Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The President Wore Pearls With Merritt K

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

As Lisa gets another makeover, we welcome back Merritt K (check out her new game, Fledgling Manor) to help us make sense of this 2003 satire! It's primarily a lengthy parody of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita, and we do our best to figure out which songs are being referenced. Plus, this musical episode features Michael Moore, leading us all to reflect on the politics of 2003, 2013, and today. Not to mention a history of Elvis kissing bats and theme park zombies in this melodic podcast! Support this podcast and get nearly 200 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. or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that captures your attention like a bright piece of construction paper. I'm one of your hosts, the absolute fud-rucker Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons. Who is here with me today as always

Henry Gilbert finally teaching kids the danger of doubling down on a six and who is our special guest on the line Hey I'm Merritt Kay and I majored in sign making and creative chanting and this week's episode is the President War Pearls You wanted to see me? Actually Lisa I wanted you to see you You're our president now, but you look like the first lady of...

Yaaan. This week's episode originally aired on November 16th, 2003, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened in this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby, the Massachusetts Supreme Court rules against anti-gay laws making same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

Britney Spears in the zone is number one on the charts and Elf bounces back up to the top of the box office, defeating Master and Commander and Looney Tunes back in action. Well we did a long history on gay marriage for our Talking Futurama episode about Proposition Infinity, so if you want to hear 20 minutes on that, go to the Patreon, patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. long history on gay marriage for our Talking Futurama episode about Proposition Infinity. So if you want to hear 20 minutes on that, go to the Patreon, patreon.com, talking Simpsons. But hooray for Massachusetts. Yeah, good stuff. The elf one, we already talked about elf and how we find it a dubious holiday classic.

But Mare, what's your feeling on Elf and his triumphant return up the charts? Can I tell you something? Can I admit something? Okay. Here's the safe place to admit this. I've never seen Elf. When I tell people that they act very surprised and I don't know, I was never a big feral head

when I was like a teen and I liked some of his SNL stuff. When he played the devil, I thought that was good. I don't know, I just was never that big into him and I just have gotten this far without seeing Elf and at this point I'm like, I don't know. I just was never that big into him and I just have gotten this far without seeing elf and at this point I'm like, I don't know should I? Yeah, I waited until 2021. I thought well, I have to see this eventually and I think I waited too long

Elf was way past its expiration date Although it's nice to see that Will Ferrell is openly not full of hate unlike a lot of other comedians from his generation. That's true Yeah, I actually haven't watched the doc yet of his travels around America with the recently transitioned former SNL writer that Farrell worked with a bunch, but I've seen several interviews that are very nice because it's fun. If you like hearing SNL stories, but also about queer acceptance, then hey, these are the podcast interviews for you. Also Master and Commander, I saw that in theaters as well,

and I've seen that one reclaimed as a real dudes rock movie in the last five years. All those ships just seem so boring to me. Maybe now that I've aged into my 40s, I'll be on board, no pun intended. I said that- No, it was intended, I'm a liar. I'm sorry. No, I did see Master and Commander,

and I saw it on a boat. Whoa. Because my dad was a big boat guy. I mean, he still is, but just, he's still around. He's just not as much of a boat guy. But when I was, you know, 20 years ago, he owned a small sailboat, smallish. You could go underneath.

At one point we watched Master and Commander on that boat. And I remember being bored out of my mind by that movie. But I feel like maybe now I'd be able to appreciate it a little more, because I was being bored out of my mind by that movie but I feel like maybe now I'd be able to appreciate it a little more because I was also bored out of my mind by the Lord of the Rings when I was a teen so I think my tolerance for kind of slow character development movies was like very low. And Henry you mentioned Looney Tunes back in action was in theaters too around this time right?

Yeah both get killed by Elf and it's like fourth week. It's funny we now have 21 years later a new Looney Tunes movie but apparently only Germany and Argentina get to see it. Right. As opposed to the other Looney Tunes movie nobody gets to see and just got mulched. Yeah. Oh, Acme versus Coyote or Coyote versus Acme whatever it is. Yeah. We'll never get to see John Cena against Will Forte in a courtroom. Looney Tunes back in action,

that was like supposed to be the good Space Jam. And I think it is actually as a movie better than Space Jam, but nobody gives a shit. Yeah. Space Jam just overtook it in the cultural consciousness in like the years since. Space Jam has become like, I think probably if you go back and watch that movie,

it is very bad, but it's just become larger than life at this point. I'm sure we'll cover back in action on our podcast, but it does make some vital mistakes. Jenna Elfman is not carrying a Looney Tunes movie, and Steve Martin, I don't know what he's doing, but they let him, and it's a huge mistake. I will defend Master and Commander as a good movie.

Well, I think what's fun about it, besides it being about, you know, a bro down between Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, aside from it being a bro down between them, part of it is the fun of imagining that it became like a film series because it was supposed to be like, this is the start of a story. Like it ends on a cliffhanger. You're supposed to love these two guys together so much and also if you're a Star Trek type person basically it is like Kirk and Spock are Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany kinda so that kind of feel for it I do think it's better than

elf as well I think elf is like an hour too long probably or 30 minutes at least I think it's 80 minutes too long it should have just been an SNL sketch, but this is just me repeating myself every time we talked about elf Oh and Brittany Spears album in the zone It made history for her because she was the first female artist to have three albums that were number one and the first female artist To have four albums be number one consecutively so good on old Brittany Spears though This was around when the problems were beginning for Britney in in the press then soon enough We'd be asking to leave her alone. This is the toxic album though the one with toxic. That's right Yes in the zone kind of a stinker of a title though. It's just too broad

Well, you know she was think trying to make it happen like say fetch or whatever like oh We'd all be saying we're in the zone. Like this is the 2003 is the year of being in the zone. Anyway, that's what happened to the week. This episode of Simpsons aired. And joining us once again is Merritt Kay. Merritt last joined us for Lisa the beauty queen and she is working on a new game that's coming out very soon

which is called fledgling manner. Welcome to the show Merritt. Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me. Wow. That one was that that was like a year, two years, three years ago? Maybe early 2023, I wanna say. If only there was some way for us to know. Okay.

It's all been lost to time. Yeah, there's no way of knowing. Though also if it happened in lockdown, I'd be like, yeah, that happened in lockdown. I remember that, yeah. No, it's funny, it's another Lisa makeover episode. This was not intentional. It's just how timing worked out. Yeah, it's funny. Like I another Lisa makeover episode. This was not intentional. It's just that timing worked out Yeah, it's funny. Like I was watching this. I was like, did we do this one? No, it is different. Okay

Yep, slightly different in both cases Lisa gets a new hairstyle and an outfit. Yeah One you're becoming a girl boss working on your own video game there. See I'm making the connections Wow But not a fascist like a veto See, making the connections here between. But not a fascist like Evita. Give it a few years. We'll see how well the game does. I don't know, maybe the dream obviously is to have an expose written about how successful and fucked up you became

and just having former coworkers and employees talking about all of your excesses and eccentric behaviors and things. Like that's obviously what everyone, every artist like wants, right? I Look forward to that on polygon in seven years. Yeah Polygon 2030 just like yeah. Yeah, but the game is coming out on Steam It's a visual novel and about vampires and it's also about a reality show featuring vampires It's kind of like Big Brother meets what we do in the shadows is how I've been describing it

And yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I've been working on it with two of my friends. Yeah, it's definitely not. If you know anything about visual novels, it's like there's this kind of trend in the last decade or so of like Western visual novels that are like, yeah, what if we deconstruct this whole thing a little bit? What if you're dating concepts or office supplies? And it's like, it's not that. We're not doing like a making fun of the whole genre. It's just a visual novel that has like a certain premise

and it's not like winking or like smarter than the rest of the genre or anything. I think it's just a fun game. And it also is sort of about just the horrors of existence and the economy in a way. Yeah, fun, right? Yeah, hey, as a visual novel liker, it looks great, I have to say.

Thank you, yeah, we have a great artist. Their name is Shade, and it's a very different style. I know a lot of people try to do the anime style because visual novels come from Japan, but we have this kind of black and white, more Western, comical-y sort of style style to it and I think it makes it a little Distinctive in a sea of games that look a certain way. I'm glad you clarified that like this is not the you know ironic Distance that some definitely associate with a Western

Approach to a visual novel for sure. Yeah, so please wishlist fledgling manner on steam. That's the call to action. Please yeah put that on your wishlist on steam it costs you nothing and I think if Gabe Newell sees enough of those like he flips a switch that makes your game sell or something. So do that. You can do that while we're talking. We're not going to get to the episode for like 45 minutes. You know. You know I live near the Steam offices. I should storm that. Or at least. They love Stranger Show.

Yeah. It's 2003, right? They love, you know, just meeting the fans. I've considered I could stalk certain food courts in the Bellevue area and perhaps find Gabe Newell at them. Look for the guy without shoes. Yeah. You know, actually I've grown my beer quite a lot.

Maybe I could connect with him as a newly bearded man, of like, ask for beer tips, and then say, oh, wait, hey, do I know you from somewhere? Well, Merritt, we did bring you on for an episode about faux female empowerment for Lisa that also sort of parodies, well, look, it's a takeoff of a specific musical. Notably, this is their first full musical episode since the Sherry Bobbins episode in season eight.

I will say the reason why that one is better is because what they're parroting is immediately recognizable. The sound-alikes are very good, and the sound-alikes are very funny. I feel like, to kick things off here, the songs in Evita have to be very expository. So that's the purpose they're serving here. And because of that reason, they're given less space to be funny.

And also I think they've not coming from the same place as Al. Al Jean clearly grew up loving Mary Poppins and put so much heart into it and I believe that's the one we're on the commentary. Mike Reese credits most of it to Al Jean even though it's like co-written by them because he's like, well yeah, I thought it was stupid. I didn't think a Mary Poppins parody would work so I just let Al do the whole thing. So Al Jean comes to it with like a childhood love of seeing Mary Poppins when he was probably like five. Meanwhile Evita, if he ever saw it, it came out when he was probably like five. Meanwhile, Evita, if he ever saw it, it came out when he was an adult man.

