is just stock sound effects so my theory is they stopped having frank welker on the show now luke a few episodes back we talked about how frank welker was hired to do animal noises for the show then they realized oh dan castaneda can do this for cheaper and he's already here so they stopped using frank i think they found they can get jess harnell for cheaper and tried using him out once for animal sounds and realized we can just use these stock sounds and they're better so i think he was hired and credited but in the final mix they use stock dog and seal sounds for poncho and there you have it the wiki says jess harnell did the voice clip for charlton heston in the beginning but no that was dan castellaneta and they wouldn't have hired

jess harnell to do charl do childhood testing once for one gag. And that's my theory. I think you cracked the case, Bob, 100%. That is great. That's why we're here. We're doing this work. I definitely can't improve on that. I will say, I found the seal gag a little bit like, I mean, it's a little random.

It's kind of like, I'm not really sure where it fits in. Yes. No, I mean, it's just, and then they think they're escaping and a seal pops up and acts like a dog. And then it turns out that it's like constant harms pets. Yes. She's such an eccentric judge. She's got a great body. She lives on a houseboat.

She owns a seal. Yeah. She has a great quilt, apparently. That's so great. And so this is when Homer decides to kill her. Look at her in there, washing her body. Get away from that window

and help me with this banner. I hate to call a judge dirty names but there's only one way to describe a nasty super witch like her It's just a friendly seal Play now. What is it, Poncho? Someone out there? You can't hide from me. She's gonna find us.

Oh, Lord. Guide this cinder block. Attempted murder. Homer, I guess he thinks because he closed his eyes and prayed to God, that he's like, hey, if it kills her, that was God's will, not me. But, like, he threw it at her head. She ducked. And, again, I pose the question to our audience.

Did a human being make those seal noises? I say no to you. That was not Jess Harnell. That was playing a clip you're right poor man poor jess harnell he probably thought he had like all right i'm the new sound guy for simpsons and then like one episode they let him know he's replaced he got his one clip and that's i mean not that he's like hurting for work or anything no he's fine yeah but the homer attempted murder scene makes me think like matt geraning is so busy with futurama right now

i think they got away with a lot while he was kind of working two jobs at once but i think he would have shut that joke down yes yeah i think so too i think homer again like just he wants her to die homer is trying to kill a person to solve his problems like yeah so after the boat is destroyed she's pissed off she lost her home we then get a great headline of Pear Sinks Judge's House. Quilt ruined. Great setup to the next joke here, which I really love Homer's incredibly selfish response. Like, so it cost you nothing. Like, yeah, why what you so mad about?

So she's about to really rain down hell on Homer and Marge. And this is when Bart decides he's seen enough. That quilt was made by my grandmother. So it cost you nothing. Shut up. You two are not only horrible parents, you're violent criminals. And I'm going to lock you up till frogs do fractions. Your Honor, may I say something? Well, it is highly unorthodox, so no. Please, Your Honor.

Oh, I can't resist that look. You remind me of me when I was a little boy. Your Honor, it's not easy being my parents. I'm always screwing up in school and getting in trouble with the law. But if I grew up to be a halfway decent person, I know it'll be because of my mom and dad. Everyone else might give up on me, but my parents never will. That's my brother. Um, did she say she used to be a dude so yeah now on the wiki

constance harm is listed as a trans woman i don't think that was the intent of the show this fact about her life is not ignored this is not a joke that has aged well i like the idea of this personal bombshell being dropped and then immediately skirted over and snake wants things to back up a bit like hey wait a minute what did you just say about yourself but obviously they wouldn't make this joke now no i mean from 2022 eyes that the scene in a vacuum that it's actually like oh judge constance harm like she's not ashamed that she was assigned may assign male at birth and it's just like yeah i, and then I transitioned. So that's fine.

But obviously that is not the intent of the joke when it was written. And as you noted, Bob, that Dana Gould uses a certain phrase for what type of joke this is that I'd rather not say. Yes, yeah, but it's on the commentary if you want to hear it. It starts with the word Tran. But anyway, the joke is not an open-minded joke it is a joke about how this this very you know aggressive masculine woman is obviously transgender because they're it it's a it is to mock trans people like that yeah ultimately which i prefer the 2022 reading of that. She's a proud trans person who is like, yeah, I'm not hiding it.