Apparently he was a big fan and this was his idea. That is surprising to me because this seems to misunderstand what Evita is. Like Lisa's not a fascist, she's not a cult of personality. She's the opposite of Evita, of the person in the musical at least. And I watched Evita for the first time not knowing anything about it About 20 minutes in I realized like oh no one's going to talk in this movie

It's just wall-to-wall singing so then I thought if you're going to do the Evita parody you have to go whole hog You have to make the episode an opera instead. There is I don't know two and a half minutes of songs ish It's weird. It's a weirdly constructed episode also just because it kind of just ends like it feels like they read out of time and we're like ah and it's over now status quo button slam it's strange it's definitely not like the musical stuff feels kind of just there because someone was like oh let's do an Evita parody but didn't have any real attachment to it. So it is weird to hear that like,

oh, he was a big fan of this because it doesn't really come across. Apparently, according to the commentary, I listened to it, but this quote is written out on Wikipedia. Al Jean considers Evita, quote, one of the most brilliant things ever. So he was coming into this as an Evita super fan. I think also this is coming at the end

of a production season, so maybe people are too tired what 20 episodes in to really make the most of this Evita parody. Also I would say is people who have interviewed Dana Gould once and know his career, like he loves a lot of things very passionately. I don't really know how much he loves musicals. Like I've never seen him do jokes about musicals. He's a big geek for horror stuff. When there's a bit about zombie performers, I was like, okay that's Dana Gould, but like musicals don't really

feel... They mentioned that Michael Price has like an encyclopedia knowledge of musicals. I'm like, well why wasn't he given this one then? Yeah, we covered him in a previous episode, his bio. I think he spent a decade in musical theater after getting out of graduate school. That was his profession before becoming a TV writer. I feel like Al Jean thought, I want to do a musical and Lisa runs for president of the school, so you also get Yardley to sing. And she's a good singer. She's not like a Broadway caliber, but I'd say she's a good singer. And what is the most famous musical about a woman in politics?

I would say it is Evita. Like it is probably the most famous musical about a woman in politics, but Lisa is not a fascist. She is not making a cult of personality. And it's a story of it all being foisted upon her by the school instead of her demanding to become a fashion icon. A quick Aveda history here. Well, I would just say there's on YouTube a really great hour long

history by the channel Staged Right, which is not just a history on Aveda. Areva Peron Duarte, the person, and some of the political actual insight into a Peronism was and is, but also the history of it being a concept album first with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, how it transferred over from England to America, the different people who performed it and made the the real famous like Elaine Page versus Patti LuPone in the parts and even the history of Madonna wanting to star in the musical for many years and finally succeeding though it was not particularly critically loved when she did. Me growing up my mom had the Broadway version of the 1979 Broadway cast recording two cassettes and she played it all of the time.

And I had not experienced it again until the last month of getting ready for this podcast. I was like, you know, I should listen back to it. And as I heard it, it was like the pings of childhood nostalgia, like, oh, I remember hearing every song of this. And my mom getting asked by me, like, what's a whore? They're calling her a whore in this song. And my mom having to explain it to a five year old.

Well, this is going to break your heart, Henry, but my mom liked the Madonna version. And she bought the Madonna version soundtrack. So when I was watching the movie, I remember, oh, I remember my mom singing a lot of these songs around the house. I am a stan for Patti LuPone. Though I also, I do like Madonna,

as all gay men are forced to. Yeah, you have to. That is a good family guy joke. They called in an early family guy, they said the gay test was ask somebody what they think of Madonna, and if they say, you know, I liked her first couple albums, but I think lately she's been,

and if they say that, they're gay. If they say, I don't know, but I think she's hot, they're straight. That is the gay test. Patti LuPone, I really love her version of Evita. I think she is a great singer. It's also funny because she is a sassy lady who hates Andrew Lloyd Webber, and this was less. She would work with him on the failed Sunset Boulevard

musical and would sue him for millions of dollars. So she's very funny. And now, hey, if you're an MCU fan, you're seeing her every week in Agatha all along as part of the coven. So it's come to this. Wow, wow. I don't know how to feel about that that's so complicated like is it good that our aging stars have work? Is it bad that that is basically the only outlet? I don't know. That's just such a strange thought. I am hopeful that the young homosexuals who will be caught in the net of watching this

show will then be told by somebody, hey, if you like her playing this witch who says like three lines an episode, then maybe check out one of the times she sang songs. The original musical too, the Broadway version, Mandyinkin, also I think is very good. Though they're both playing roles they would not be cast in now in these Argentinian character roles. Most of the newer productions lately do cast appropriately, I think, at least for ethnic background, which is good. But the thing about Evita that I do think a lot of people miss, Evita is not a good

person. She is a bad, or at least she's a troubled person who is like she wanted to be very famous and loved by everybody and she married a fascist to do that and she she was like a Lady Macbeth figure. That's how they put her in the musical. So it's a weird fit for this episode because if you didn't know anything about Evita going into this episode and you're like oh this is a parody of something called Evita I guess it's and then you're like oh and Evita is about Eva Perron you'd be like oh so I guess she also was kind of like an you know politically engaged like idealistic person who was caught up in the demands

of performance and stuff and it's like well No, she had no interest in politics like prior to any of this. It's like completely the opposite So it's a really weird fit for like a Lisa story Yeah If you wanted to make it closer to the original play a musical or the movie it would be more like Lisa Starts dating Nelson Nelson overthrow Skinner. They start rolling the school be a lot funnier I guess yeah, we've seen the kid. Be a lot funnier, I guess. We've seen the kid runs for school president plot is just one of the most standard sitcom plots. The Simpsons did it in season two with Bart and Lisa Substitute.

That's right. I should have a button for that. Like a Simpsons did it button, you know? Oh, man. That's the one sound effect we're missing. I think it would go overused by this point though, so maybe it's best that it was never invented. Yeah. It's why I stopped using our crazy first act change of Homer saying, but you didn't see that coming,

because every episode from season 11 onward, I would have been using it. Actually, take that, Lisa's beliefs would not be used in this episode, I think, because her beliefs are pretty much supported. Yeah. Yeah. I also think that you learn more from the commentary

about the writing about just how residuals work and how they're like, oh, well, this has to all be credited to Dana Gould, because otherwise, everybody fights over the residuals for the songwriting ASCAP stuff. It's like, oh, well, at least that's kind of interesting. But the commentary, unfortunately, is very focused on the guest star of this episode who's on screen for 20 seconds, but they talk

within the entire commentary. Bizarre. Bizarre guest spot. And one of the songs in this episode was nominated for an Emmy. It's the first one we hear, which is called A Vote for a Winner. And we talked about this in the Futurama episode, the Fox finale, The Devil's Hands Are It'll Play Things. They were both up against something called Until the Violence Stops, which was a special about domestic

violence. So of course, that's complete Emmy bait. I know it's for a good cause and everything, but the song Because You Are Beautiful is what took home the Emmy that year. They didn't want to nominate an opera starring the robot devil or Lisa cosplaying as Evita. I've never heard of this before. There's no way to watch it. There's no I'm like, I've never heard of this before. No, there's no way to watch it.

There's no like home video release, I don't think. It's just, it's very strange. I guess it's always like that. Like, you know, looking back, it's easy to say they should have gone with the robot devil song, but. Yeah, in fact, the previous year, Everybody Hates Ned Flanders was beaten by Aren't They All Our Children

from the Concert for world children's day So these are some real schmaltzes going up against the Simpsons these years. Look, it's post 9-eleven people were looking for some It is funny on the commentary they are mostly reflecting about from 2012 how it felt after 9-eleven and in the run-up to the Iraq war It's an interesting time capsule. As far as doing research for this podcast, it is not a helpful commentary, but it is a good time capsule of people in mid Obama era

thinking the bad times are over and let's reflect on that Bush era. Of course, now we know the Bush era was good and that Dick Cheney's a great guy. Uh. Yeah, the commentary referencing Occupy Wall Street knocked me off my couch. Oh, yeah. now we know the Bush era was good and Dick Cheney's a great guy. The commentary referencing Occupy Wall Street knocked me off my couch. We should begin with casino night where absolutely no money goes to Indians.

Have you guys ever been to a fun casino of no money? No, I mean, I don't know like that's the whole thing with gambling is I mean I'm a kind of at this point I feel like semi notorious anti gambling person just because I've made a few like viral tweets that gamblers got really mad at me for that or I think you shouldn't be able to do sports betting on your phone but I don't know gambling is like games of chance are only fun if you're wagering something and so like I don't really understand like Is it still money but then like it goes to a different charity? Like I don't really get how this would even work Yeah at my school it was Catholic school. So obviously bingo was a huge racket

In fact, the bingo board was a permanent installation in the gym Wow, I don't know how much they raked in but it had to be very lucrative for them because the bingo nights were always extremely popular. So you paid and then, do you win something if you get bingo? I think there are prizes, but they definitely were spending very little on those prizes. Sure, it was like a sub-download or something, yeah.

Or like gift certificates for local businesses or something like that. Right, yeah. Let me say, I have become a bingo addict when given the chance. I don't seek it out, but two years in a row now I've gone to my husband's company picnic for his job and they have bingo at it. And last year I sat at that bingo table for two and a half hours trying to win something and I did not win and they were like, sorry, this is the last bingo game.

This year it was the same Bingo presenter, and I basically begged him from my seat. He's like, well, okay, that's four winners. Should we go for a fifth? When I'm like, one away, I'm like, please, please. And he's like, all right. And he called my number on, I was like, yay, I'm free. But I wasn't happy to win.

I was happy to be free of playing Bingo because I would not stop until I won once. Addicted to Bingo, Henry, after this podcast, we're going to have you draw a clock to see how rapidly you're aging. Do you have those like the bingo dabber things? When I was a kid, my friend's mom was addicted to bingo and would go to like a bingo hall every weekend. And they would have like, you know, it was mostly like seniors and she was, I guess in

her forties or something, but they had had these big marker type things where you would dab on the cards to indicate you got in that spot. As a kid, I thought those looked neat in bingo episodes on Roseanne, I think they did bingo. Unfortunately, no. This was basically also with a kid's bingo set where it had little windows you push over for it so you don't have to collect collect anything yeah also my husband a different company function they actually did have like casino night they basically give you like here's 500 fake dollars or is a thousand fake dollars gamble with this a thousand fake

dollars and if you end up with more money you can then buy it at the prize booth and I did okay at Texas Hold'em until I played against one person who knew how to play Texas Hold'em. And I was like, oh, I'm not doing so well. He'd seen Rounders before. And I had only seen Casino Royale and knew the rules from that. Don't learn gambling from James Bond movies.

That's a terrible, terrible idea. James Bond teaches you the way to play it is to be lucky like James Bond. Just give meaningful looks to everyone, and then hope the cards come up right. I love that movie in Casino Royale, they have to be so obvious for regular people, like his tail is every time he touches his eye,

that's how you know he has a bad hand or a good hand. It's like, that's what would happen at the Monte Carlo, like million dollar game, a guy would have that obvious on the tail. Yeah. All the players act like million dollar game. A guy would have that on his hotel. All the players act like video game bosses. They start flashing when they're losing. Sorry, I immediately, I stole the joke. It was sitting there.