Like, well, what's to hide? What's to be ashamed about? But that was not the intent of the joke in 2001. It's crazy to think like when we were all growing up, like just how common that sort of joke was. And in all kinds of like, I mean, you know, The Simpsons is not like a, you know, conservative show. It was a show that a lot of conservatives actually were very uncomfortable with right i mean like there was famously you

know george hw bush like name dropping the simpsons in you know some uh some speech about family values or something you know i was i mean there's that uh there's that john stewart clip i can't remember from what year it was where i i remember what the joke is and it's you know not worth repeating but the punch line is like is chicks with dicks or whatever it was about Dennis Kucinich being not transphobic and he was mocking him as like what an unserious candidate Dennis Kucinich treating trans people with respect I mean we're yeah it was pretty it was pretty wild how uh you know there was all of that stuff in these like liberal milieus and then suddenly in like 2016 like Hillaryinton was all of a sudden talking about like intersectionality and stuff how did that happen yeah i think we're steering into unfortunately a slightly transphobic era for the show and for

comedy in general because i think by 2001 there were still gay jokes uh stereotypical gay jokes but i think by 2001 it's like well these are kind of tacky and dharma and greg is on tv and we're kind of progressive so let's not make gay jokes Dharma and Grace yeah Will and Grace but instead of like making gay jokes like oh these these they wouldn't call them this at the time but these trans people now they're weird let's make jokes about them so I think they

had to get over that yeah yeah it's you know times change and seemingly it's much better now for those certainly trans people and comedy intersection is uh not it's still a hot button issue these days unfortunately you know we're rebooting everything let's make dharma and grace hey what if they got together those two characters that yeah jenna elfman dating deborah messing yeah okay let's see him happy but but yeah like it's uh it's such a mean joke i it's it makes me

sad but i like to view it now as just like no a proud trans person that's all it is but uh yes they also joke that like this is the fastest they've ever sold out a character in the show that within the same episode they go that far with a joke with them but that's how punchy they were you know also when they mentioned that snakes there matt selman has one of my all-time favorite commentary jokes on there because they mentioned why is snake in juvenile court and matt selman jokes he says you're in the court of the victim you killed and so that's right oh my god like as a really they asked the question i love that bart gives a little speech like just a very

traditional sitcom sweet speech and she's like okay then i'm throwing you in jail like every there's so many just great like first she says it's very unorthodox so no just great uh just pretending that like this is going to melt her heart and nothing melts her heart and so of course the thing that saves the day is that a character who very sporadically just disappeared for the plot to start reappears so the plot can end in our final clip. Bartholomew Simpson, I hereby sentence you to five years in juvenile hall.

Well, I'm back from vacation. But I was just about to bang my gavel, making the sentence official. Sorry, I've already from vacation. But I was just about to bang my gavel, making the sentence official. Sorry, I've already put my clown down. But I was just going to... The clown is down. Oh! Judge Snyder, motion to declare a writ of boys will be boys.

Motion granted. Case dismissed. Woo-hoo! All right, we got lucky that time. But I want everyone in this family to raise your hand and promise not to break the law for one full year. We promise. We promise.

Ah! Ah! Ah! Whew! That was close. Please drive off me. No. What's that noise?

It's just the radio, dear. Dang me. Dang me. That ought to take a roll and hang me. And that was the Roger Miller song, Dang Me, from 1964. Grammy Award winning. I'm surprised, Luke, you might not know this, but Mike Scully, big fan of the band NRBQ. He used them eight times in his run on the show.

I'm surprised he didn't end his production run with an NRBQ song. Yeah. You know what? I mean, Dang Me is not that. I guess Gotta Take a Rope and Hang Me, I suppose, is thematically connected to the episode about tethering and and judgments but still yeah i wish it was an nrbq song well one last paycheck for his friends at nrbq why not nine songs yeah but another of my favorite lines in this episode that i think is full of great lines is we've all watched movies where you just assume that like oh well the gavel didn't go down then the sentence isn't true but

just for her to say like it's thus making it official like that's such a great lie and she's explaining it to another judge too yes yeah which obviously is not the real rule a judge can just say like well no i made my sentence a gavel doesn't gavels don't make things official but uh also i speaking of lisa being out of character she's supporting boys will be boys uh pronouncements i guess i mean it saves her brother but still the the first uh scene of this act of the third act is her saying against boys will be boys and the bart shouldn't get away with this stuff anymore but uh whatever the episode's over that's what's important they finished an episode and now scully scully and george meyer can head out the door to retirement well mike scully will head

out to make a tv show with uh mel gibson hey before that he makes the picks okay yes he does the show that's right yeah and look he's he doesn't work with mel gibson anymore mike scully does it was it was just a brief dalliance with him if he's sorry and then luke you would i think you would really appreciate that mike scully is like he's a big like union guy in the the comedy world like he is about unionizing the writer's room like he's a big guild guy so i i he's you know scully has a lot of positives about him but uh but yes then we end with blue oyster carl cult over the over the credits two songs back to back yeah one one should just flow into the other one there but but anyway yes we we get one last dose of cowbell and the episode is done but as far as an exit for mike scully even though it's

not the last mike scully episode to air and technically he comes back. Yeah. The, the Strummer vacation is pretty much just a Mike Scully episode, even though Gene is a showrunner, but this is kind of the end of an era here. And it, I'm glad that one of the last ones for Scully for me exemplifies what I like about his stuff, which is zaniness not what i don't like as much about it which is cruelty and awfulness though there's serious some of it there characterization goes out the window it's just like what is the funniest thing that can happen

we'll do it now and yeah just a rapid fire joke machine which in some ways uh broke the show but i think it kept it interesting at a time when the show had been on for over a decade. So I have really grown to like a lot of what Mike Scully does and we've talked to him a few times and I think he's a great person, very funny on Twitter and again, pro-union

because he wasn't born with the Harvard spoon in his mouth. That's true. He's a working class guy, man. A college dropout, I think. He is. Luke, thank you so much again for coming on. Please let everybody know where they can find you.

Check out Michael and Us, patreon.com slash Michael and Us. If you don't listen to us already, if you like this show, you'll probably like ours. And also, I have a book out. It's called The Dead Center. It's published by Or Books, and you can find it on their website. Oh, awesome. Awesome, man. No, it was great having you on, Luke.

It had been a while and me and Bob really enjoy Michael and us a lot. So it was great. It's always great talking with you about old Simpsons. And yeah, I hope, you know, Simpsons articles do well on Google and stuff. You should do a weekly one, just a monthly one. Just monthly on Jacobin. Yeah, I mean, thanks. It's wild.

I mean, I think that's probably, I mean, that's probably like the most popular, like shared thing that I wrote in the last like quarter of the year, at least, if not last third of the year. Yeah, for whatever reason, that really hit the zeitgeist. But yeah, no, this is always so much fun, guys. Your forensic method of going through the simpsons uh never ceases to impress me well thank you so much again luke thanks luke thanks for your time so thanks again to luke savage for being on the show please check out michael and us it's a

great podcast but as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week at a time and ad free please head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month you get just, but also access to our extensive back catalog of miniseries episodes, over 100 to date. When you sign up, you get access to one episode of Talking Futurama and King of the Hill every month. And there are so many things going on behind that $5 paywall. Too many things to mention here, too.

We've covered so many series in the past, but we have a $10 level as well. Sign up for that. You get access to one mega long podcast every month, along all the five dollar rewards and what is going on on ten dollar level henry bob is talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast where we cover an animated feature film super in-depth only for our premium patrons at the ten dollar level each month we put out a different one last month we just did south park bigger longer and uncut the south park film as chosen by our patrons.

And the month before that, we did The Lion King 2, Simba's Pride. And there is a giant back catalog of over three years worth of What a Cartoon movies at your fingertips. If you go up to that $10 level, you can see all of that if you go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons today to sign up. I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast, by the way, is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. Find it wherever you find podcasts or go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts.

Sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month. And Henry, what about you? Follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. You'll stay up to date with me. And you should follow on Twitter at TalkSimpsonsPod, the official Twitter account of this podcast. You'll stay up to date when there's new episodes that go out or whenever there's stuff on the Patreon. And you know what else? There's also the official website of Talking Simpsons, TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com.

Check that out for a back catalog, easily searchable there, of all the free podcasts we've done thanks so much for listening folks we'll see you again next time for season three's mr lisa goes to washington a cnn all our times have come We're but now they're gone Seasons don't feel the reaper

Nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain We could be like they are Come on, baby, Don't feel free. Baby, take my hand. Don't feel free. Shh. Go, Roy! Ah!

Say, are those new shoes? Yes, they are, Roy. Judge Snyder, while we're young. Oh, sorry. Oh, my. Looks like you were the ringleader in this car theft. And that's a felony! Yes, sir.

On the other hand, I was young once. I'll bring the car around. And I suppose boys will be... Oh, oops. My vacation just started.