But yes, this one, Marge is already falling into her gambling addiction. She plays Candyland once and through vodka in Maggie's face, which I think is more troubling than Marge has a full glass of vodka while playing Candyland. That's the problem there I'd say what season is the Marge gambling addict episode from? Season five so we are ten years out from that one Wow deep callback at this point So we're coming up on it again soon in our thing, but I will say I appreciate in the Al Jean era He doesn't always care about continuity, but I will say I appreciate in the Al Jean era, he doesn't

always care about continuity, but they actually do like remembering that Marge has a gambling problem that is never addressed. Yes, she instantly falls into it. I also think they fucked up a joke in the background when they go in there after Marge splashes the drink in Ralph's face. Then in a background gag, they have slot machines there too, and they clearly drew in Herman, the one-armed man from the memorabilia store playing. He has a left arm in it, but the joke's supposed to be

he's playing the one-armed bandit because he has one arm, but then they drew an arm on him. I totally missed him, maybe because there was two arms and I didn't recognize him. There are so many background characters in this scene, like just a wild number of characters, who just, some of them, like like I went to like the Simpsons wiki and was like I don't know the names of a lot of these characters and it turns out that a lot of them like do not have names because they are just guys and that kind of surprised me. I was like the show's been going

on for however long and like they're still just like girl with glasses, smug girl, Lewis's lookalike which almost certainly is because someone drew Lewis wrong one time, and they're like, it's a different guy. We didn't screw up drawing the black kid, it's fine. I like that there's still the season one freaks among their classmates, even to now in 21 years after this. Yeah, it's perfect.

And lots of childless people are going to the school function as well. Then we find out where the current school president got the idea for Casino Night. Boy, Casino Night! Finally they'll teach our kids the dangers of doubling down on us. I really shouldn't be here. I have a problem with games of chance. I played candy lane with Maggie and ended up throwing vodka in her face. Oh Marge, I bet you got that out of your system. Bet? System? Betting system? God is telling me to gamble. Hey! Deal! Hit me! Hit me! Hit me! Busted!

Welcome to Springfield Elementary Casino Night. Busted! Welcome to Springfield Elementary Casino Night. My fee for this evening goes to victims of my criminal recidivism. So, relax, have fun, and please God, don't piss me off. Congratulations, Mr. Student Body President. Your casino night is a huge success. Thanks, Principal Skinner. I got the idea from an episode of Saved by the Bell. Hmm. It was always on too late for me Now what we're saved by the bell heads. We like hearing that reference there Yeah, although as a saved by the bell scholar

I have to say that episode does not exist not even in the new class as far as my research brought me and I don't Acknowledge a new class as saved by the bell cannon those people aren't real. It was a dream had by screech as he was dying You know, mr. Bellity makes a lot of mistakes, but he would never actually by screech as he was dying. You know Mr. Bellity makes a lot of mistakes but he would never actually hire screech to work at the school. No, no. I didn't buy that at all even at age I don't know 11. But it is true that Saved by the Bell was on later in the block like 11 or 1130 so Skinner is accurate with that statement. Right, right. I found yeah like that's the joke I guess it's not a great joke but on the Simpsons wiki,

it was like goofs and trivia. Like Skinner says that Saved by the Bell is on too late, but Saved by the Bell was always on in the morning. And it's like, yeah, he's a principal. He has to be at work. Yeah. Guys, come on. Or it's in the afternoon and he'd miss it then too,

because getting off of work. Like, yeah. But also that he thinks of Saved by the Bell as late night programming when it is like the most like childish thing there is. But it sounds like there would be a school casino episode of Saved by the Bell. That's definitely a Zack scheme, absolutely.

Yeah, he'd have a scheme. This scheme makes more sense than like his tanning pill scheme. Yeah, Saved by the Bell, I only ever saw, I think it was slightly before my time. So I saw like a few episodes in syndication. I always kind of like, kind of hated Zack Morris. He seems like Ferris Bueller,

but also blonde and conventionally good looking, which is like, I don't want to root for this guy. Like everyone loves him and he's attractive and like has time freezing superpowers. Like where's the drama there? Come on. It came on when I was seven and then by age nine I knew I was smarter than the show,

so I enjoyed watching it ironically. And I watched it just as much as Simpsons reruns because when there was an hour of Simpsons reruns a day, there were probably two hours of Saved by the Bell, all 80 episodes on TV on the same day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Simpsons will be right back. Ha ha ha! The Simpsons will be right back. When Lisa's elected class president, school will never be the same. I call a student strike! Are you crazy? These are little kids, so take out your tiny baton.

It's the episode the school board doesn't want you to see. This is the kind of troublemaking I expect from your brother. Cool, a blank check for man. The Simpsons, all new, part of a full hour and eight next Sunday. Welcome to the break, everybody. Hope you're enjoying playing chess with your Hamburglar's. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Merit, for coming back onto the show. It was great having her back on and you should all know

that she worked on a brand new video game that you should be checking out on Steam. The demo is out there now too. It is called Fledgling Manor, a visual novel with three romantic routes and all about vampires. It was so awesome having Merit back on. Thanks so much for coming on and definitely follow her on Blue Sky and Twitter about vampires. It was so awesome having Merit back on. Thanks so much for coming on and definitely follow her on Blue Sky and Twitter as well

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don't even have names and everyone hates them. They just get to have one line and everyone's like, shut the fuck up. Like nobody's nice to them. It's a cruel show. Yeah. That's also how it was in Dawson's Creek. There wasn't even a screech in Dawson's Creek. There were just nameless nerds who everybody rolled their eyes at in it.

But, and yet I watched every episode of Dawson's Creek as well. But I wish when they said if American Dad did a joke about Saved by the Bell, they would tell you the exact episode then they would name it. Like this one just makes up an episode about Saved by the Bell, they would tell you the exact episode, then they would name it. Like this one just makes up an episode of Saved by the Bell. I feel like a Saved by the Bell reference in 2003

was breaking new ground for comedy. Yeah. They're like, can we? Also, I feel that way as well about the PlayStation joke. It comes right after. I do like that. Yeah, because Homer wins a bunch of money, right? Fake money, whatever, and says to Marge, first thing tomorrow

we're getting a PlayStation 1 and The PS2 had come out I think three years earlier Yeah But I remember this time period because this is an episode that I definitely watched when it first aired like this was around the tail end of when I stopped watching The Simpsons and Video game humor was like not really around. There's also an episode of Third Rock from the Sun where they rhymed Waystation with PlayStation one time and I was like they said PlayStation on TV that's crazy. So it was a completely different

world like obviously gaming was a big deal. I made a lot of money but not to nearly to the same degree. Yeah at best you would see a reference to old arcade games or old Atari 2600 games like the moon And nights on Aqua teen hunger force. Yeah, that's as far as it would go or like thing Yeah, they would go to the arcade and Simpsons and stuff like that, but there was no like even somewhat contemporary References if a comedy knew the difference between a PlayStation 2 and a PlayStation 1 I was impressed then right? Yeah Now now we've had enough gaming content and comedy and I don't want any comedian to know anything about video games anymore. I also do the walk and talk staging of Skinner and Martin talking of database handing. It

feels like it's staged a little like Casino or the Martin Scorsese movie or other fast moving Casino movie. Maybe Oceanceans? Wait. Yeah, I think the first Oceans 11 had come out by this point. Homer wins in a very long scene of him saying doe many times over, which I at least like the Dan seems to have like said doe naturally each time and they're not just replaying it like meep meep twice. Yes, Homer wins. He thinks he's rich. Then he corners Martin and is going to bully him into being and this is how he learns And everyone else there learns that they didn't win any money at all. And didn't you read the flyer cute line there I think doesn't it feel like Rue C Taylor forgot. She doesn't sound right as Martin. I don't know. Hmm

I didn't flag it as off, but I think it's been a while since we've heard Martin, perhaps? I don't know. Maybe she just did a lot of singing as Mickey Mouse, I'm sorry, Minnie Mouse that day, and it threw her off. Ha ha ha ha. Oh, and there is one deleted scene in the episode that they cut from here. We got to see Lisa working at it, but we didn't see Bart.

Bart is running the craps table where Smithers and Burns are in this little scene. New shooter coming out. Smithers, blow in my dice. Now make me roll the dice. How many dice are in there? None, those are my wrist bones. There you go, that's it.

I wish we had that. A little Burns adds so much to every episode, I think. Well, they gotta get more lines for Michael Moore in here. That's the, yeah, okay. Although I would have expected that to be the other way around with Smithers rolling and Mr. Burns trying to blow on the dice, but just expelling just dust or something.

That feels more natural to me. But I've got notes on your script from 20 years ago. On your deleted scene. But also, if Smithers is to be asked to blow on something, I mean, you're missing another joke there too. Yeah, I see why it was cut, is what I'm saying. You know, in the next episode that we've already recorded,

they have a much dirtier joke of like, where Byrne says to Smithers, Smithers, guide me in. Everybody freaks out as they learn that there's no money. We have a classic Springfield riot. Lenny crushes himself and then randomly quotes Bob Dylan's classic, Just Like a Woman.

Thank you, I didn't know that was a reference. Yeah, she breaks, Just Like a Little Girl, that's the song, and hey, aren't we all looking forward to seeing Timothee Chalamet sing that one in a hit film very soon? Is that real? Oh God. That's a real movie. Yeah. Okay, because I felt like one of those things where like it could definitely be real or

it could just seem so plausible that I was just willing to accept it. He's playing all the great musicians. He's playing Willy Wonka, Bob Dylan. Yeah. So true. It seems insane to me that we're making this. I watched a trailer for it only because Simpsons writer Michael Price correctly says that like they treat the drama of Bob Dylan going electric in the trailer as More silly than it would appear in walk hard. I

Mean we already had a pretty good Bob Dylan biopic. I guess it was like 20 years ago Oh, yeah, that was actually like imaginative. Yeah, the Cate Blanchett one, I think that was her. It was like six different people, yeah. Including Cate Blanchett, yeah. I believe it's directed by Todd Haynes, the gay director who actually tried fun stuff with it. But no, it's time for something obvious and direct. You find a young person who sorta looks like him.

Though also, I also forgot that Bob Dylan sold his entire recording catalog to Sony for $200 million. So maybe that's also why we're getting the obvious down the middle one for Sony to recollect on their investment. Isn't music fun? They have the whole place destroyed. I do like Martin reflecting on it as like, I should have known this would happen.

The same thing happened on Saved by the Bell. So Martin is told to resign and this then makes him a mashup of Nixon references. And we are deep in Nixon territory. We've been talking about Nixon on three other season five episodes right now. Oh, that's true. Yeah. He makes a lot of appearances while he's still alive in season five. And some of this is cute. I guess Henry and I in the past have called this Rugrats style humor where a child thing is a stand

in replacement for an adult thing. So instead of drinking whiskey or booze, Martin is drinking whole milk. Instead of being carried away in a helicopter, he's wheeled away in a little red wagon. All very cute, but I'm tired of those jokes. And The Simpsons is not the best place for like those kind of jokes.

Yeah, in my notes, just have stupid little Nixon thing as Martin is wheeled away. And it's a mashup of things too, because it's like what he said after he lost the California governor's race in 62, but then it's his exes from the White House with the peace signs. So it's like a combo both,

and I suppose him drinking a lot is a reference to Nixon being a sad drunk as well, I guess. I don't know. They wanted to do Nixon, but they didn't go like specific enough, I suppose with it. And then we cut very quickly to the school being fine in the next scene after all of the smashing up and Skinner avoiding being beaten up by repo men who repo men have a lot to do in this episode.

And we see Lisa sign up for it. And yeah, I mean, the timing of this, as we do this episode, is interesting because yes, it is Lisa running for president. Nobody's talking about this in The Simpsons Predicted, Lisa running for president stuff. Mm. Oh, and she's even wearing pearls, like the,

I mean, she always wears pearls, obviously. But I mean, is that another piece of the connective tissue? Because I guess there's maybe one scene in Evita where she's wearing pearls. She's known for her big necklaces for sure too. Yeah. Also, I don't understand the title references. Is it a reference to something else?

The President wore pearls. It feels like it should be a reference. It feels like the computer wore tennis shoes. That's what I was thinking. But like, what does that have to do with anything? But also it feels like a reference to an old B movie that is referenced in the president's neck is missing, but it's like the president did this or whatever.

Also the scene where Lisa signs up to run for class president, I don't know, maybe this is my modern sensibilities where I'm expecting jokes in every frame, and maybe I'm spoiled now, but I paused on the Lisa looking at like the board and there's like no jokes on it. It's just like a normal board and like the only text you can really make out is like

found, Krusty the Clown jacket on playground. And it's so strange because like in a modern show like that there would be gags on that board, like there would be site guys and they're just like, Oh, we don't need to do that. It's like and I don't know if it's worse or better It's just like feels like a very different world. I think these days in the new episodes. There's too many background jokes I think they just have a lot of free space and with the HD era Yeah, a lot of people writing sign gags right where they're overwhelming. I think yeah I mean, I just feel like I think something like BoJack Horseman was the start of that

really being a big thing, like with HD, the Netflix early kind of Netflix era of animation, having like being able to stop because also like thinking about, okay, this was on TV, standard definition. You're not stopping it. Like you're writing for a different medium, basically. Simpsons was like a VCR show, but VCR show for Esty. Right. You're supposed to pause it and read tops two things on screen and those are gonna be two funny jokes. But yeah now that you mentioned BoJack which I think had very funny pause

and read it background things but did overwhelm you with like they just put so much on screen. Maybe it was that Simpsons were like, BoJack is beating our asses when it comes to sign gags. We have to fill every inch of legible word in HD with some written thing that counts as a joke. Though I also thought, like, I don't know, Crusty and Otto being previous presidents, it's sort of a joke, but it's not funny enough. You know?

Just two weird guys. I do like the payoff when the pictures give each other a knowing nod while Lisa's singing the song. It's like, oh, they're finally getting along, Otto and Krusty. Though I must reject this Krusty went to Springfield Elementary thing, because of course, he went to a private Yeshiva school.

That's also why he can't read, because he only learned how to read Hebrew. Like, he doesn't know how to read English as a kid. So he would not have been a school president. I reject this. But yes, Lisa signs up that Nelson does too. So this is the classic Simpson staging to of the nerd versus the jock in things like this is written in the West Wing era too. They're not that they're really plugging into that idea of, you know, this cool guy versus the nerd who's an incrementalist, but they are writing to that, I'd say. Later, Lisa's stance of, you know, I'm going to stick to my platform of

incremental policy amelioration. I was like, oh, am I listening to Democrats of the last 40 years here? By the way, Dick Cheney loves me. He can't get enough of me. Yeah. What Lisa should be doing is showing off her Glock. That's what she should be doing. Yeah. And say she'll shoot somebody. We need to hear Lisa say these things. I hope this becomes dated very quickly. Oh dear God I hope so. Keep hoping. But Edna Krabappel also signs up. She gets her answers for a real estate exam. It feels like they remember that they could give lines

to Marsha Wallace and she could be funny. Like I think they forgot Marsha Wallace for years now. Right. They should have been a- Incredible, funny, like great voice actor. Yeah. She should have more to do here in this episode about the school, I think.

Yeah, yeah, I think so. And instead they like squeeze Willie in a lot until like very limited effect I would say. Most of Willie's stuff that we'll get to later is just so broad and like yeah that character can be very funny but in this episode he is doing very little. They need to pick a lane of one thing they're gonna do with Willie instead of like they make a lot of Willie choices they're going wild with Willie. Dana Gould though if I have to think of one thing that tells me Dana Gould definitely wrote this,

you know it too, but. Yeah, it's the Homer doing all the gay act outs. Yes, yeah. Dana Gould, not full of hate as far as I know. I could see him doing this prancing around the writer's room saying all of these things and just going on and on and on with it. It's just like such an interesting look

at kind of where we were in 2003. Cause I mean, you mentioned the Massachusetts thing at the top of the show. And then this bit just like kind of like goes on like for the entire scene. Like, Oh, Martin's going to beat you with like unethical means by like giving out test answers and stuff, like just say that he's's gay like start a rumor that he's gay the things that he says to say are that he likes quiche which I guess was a thing for a while drives a pink Miata and then he leaves and then comes back in a pink tutu throwing flowers around saying I'm Nelson I use a salad fork and wash my face. Weird I guess to to put it into not just the same-sex marriage

Ruling that happened this week to God. I should know this as a gay person I believe the American like sodomy laws hadn't been changed yet at the Supreme Court yet either which Makes it technically illegal to have what is classified as gay sex at the time of this as well I don't know where the idea of quiche being gay came from, but there was a very popular humor book in the early eighties called Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, and it was just a humorous list of examples of what men do and don't do. It's a lot of rules for men in what's, you know, I'll say it, faggy or not, that's what they're saying, I'll say it.

Here, why don't we hear the long act out here? I can't beat Nelson. Why don't you start a rumor that he's ding-a-ling-a-ling? Hello! Oh, what a delicious quiche! I drive a pink Miata! I can't believe Nelson is more popular than me. La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la I wash my face. Where did you get that tutu? Closed line.

I also think back to our pal Drew Mackie from the Gayest Episode Ever podcast. He did a great history of every gay or LGBTQ reference in Simpsons up to four years ago. And he charted Marge Later will do the ding-a-ling-a-ling act out. That is Dana Gould's then favorite way of saying somebody's gay. They're ding-a-ling-a-ling. He is channeling his hateful father.

And if you know Dana Gould, he has talked a lot about his father over the course of his lifetime through his comedy. No, yeah. I think Dana Gould, he's your typical straight comic who has tons of gay friends and is pro gay rights and issues and all that but he likes he thinks it's funny there's something funny about it and it's fun to act out all of the ways it really is about how many ways there is to indicate somebody is gay without saying they are gay and acting

it out though I also think it's because when Homer is not the main part of a story, he goes insane and they are just like, well then, Homer just gets to have a lie in every scene where he's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, there are so many Homer interjections. This, him talking about his chest set with the Hamburglar, making Elvis kiss a bat.

Yeah. It's all happening. Yeah, it's just full on insanity, absolutely. Because they have nothing for Homer to do, in the actual plot. So just go mental, yeah. Marge telling her you can be popular, you just have to be yourself in a whole new way.

This is some politics talk here, but the incrementalism, of course, that we have got to hear about it our whole lives. And man, it's been proven true every time. It works. It just works. You see how much things been proven true every time. It works. It just works. You see how much things are different now? It just simply works.

So it's time for the debate and this is where the first song comes in after Nelson flexes some which he's got some good biceps, you know, his flexing is winning me over. But this is when Lisa does the song vote for a winner which I clipped out a little bit. Let's just drop it in here. Nelson, rebuttal. Yo everyone, it's me, Nelson! I'm not that cool, I don't wear jeans. I've polished an apple or two But every grade that I grabbed I grabbed it for you And yeah, it's a parody of don't cry for me Argentina, I guess the most popular song from Evita Yeah outside of the one they added for the movie by the, there are enough songs in that movie. They added another song.

And it's a fine song, it's a fine song, but Jesus Christ. All they do in the movie is sing for two hours and 15 minutes. You Must Love Me is a good song. I think it's a good addition. So much so that they actually now, when they do new productions of Evita, they just put it in the stage version too.

But that's a classic Oscar strategy. Cause if you're adapting a musical, it's all the old songs that they don't count as being written for the movie. So you can't get an Oscar knob. So you got to write one new song that can be nominated for the Oscar. Though often they just put that over the credits and it's just the wake of like, can we get an Oscar for the old songs? Well, Hey, I do enjoy Mean Green Mother from Outer Space.

Right. That is a good edit. That's a good one. This version of Don't Cry For Me Argentina you can pull up a karaoke track and sing along to it and change the keys that Lisa goes into and I think they have an alright like 360 around her as she's talking but yeah the spirit of the song is entirely different though this is a big thing to talk about the Madonna version She cuts a major point of that song which in the middle of the song in the stage version of don't cry for me, Argentina Evita Eva Perrone moves backstage and goes like do you see this we are loved it's working like she's bragging about how I've won Over all these stupid idiots like that's basically what she's saying

And then she goes back out and gives her song The song is meant to be not exactly comedic But she says like oh it seems like fame and fortune is all I went for but no that's not true And if it just listen to me everything I say is true It's like it's a song about a liar like if you fall for it you're falling for the fascist giving a speech. Hmm Though I don't think Madonna wants that song to be the song of like a liar. Yeah I wonder if it's the director calling the shots there with that film version because it feels like they want to play it very straight and play it very

conservative because I guess the idea going into Evita is people are going to think it's funny that all they do is sing. So we're gonna shoot this like characters talking in a room there's nothing really flamboyant about it it's funny that all they do is sing. So we're going to shoot this like characters talking in a room. There's nothing really flamboyant about it. It's not like a Baslerman production. Also, they did have to change the keys and the scales to fit Madonna's singing range, which again, I think Madonna is a great singer. I love her songs, but you have to be one of the best singers alive to do a Vita in the original like compositions of it, which Patti LuPone is and I love her anyway but yeah at least the song instead is about I'm a bookworm but hey you guys should love me but why do they like she doesn't make a good enough argument to love her but everybody

falls in love with her by the end of the song yeah and we're gonna be doing a lot of dumping on this episode we have so far I want to reiterate what I said these songs aren't funny. They're good at parodying the Evita songs to a point. They're not allowed to use the original score. But nothing funny is happening in this. There are no funny lyrics. They're having issues trying to find things funny

to happen visually throughout the songs. I'm thinking of the Sherry Bobbins songs, like Cut Every Corner and the Booze Hound song. There's just so many songs that are funny in and of themselves. Yeah. I mean, people still reference those songs, or those songs still pop into my head sometimes. None of the songs from this episode. I was just thinking of the Booze Hound episode the other day, and I don't even know why.

Also, we skipped over, but there's a character who only appears in this episode for like two seconds, and it is never seen again again and is named and he's the French teacher Mr. Kupferberg. Oh right. Lisa says... What's she yacking about? I just love this guy like this like New York like tough who looks like just he has like stubble and like a pompadour and he's apparently the French teacher and does not speak French This is part of some long con we're not privy to Now he should have been the new groundskeeper Willie they should have kept bringing back Muncher Kufferberg There's deep stuff they could get into with him

Honestly, the way they are working in season 36 now They could bring him back for one episode just to kill him to be like we brought back a classic character and to Kill him off right you got to tune in I guess the cleverness of the song is we have don't cry for me Argentina and then she's running for president. She says don't vote for me comma unless Right, so the joke is it's very tortured how they're going for the Yeah And chorus of vote Lisa both lease. That's the chanting of

Evita I have a few of like oh well That's the one-to-one on it But I think maybe these would be more memorable if they just had the guts to like obviously they did it because Andrew Lloyd Webber I think especially is a litigious guy so even though they might be able to argue for you know Parody rights and being able to do it Andrew Lloyd Webber is just rich enough to give them a major headache about it And if he wanted to so I get why their legal department would chicken out But it does make it weaker by not being the tunes and they would have the legal cover for this

I would feel like lisa's song goes over great Nelson He tries to sing a parody of Iron Man, which just is the tune to it So they're not scared not scared to get sued over that. I think they paid for that at least So, yes Lisa wins or she's on her way to winning and After that we come back from the break we see from the newspapers that she's doing great, and we also get a, what I take is a parody of the then current like,

Simpsons Online character quizzes? Oh, it felt to me like a Cosmo quiz. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Are you a Bard or a Milhouse? Take the quiz. You're right, this would precede, by a few years, the Buzzfeed quizzes of like yeah, remember those guys Can you even take those anymore? Are those sites still online? What the hell's a BuzzFeed?

Well, it's not quite a buzz Merritt, I don't know if you ever got a BuzzFeed paycheck. We've had on some BuzzFeed people. Maybe once or twice I mean, there's so many sites whose names I can't remember and whose archives have been purged at this point that have cut me, you know, $50 checks for things over the years that it's hard to keep track. Nine months later. Yeah. Without BuzzFeed, there are no more articles

that can show us what we're feeling about the election via Parks and Rec gifts. Oh, come on. You know, maybe it's fine that the Internet is turning into A.I. Sledge. Maybe that's okay. I feel like The Daily Show could be eviscerating Trump every night and I wouldn't even know about it anymore.

So Lisa's doing great, but not everybody is happy about that, especially Chalmers, who I feel like is acting a little too interesting for Chalmers in this episode. He needs to be more boring, in my opinion. Everybody's worried about Lisa's popularity. Lisa. Lisa. Wow, she even beat perennial write-in candidate Skinner sucks. Skinner? I'm worried.

This girl is extremely popular and thinks for herself. She's like a female Eleanor Roosevelt. The students will do anything she says. He's captured their imagination like a bright piece of construction paper Yeah, well, we've got to find a way to control her Hey, maybe that escaped mental patient you hired has some sort of toxin in his shack. Yes. Hello, Willie Well, if you ask me a woman's weakness is her sense of vanity vanity You might have something there, Edna.

So, when's my inauguration? Hmm, let's see. When hell freezes over, tough guy. And it turns out Edna is right. All women are vain and easily tricked. It's the only thing I know. They're like vampires for compliments. I guess Chalmers has become a bit flanderized

because they really lean into the whole Skinner catchphrase. But he started as a very broad, angry boss character to begin with. Also, I mean, that him saying a female Eleanor Roosevelt, it's like, that's a little too mean for him. Though he'll have another like shockingly like, wow, Chalmers, this is too much of a joke for you later. Though he wants to kill Lisa with gas.

That's true. Yeah. I mean that is just like I don't know that line did get me the realist and just now like escaped mental patient has a toxin in his shack. Maybe it's the K sound at the end of shack but a funny line. It's like not a Chalmers line like that's weird. And I like him waving at Willie and they're kind of just mocking Willie of like, yeah, yeah, you think we're saying nice things about you. This is it's a weird button on this scene too.

Again, I feel like this is Bob, what you mentioned earlier about maybe a product of this being near the end of his season where the button on the scene being the like, oh, when's my inauguration? When hell freezes over like not a joke. That is not a joke. It feels like it would be way more natural to like do something with Edna, like continue that. Like, oh, you're right Edna. Like, and you're as beautiful as you are intelligent. And then just like her being like, oh wow. Yeah. There. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's something. Again, I have notes on your script. I'm going to send them back in time. We have lots of notes. Now you're totally right that when hell freezes over, that feels just like a bad attempt at a joke.

Not a joke about it not being a joke, just this is all we got, we're tired. It's episode 20. Yeah, exactly. I feel like Nelson should have a line he says back there. At least be sad. I mean, maybe I'm just thinking of like, oh, that's why nobody came to my birthday party

type lines for Nelson. Yeah, yeah, that's something. Him in a top hat and tails, I guess, is a funny enough visual. So Lisa is put in charge and she heads into the teacher's lounge, but this is where she is told, you know, she's the first lady of yawn. That's the opening gag there.

This is where she is getting dressed up by everybody, which... Well, let's drop in the next song, which is called, I Am Their Queen. You wanted to see me? Actually, Lisa, I wanted you to see you. You're our president now, but you look like the First Lady of... Yawn! What would you change? Eyes, curls, smile, hair points, dress, voice, shoes, swatch, swatch.

I may be the new girl, but you can't brainwash me. Just hush, hush, begrush me, and then leave me be. To fight for keep power, I must be heard, not seen. I have to lead wisely, not just prepare. Rails, dimples, ears, stretchy purse, lunchbox, teeth, millhouse. This cuting up suits me, there's beauty within me. So let's also twin me, give them someone to love. His grown-up makeover has made me a super tween. For they are my people and I am their queen.

Now this one is, I would say, a parody of the song Rainbow High, which is basically the dress-up song of Evita. Yeah, I like how they're acknowledging hair points are part of her anatomy. That's as far as the song goes with me though. Yeah. I mean Rainbow High is a fun song. I watched a staging of it in the musical version and so you're really supposed to be impressed like, wow, look at how quick she changes her costume. Is she like listing all of the stuff she's gonna get dressed up in. But the song is about how Evita wants to have all of the best things and cutting

edge fashion and jewelry and all this stuff. But it's because, oh, they expect me to be amazing. I must be rainbow high. And I cannot reach the note there as you can tell, but hey, the poem sings is great. On the commentary, Michael Morris says that one of the parody songs sounds very close to something from Book of Mormon. So I will report back. I have not seen Book of Mormon.

I will in early November. So I'll let everyone know. Maybe I'll talk to the audience. The weird thing about this scene to me is just, Lisa looks so weird when they brush out her hair. Like it's just unsettling to see a Simpsons character who has like the same hair color, like a Bart or a Lisa where their hair is an extension

of their skin essentially in terms of color and design. To have that brushed out then into like hair. I know this happens in a few different episodes, but it's just like unnatural. I don't know. It seems like she has these flesh eclairs on top of her head. And apparently they were very hard to draw in anime.

They were just so complicated, the dimensionality of them and how they turned around with her head was hard to figure out. But I guess the parody called for it. Which maybe why she's not in that guise for the entire episode. After the makeover, Lisa says, or maybe it's in the song where she says she's a super tween.

How old is Lisa? Hey yeah wait she's eight. Eight right? Yeah like huh? Well you gotta rhyme with queen. That's true. And tween was a new word and people yeah I mean yes it's supposed to mean from 10 to 12 I thought right but yeah I mean Lisa gets one over in the end by it. I wonder if this is the song that's the Book of Mormony song I saw Book of Mormon on stage about a decade ago and I recall some of the songs but this one doesn't feel Like it to me. I'm curious to hear back from your version Bob because they did an admirable thing of the stars of it or some of the troop

admirable thing of the stars of it or some of the troupe came to Matt and Trey and said, you know, hey, could some lines be improved? Like could the portrayal of the Ugandan people be a little better? And Trey Parker in Matt Stone? Listen and re-wrote the musical. They're getting less stubborn in their old age about some topics, I guess. Some, some topics. Yeah, not all. They did admit that Man Bear Peg is real in the last five years, and they apologized to Al Gore in the episode. Maybe in 10 years, they'll apologize

to some more groups of people. But also, yes, if we're one to one-ing of the lyrics being parodies, she said, just Oshkosh Begosh me. The line in Rainbow High is, so Christian D or me. So that's the one to one there. We're all over the place with Lisa's age.

She says, I'm a super tween, but Oshkosh Bagosh, I feel, those are clothes for toddlers. Yeah. Yeah. Shouldn't it be LL Bean Me? I mean, what is the Christian Dior of children's clothes? In the aughts, I have no clue. I mean, it's good none of us know

what children buy for clothes. Gap Kid, I don't know. Oh, Gap Kid, yeah, okay. Some kind of us know what children buy for clothes. Gap kids? I don't know. Oh, gap kids. Yeah, okay. Some kind of Lizzie McGuire brand. If we're in 2003, I don't know. Also during the song, she is offered Milhouse and turns it down off screen.

That gave me a chuckle. Gave me a chuckle. And also good animation on the character turn of her from being surrounded in the teacher's lounge to then into the kitchen. I like that. And this is where Homer also has to be insane while washing dishes, which he would never do except for a joke. Yes.

That he wants to be like, Marge, I do like that Marge cannot conceive of Lisa being a powerful female politician. That she looks like the wife of a businessman. It's hard to really tell what's going on if you don't know about the person, but largely she was a wife. Yeah, yeah. So the story of Chalmers and the others thinking she's getting too much power, that is the Argentinian generals are constantly in the musical saying like, this lady sucks, she's tricking Juan

Peron, we got to kill her, we got to get rid of her, she's just the latest fling. There's some funny lines about how they like her, she's just the latest fling. There's some funny lines about how they say, she's flipping the rules, men are supposed to use women for sex, women aren't supposed to use men via sex for power, this is the opposite. They're having fun with it, though I also would say, it's like, I wouldn't call the musical apolitical,

but it is more about fame than it is about politics, I think, being a musical. That's fair to say. Yeah, and that's what Lisa is being controlled here. but it is more about fame than it is about politics, I think. That's fair to say. Yeah, and that's what Lisa is being controlled here. This is more like the musical ends or nears the end with the real fact that Eva Perrone was running to be vice president with her husband,

but that is when she becomes too ill with cancer and has to drop out. And know the musical frames it as oh She almost became vice president or that she couldn't make that fight and they frame it tragically But Lisa doesn't have enough tragedy in this musical either like she should get sick Chalmers should poison her. That's what I'm saying But yes Homer wishes he was like the wife of a businessman, then he could afford nice things. Then also we have an odd joke about Lisa having a campaign against the Romani people, which I was surprised at too.

Yeah, that feels like another like, oh, that's like something we probably wouldn't do now. She's tough on the school border policy. Right. Yeah, that's true. She wanted to follow Nelson's plan, but Nelson wouldn't vote for it Yeah on militarizing the borders So Lisa's walking the school grounds wearing the pink dress just like Evita wears and many of her famous things

I keep calling her Evita not Ava Perone or Ava Duarte, but only true fans call her Evita Henry. Did you vote for her? Oh wait, you couldn't never mind. You're right. I'm mispronouncing it wrongly by calling it Evita. They do have a good design bit, I will say. Lisa's election poster parodies perfectly the cover for the original Broadway cast album release. It's the poster. Well done with Lisa in it. But as Lisa's walking the school grounds, Millhouse is asking for comment. He finds out that everybody makes fun of him, including, it lets you know that Willie is at the bottom rung, except for Millhouse. That's why he's got to make fun of Millhouse to get any approval in the teacher's lounge. I do wonder as a kid myself, was I being mocked for how I tucked

in my pants by my teachers who I trusted? That's why I've been having the untucked look for 40 years now, it's because I've been mocked too heavily. Catholic school, you don't tuck in that shirt to detention, Henry, I'm sorry. I'm a master tucker. Now we didn't have tucking rules in my school. Now I still don't tuck. I'll tuck at a formal event, but otherwise.

You grew up without boundaries. Now look at you. You're a podcaster. Cautionary tale. But this is where Lisa gets more of her distractions. Shouldn't I stay here and work on school policy? Lisa, you were elected to be seen and enjoy. Don't hide your light in a smoky back room making dusty old decisions. Well, I am proud of my light.

But just in case you want to do any more thinking, I'm proud to present you with an official key to the study hall. Ah! Use it anytime you like. You mean I can come to the school after hours? Weekends? Even during the summer? Yes! It's like your Harry Potter without the magic and wonder. Just sign these authorization forms and you can be on your way! Even during the summer? Yes, it's like your Harry Potter without the magic and wonder. Just sign these authorization forms,

and you could be on your way. That little girl should learn to read things before she signs them. Excuse me, I was wondering if I should read what I just signed. Oh, it's just standard key release boilerplate. OK. Boy, she'll believe anything. Key release boilerplate? I. Boy, she'll believe anything.

Key release boilerplate? I find that very hard to believe. Mm-hmm, and yet, there it is. I'll just lock this door. Boy, this key opens everything. Oh. I think that is my favorite bit in this episode. Yeah, it's pretty good, yeah.

The very vaudeville opening, closing door, Skinner's bad excuses, it's all good. And it plays off of Lisa is being written out of character and she's like, wait, no, I wouldn't fall for this. Like I'm not Homer. Like, well, but there you go. Like key release boilerplate. That is what's there. Also for that clip, Lisa is throwing out, you know, like, well, in a Swedish public school, they do this. And she's trying to make all these suggestions that a school board would never do that when she brings up a Swedish school board it did remind me Michael Moore's on the commentary and it's funny because after he does this commentary he will

make his where to invade next documentary which basically is full of arguments like hey you know in Swedish schools they do this why don't we do that that was the last of his Docs I watched I don't know if you guys see that one I don't think I've seen any of his. I think maybe I saw a bit of Bullying for Columbine in high school, but I'm not. I also just, I like the little throwaway line when Lisa comes into the teacher's lounge. I think Skinner is like, oh, we were just discussing Vasco da Gama, like such like a primary school, like, oh yeah, it's the explorers unit. You talk about Magellan and da Gama and all those guys. School like oh, yeah, it's the explorers unit you talk about Magellan and the gamma and all those guys

Yeah, I mean we'll get to him But I think I stopped watching Michael Moore stuff in my late 20s because my thoughts were I agree with you and I don't want To be depressed so good job Yeah, go in the where to invade next is the last one I I watch because it's a funny comedic idea Which is basically it's called where to invade next because obviously you know Americans invading everywhere let's invade and so his argument basically is let's invade European countries because they have these democratic socialist things that we should do it really is just in being able to say guys I know you won't listen Americans are racist so I'm gonna have to show you mainly white countries that have democratic socialism that works.

Why don't we steal this? Like that's the main argument of it. So that's why I felt like him on this commentary that's done before that movie comes out. He's like, yeah, people should hear more about how like Sweden or Finland does things better. It's a good documentary, but I guess yeah, you know what? I'll save the Michael Moore thoughts we all have for later, but that I also take mr. Largo's hypnotherapy sessions as part of a failed gay conversion plan of his that's what I think I think he's trying to get straight and it's not working out for him that's what I think so so yes Lisa is given fake jobs like move the brush fire needle that made me chuckle too and she's happy to get the compliments. She is you know

she says she doesn't have to take the hearing test which then she doesn't hear Marge which I was like eh that's alright. Then Marge really kicks Geraldine Ferraro while she's down. That's pretty cruel. In case you don't know she was the first woman on a major ticket to run for vice president. You know what no wonder she won Minnesota let's say that. Yeah. Then Bart is sarcastically clapping at this, which this in another line is the closest he gets

to becoming Che in Evita, the Che character, who's like the snide guy who's like, oh Evita, you didn't do all of these things you said you did. You're a liar, but they're not really committed to it at all for Bart. Like it's like, well then give Bart a little more than if he's gonna be the guy telling her you're full of it Lisa and the spoil sport though in the many potangans version

I want to say he has very silly singing of when he's being sassy He will imitate like a Spanish accent and Italian accent an English accent He's having a lot of silly fun old Mandy is there and this is also where I chuckled at Homer saying, on my chest set the puns are all hamburgers. And he's just there to have fun. He's serving the role that Grandpa usually does. He just appears at the end of a scene to make a joke. That's true. Grandpa's out of a job this week.

So as they're setting that up, we then get the Skinner's Evil Plan song which wouldn't even really count as a song I'd say it's like three lines of one. I'm so happy with my evil plan say goodbye to music, gym and art. Soon we will have the perfect school where fun and excitement never start i'm so drunk i can barely see but it helps me get through another day my stomach is filled with haggis and hurt i've got to go puking some lisa is a fool i think the rules are cool i'm falling in the pool!

I'm falling in the pool! Is this a parody of anything from Evita, Henry? I was trying to figure it out. It just seems like, okay, it's a Android, Lloyd, Webber style song shifting between different perspectives. But that's kind of it for me. My guess is it's a mashup of

Perone's latest Flame, which is multiple characters commenting on how they don't like her and their secret plans, or the song Rainbow Tour, which shifts between musical styles, and that's the one where Che is like, it'll eat it like a her like he thought she would. Although I do like hearing Harry sing as Skinner, which rarely ever happens. It's a rare bit of Shearer feeling like he is enjoying it. It feels like, oh, I think Shearer's liking this for once in season 15. I mean, the only line in it that made me laugh is Skinner saying, I think the rules are cool.

And again, we just get like really broad. Willie is a drunk stuff here, which is like, yeah, I don't know. This character's funnier when he has like specific, like I find Willie funnier when he just is like really arcane and weird and not just like, ah, he's a drunk guy. It's like we have Barney, we have Homer, we have so many guys whose thing is they're just drunks.

And like, obviously Willie, oh, he's Scottish and he drinks a lot, but it's just, it feels wasted. He's drinking like Scotch whiskey. That's what makes him different from Barney with beer, I guess it's like that he drinks Scottish stuff. He's just really a distraction in this episode, I feel, that should be more focused on the parody elements. We're always seeing what Willie's up to.

Yeah, and also like, oh, the middle of the song is, instead of, how about Bart has a song more in this instead of like Lisa is a fool? How about expand on that instead of just like, nah, we need to see Willie driving around drunk. It's like, well, okay, so is Willie a hateful guy who throws sparks plugs at people? Is he an insane guy who thinks he died in a mind strike?

Or is he a drunk? Like, what is he i did like that bit we all died even willy and then he's just like like that's it that's pretty good but yeah they can't land on something okay so like when they come to take all the stuff away right and like millhouse is climbing the rope is it millhouse he's like i'm gonna get to the top. Here comes self-esteem. And then the repo man shows up to like take the rope.

Is that Kearney's dad? Like he just looks like adult Kearney. And it's probably just like, oh, we just need a guy. But like, like spitting image, it's bizarre. Yes, he does look like adult Kearney. I think they're reusing the repo man designs they had for the ones who take it back from the New Age shop where Homer and Lisa get put in the sensory deprivation tanks. But yeah, that guy definitely looks like Kearney's older brother.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, because is Kearney in his 30s or is he not? Right. Let's ask ourselves that. Well, Milhouse takes a really nasty fall and he appears perfectly fine in the next scene. So I'm not complaining.

I just feel like I'm glad we saw him again because he looks like he's paralyzed. Yes. After this. You hear bones snap. Yes. This is where Skinner launches his Slam program and Chalmers has a shockingly harsh joke.

Not a cloud in the sky. A perfect day to unveil Operation Slam. So long, athletics, art and music. Care for a t-shirt? T-shirt? Why don't you just give me a sandwich board that says, Mailed Prostitute. Well, forgive me, sir.

They've taken everything. Oh, no. They've taken everything! Oh no! Look what they've done to my triangle! I'm doing it! I'm almost to the top! Hello, self-esteem! Ripple man! I love this job! But fortunately, Millhouse, like he said, Bob,

he's over the top. He's over the top. He's over the top. He's over the top. He's over the top. Ripple man! Waaah! Haha! I love this job! But fortunately Millhouse, like you said Bob, he's okay enough to ask out Lisa later. Like in about 10 seconds after this. Calling himself like, why don't I just put a sandwich board on myself that says male prostitute? Like even Skinner's like, well gee, okay Chalmers, Jesus!

This, all I can think of is that one episode that people don't like to talk about where Skinner is house The sandwich board outside of the strip club. Oh Yeah, and he's like nude nude nude. These girls are all naked. Yes They're not even wearing a smile, that's a great yeah That's a great, yeah. Yeah, thank you, forgot that. Specifically, is Chalmers envisioning, what, like, you know, rough trade guys? I guess, like on the corner of, you know, New York in the 80s, like, I don't think they had sandwich boards. A Tom of Finland drawing dude, perhaps?

Yeah, I guess he's so behind the times that he thinks t-shirts are only worn by slutty men. Right. the times that he thinks t-shirts are only worn by slutty men. I suppose Chalmers, you know, hey, maybe he'd look good in tight white t-shirts and with a hanky in his back pocket. But yes, they learn that all the things are being replaced by nothing, which this speaking of things that have been done before, there have been many episodes up to this point of Skinner cutting, cutting, cutting the school budget. That's the entire point of the PTA disbands, which does handle this plot much better, including the strike element too.

And also in the end, it has an answer of how to get money back. But yes, everybody learns the truth in our next clip. All extracurricular activities are hereby canceled to be replaced by nothing. Who would sign such an order? As ordered by Principal Skinner and approved by student body president Lisa Simpson. And to think I was going to ask you to the dance. I would have gone with you.

Well, you still can. Well, I don't feel like it now. Oh, that's cool. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Ah! Look, they're taking away the art room! I'll be cooking my lean cuisine in your kiln tonight! Ah! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

What have I done? What they wanted you to? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha That stanza there, I guess you'd call it, that's a parody of Waltz for Ava and Che, I'm gonna say. That's my guess. It does feel like how in the movie, they'll often have to have an exchange between characters, but they don't feel like writing an entire new song, so it'll just be like, Evita, where are you going? I'm going away, and then that's it.

There's no song surrounding that exchange. It feels like that's what they're doing here. At least Bart's saying a tango takes two, referencing a specific dance. That's what made me think it's the Waltz for Ava and Che song, which is mainly like Che's calling her a sellout and Ava saying, well, yeah, what do you expect me to do? I got a sellout.

I wanted to be a sellout. I can't fix everything. I may as well get rich. But hearing the voice of Database just brings life to my day. That made me feel good. Yeah. Any whee sound to Datab database, always worth hearing. Great stuff.

And I like hearing Milhouse try to pretend that he's not upset when he clearly is. Like, that's cool. Lean cuisine though, can Willie even afford that in his shack? But I mean, as far as a visual, they don't just leave an empty art classroom, they take it entirely off of the wall and steal the entire room Though this is right after Homer stole an entire room from the Ned Flanders his house

So they're kind of in room stealing runner at this point. I like it. I like it So we come back from the break everybody's pissed at Lisa for getting rid of class though This also doesn't feel I get Jimbo has a good reason for it that he wants to know the band geeks to beat up but wouldn't Bart like that he has fewer things to do in school and goes home earlier? Wouldn't he like that? We also learned from Uter that they eliminated English for Fat Kids which on the Simpsons history channel The Real Jims does he did a great history on Uter and how they used him but I watched it just to remind myself. Basically, they killed Uter in season 11.

They had a guess who's coming to criticize dinner. There's a joke that Uter has been missing for a long time and his parents just want closure. Al Jean has decided that it's time for Uter to come back. Like, they missed Uter and he's been resurrected. Well, this is the first Uter appearance in four years then? He does have a background appearance in the one where Homer becomes a babysitter but I don't think he had a line.

This is his first real line since coming back. Children of a Lesser Clawed, that's the name of the episode. You'll see him but this is the real return of Uter. His family can be happy now, he's not dead after all. Bart also lets Lisa know there wasn't exactly San Diego State to begin with. Then Lisa in a couple of brushstrokes easily gets her hair back into the hair points she loves, which nice to know they're officially called hair points as we learned from the old song. And this is where my favorite joke is, just because I like

this act out by Homer. I think Castle Ned is at least having fun. They made me pretty unpopular just so they could exploit me and ruin my good name. Lisa, you've got to stand up to these guys and when you do people will remember you. Just look at these postage stamps. There's Bugs Bunny, Fat Elvis, Autumn in New England, Bats of the Southwest, all heroes. You want to see Elvis kiss a bat? Hey baby, come here, I wanna kiss ya. Squeak, squeak, squeak, no, don't kiss me. It goes in a direction you're not expecting and also it is implying that Springfield,

the reality they exist in, they got the fat Elvis stamp. Yes, that fat Elvis won the dueling Elvis design vote from 1992, which we did a whole history of that and the crusty loses his money episode. Though also the bats were a recent stamp design from 2001. And you know what, folks, if you want to own your own sheet of Night Friends American Bats from 2001, only 10 bucks on eBay right now. Oh, Night Friends, how nice. It's not just bats of the Southwest. 2001 only ten bucks on eBay right now. Oh Knight friends. How nice

It's not just bats of the southwest. It's all the bats of America, but including southwest bats Merit It's not too late to call your game Knight friends. Knight friends. Oh my god. That's great sequel sequel yeah, yeah Fletchling Manor 2 Knight friends subtitle yeah Also, they're making this joke about characters being on postage stamps. It's just six years after this that the 2009 Simpsons postage stamps happened. And those are great because they have the Matt Groening way off model drawings on them. They're not just clip art from the show. Just like Matt Groening insisted on being on this commentary for an episode he didn't remember because he wanted to hang out with Michael Moore, He insisted on like I'm drawing these postage stamps because

it's been a childhood dream to be a postage stamp. Though apparently I can't recall if we've covered this before, but in 2012 it was reported that those Simpson stamps were blamed for like a loss of a million dollars at the US Postal Service thanks to an audit. Part of the like very stupid thing of like oh the United States Postal Service thanks to an audit. Weird, okay. Part of the like very stupid thing of like, oh the United States Postal Service needs to be a profitable company instead of like a government service. It's part of that bullshit. In a 2012 audit of it, they apparently viewed

that the Simpsons printed too many stamps. There was a lot of unsold Simpsons postage that had to be destroyed at the cost of a million dollars. Wow. I, of course, have been strongly opposed to the Postal Service being run as a business. It is a necessity of life in America. I don't care if it's unprofitable. How profitable is all of our bombs?

Let's not blame Bart for this one. Sorry, forced a habit. Also that million dollars, like what even would that pay for in any part? So Lisa decides she's going to call out Skinner and Chalmers. This is where they learned that student government is a joke, the Constitution is written on the back of a placemat, and not a good placemat, a place called Doodles, which they chuckled at that too.

Sensible chuckle. Yeah. It's letting everyone know the kids out there, the power of strikes. That is what's important, yes. And what also that they don't get why Lisa would want to like, well, I can't see the harm of that as she calls for the microphone. You tricked me into betraying my fellow students.

Lisa, student government is meaningless. Look at your constitution. It's written on the back of a placemat. And not a good placemat. It's from some place called Doodles. I see. Principal Skinner, may I make an announcement to the school? I can't see the harm. I hereby resign as your president.

And for my last act, I call a general student strike effective immediately. Give me that. Any student caught striking will be severely disciplined, unless all of you do it. Then I'm stymied. Strike! Strike!

Strike! Lisa, please, help me lure them back. I had to do what I did. Our budget is stretched tighter than Mother's sauna pants. Seymour, quit using me in analogies. Yes, Mother. I like that she's calling out to Hackeyline. It's an OK joke, but having Agnes appear to be mad that she's calling out to hacky line. You know, it's an okay joke, but having Agnes

appear to be mad that she's being used for an analogy, that made me laugh. Yeah, I did like that. Though of course, Lisa calling for this strike now, what Brockman should be doing when reporting on it is saying that it's actually sponsored by like Russian or Iranian back channels and to delegitimize this protest. Lisa causes a campus protest, which again is not really in Evita. Like Evita does have the support of the unions, like that is true,

but a general strike is not part of the plot. And honestly, the Perotist government quelled strikes and did not like them. There are lots of protest signs in Evita. None of them say, don't take my balls. Or don't cut our PNU, Simo. Or flunk me, flunk you. Or also free the Springfield Nine,

which must be a reference to the Chicago Seven. Here's where they at least were, unlike with the sign up sheets, at least they remembered to have jokes in the background. Marge and Homer teleport in there to tell her to give up. Yeah, they're just off screen for this entire scene. Also to let you know how much they're like not caring now, they have a joke where Bart is given permission

to cause mayhem, throws a brick, it bounces off the glass, and concusses him, maybe kills him. Marge does not react in any way. Unexpected joke, I did appreciate how unexpected that was. This throwing a brick through a window playing backfire to now Bart is dead. And they both just look at him silently and then tilt back up from him.

Like, Bart's unconscious for the rest of this scene just off screen, and nobody cares. Marge has the remark of those Fuddruckers, which feels a little monkey cheese to me, but I do like she thinks that she is getting arrested for saying a non-swear. This is where the cops show up, and first we get to see what was supposed to be a joke

at one time that the police would beat children. Obviously, that it's supposed to be seen like, what crazy satire, police would never beat eight year olds. They wouldn't actually have little headbusters. I suppose that's a joke. Police don't use a little headbuster. They just use the regular batons. They just roll the tank into the preschool and fire.

But this is when they are uncharacteristically convinced into joining in the protest. Chief Wiggum, we're just like you policemen. Don't you ever feel like the mayor doesn't care about you? You mean the mayor who kept me waiting for two hours in that restaurant? I ate so much bread! Sit down, boys! We're joining this strike! Uh, Chief, are you sure the mayor wasn't at a different olive garden than you?

Well, I can't take that rattlesnake out of his mailbox now, now can I? Yes, Chief, you could. Well, let me ask you this. Shut up. The Springfield student strike has entered its fourth day with no end in sight. Today, professional Buttinsky Michael Moore arrived on the scene. Kids who don't get to take music and art are 10% more likely to become chronically unemployed and appear in one of my movies. Where'd you get that statistic?

Your mother. The Student Strikers have been joined by other unions, including the Springfield Goat Milkers, the Association of Newsroom Cue card holders, and the United Federation of Theme Park Zombies. Zombie eat brains, but zombie cannot swallow this injustice. The Theme Park Zombies, that feels like Dana Gould. Yeah, it's from the Monster Put in Wallet school of comedy. To identify all the Dana Gould jokes, one of them, there are two very similar ones in this episode, one of them is Wigam saying well let me

ask you this, shut up. And then Chalmers earlier saying I've got a question, you're crazy. Yes. They're both similar. I've heard him in the prisoner episode, Dana Gould wrote the joke, why did you think a giant ball would not just pop, or giant balloon would not just pop? And the guy goes, shut up, that's why. Right. Yeah, classic structure. It has the snap of a standup comic

as good as Dana Gold has. Yeah, so that's the entire Michael Moore appearance in this episode. He says one line and is gone. And then I guess he's in like a later season 15 episode as well, I think. He's pictured in jail, but I don't think he has a lot. Yeah, he's in the Ronald Reagan Re-education Center, which we see him, Bill Clinton, Elmo, and the Dixie Chicks.

I would have kept Bill Clinton, Elmo, and the Dixie Chicks. I'd have kept Bill Clinton in there. And to let everyone know where Michael Moore was, he was fresh off of Bowling for Columbine, his 2002 documentary. His newest book at the time was 2003's Dude, Where's My Country? And we were almost at peak Michael Moore because the following summer would have us all in theaters watching Fahrenheit 9-11. Yeah this was like his the height of his cultural relevance absolutely and people hated this guy people like I don't know it seems kind of crazy now because I mean people obviously still hate people

like this but he was like wow like really, really despised him. And just like he was an endless target of mockery for like his weight, for his views, for all of this stuff. Yeah, so I'm sure there were some, there were probably people who watched this episode and were like, oh, Michael Moore. Yeah, I remember buying all of his books and carrying them around my college campus

and thinking, this is dangerous. Yeah, that's right. I'm reading a book called stupid white men. What are you going to do about it? Yeah. Well, yeah. And as our pals on the great podcast, Michael and us often point out that like for and I was a huge Michael Moore fan too. It was about is like acceptably left wing is what I could imagine back then as a kid is an American. You know, you're like, I'm so left wing, I agree with Michael Moore. When I do feel like now online leftist spaces, Michael Moore is seen as more of a center left position

than left wing. He's still an important voice. I feel like there was a big backlash to him during the Obama era because the idea was like, oh, we got it all figured out now. It just moves sailing forever. And then after that, we thought, well, OK, Michael Moore, you were right. Come back. Please thought, well, OK, Michael Moore,

you were right. Come back. Please come back. Yeah, because Michael Moore, he does get so big in the Bush era as one of the staunchest critics of Bush and being told, hey, he's insane for not wanting to invade a country for fictitious reasons and fictitious times.

What a fool. He was sure proven wrong. But then in the Obama administration, he was still saying things aren't perfect, and nobody wanted to hear that then, and that's not very popular. Yeah, especially about things like free healthcare. Yes.

He was still, I mean, still is a big advocate for that, and that was an unpopular statement during Obama's terms. Yeah, and now of course, Medicare for All, I haven't checked the newspapers lately, but Kamala Harris said she was into that back in 2019, so I can only imagine she still is. I think it was a gutsy choice politically by Simpson to have him on then. He indicates that he got the call around when he was being booed at the Oscars, though I don't think timeline-wise that exactly fits in. But him being put on a Fox show while most of the Fox apparatus was about destroying

Michael Moore every night, like it was interesting timing and a big choice by the show. And Al Jean definitely says a reason he liked Michael Moore then, or he did in 2012, I think he still has that same opinion, is Al Jean is a Detroit, Michigan native. Of course, you know, Michael Moore, his main focus usually is in most of his documentaries from the perspective of a man who lives in Flint, Michigan and its vision of how destroyed specifically Flint, Michigan is by Reaganomics up to now.

They connected as Michigan natives, which is cool in that way. I wonder like Al Jean Al Jean is more of a center Democrat. I'd say that Michael Moore is for sure Yeah, Al Jean retweets Jennifer Rubin So we understand where he's coming from politically Yeah, I think the you know the Michael Moore thing too in this, like, my dad was definitely not happy that I liked Michael Moore, and also I was physically compared to Michael Moore

negatively by my father as well, which hey, you know what? If you're a fat guy who likes wearing, you know, a funny t-shirt with a jacket, and don't like cutting your hair, maybe you do look like Michael Moore. I remember, Henry, that you would not wear baseball caps for the longest time because you thought it made you look like Michael Moore,

and now you are a cap devotee. Yes, yeah. Well you know as the hair thins I become more, I become a bigger fan of hats but also I think I physically don't look as much like Michael Moore now so I think that helps too but not that there's anything wrong with looking like Michael Moore I don't think though and I was on the front lines of the Michael Moore hate as well because I worked at a movie theater right as Bowling for Columbine came out and and this is in deep red parts of Florida and then I worked at a blockbuster video in Fahrenheit 9-eleven hit DVD and

It was nuts because it was a popular movie that was high in demand So they had a whole wall of Fahrenheit 9-11 for stocking purposes. But there were like two anti-Fahrenheit 9-11 documentaries. Like one was called Fahrenheit 9-11. And... Yeah, yeah. Keep it coming.

And Blockbuster only had two copies of it. And I remember at least twice, dudes came in and just stood angrily staring at the wall going like how come you only have two copies of this and 20 copies of that what's going on here and I was like I just restocked the movies though in my head I was thinking fuck you asshole but so yeah it was crazy it was crazy I mean there was an entire cottage industry about taking down Michael Moore from I don't know 2000 to 2009 maybe who knows? Yeah, there were hundreds of Michael Moore

Documentaries style things that on both sides of the political spectrum that came out for years and then those just became YouTube essays Sadly, he's very influential in that way, Michael Moore is. I looked up what he's been up to lately, specifically with regards to what is happening right now in Gaza. But it's his usual stance that is the kind of like, oh, I wish you went farther, Michael Moore feeling, as I have, which is basically he is against it.

He seems to have the stance that Joe Biden is being tricked into I have, which is basically he is against it. He seems to have the stance that Joe Biden is being tricked into supporting it, which I'm just like, oh, oh sweet Michael Moore I want to I want to think you're being bamboozled by thinking that he's being bamboozled. Not to linger too long on this, the only things I've seen about him recently are people I follow getting very mad at him for being critical of Kamala Harris And he's always critical of the Democratic candidate for going to the right. Yep. So just a lot of fuck you Michael Moore You're gonna ruin this. Yeah your outsized cultural relevance in the year 20 I know Everybody listens to him for what to vote for now him and Susan Sarandon. They listen so much

Oh and I saw him live when I was in college. I think part of it was a slacker uprising tour. He came to my college, Youngstown State University, back when Ohio was a battleground state. You know what, I bet those fuck you Michael Moore tweets also probably are quote tweeted with that one wonderful ContraPoints thing that I so love to see over and over again

about like, they don't want power, they just wanna complain, like, ah, it's so smart and I love seeing it every time. Oh my sarcasm meter exploded. See Marge couldn't catch that sarcasm I just threw out there. This is the last thing on the Michael Moore thing on the commentary Michael Moore throws out like America eventually does the right thing it just takes a while. I shake my head at that I'm like like, I feel like Michael Moore, he wants to appeal to people who think America could be good

and I can't agree with that anymore. I feel like, I think we're just an empire of death, Michael. What is the Hillary Clinton thing? We are good because we are great. Yes, yeah. Can't argue with that. Yeah, no, she did win Minnesota, yeah. That's all that matters

It is sweet on the commentary to hear Michael Moore and Mac raining connect on Michael Moore having run in alt weekly in the 80s And had life in hell in it That's fun on the commentary to all of that Michael Moore talk for him basically saying ten words in the episode Yeah, he's like you could blink and you miss it. Like it's bizarre. Just such a strange guest spot. I like that Ken Prochman hates him too. That's fine. Professional Budinski. Right.

Yeah, also the bit about the United Federation of Theme Park zombies. You know, a lot of Disney cast members are doing a lot of United organizing in labor to get better pay these days. So truer than ever now. Did Simpsons predict it? What?

All those Gastons being sexually harassed every day need benefits. They do. I feel for those guys. Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, the princesses get it too. I just was trying to go for the funnier option there. I watched a Gaston pose with some young lady,

and then the young lady grabs his chest in a joking way, and then he's like, no, you have to go. You're going now. And she's trying to have fun, like, no, what? And he breaks character and just like, leave. This is a human being. You're groping. Yeah.

Yeah, oof, that's tough. But almost as tough as the ending to this episode, which is barely linked to anything, it just kind of happens. Like the Skinner figures out a way to, or I guess Chalmers does, figures out a way to stop Lisa by sending her to a better school.

This is not a song parody though, but it parodies or it takes this place of an Evita where it's the general's all planning on how to get rid of her and her husband is like, well, on the one hand, you know, everybody loves her, but on the other hand, she's dying. And in this case though, they decide what they're gonna do after.

Willie is insane. Skinner! We have got to get these kids back in school. Willie, can't you turn your hose on them? They're wee children. I'd sooner turn it on myself. Well, that's a good idea too. See here, you nose wiping hair comers.

Back in Edinburgh, we had a coal miner strike. All we wanted were hats with a wee light on top. Then one day the mine collapsed. No one made it out alive. Not even Willie. Skinner! I don't mean to interrupt your advice from the janitor, but I say cut off the head and the body will die. You want to get rid of Lisa? But she's such a good student. Yes. In fact, I think she's a little too good for this school. The part of Chalmers being a normal guy is him saying, I don't mean to interrupt your

advice from the janitor. He's just wondering why is Willie in the scene with us outside of the comedic relief. Also just, they overuse the Skinner tagline. That's the ring in this episode. Like he starts- Two in the same scene. Two in the same scene. That's, whoa, guys. Ease up. Pump the brakes.

You know, it's Chalmers' plan to cut her out, which in Evita, it's just cancer does that for them. But so, in this case though, she's getting sent to a better school. That's eventually what they decide on, which she then sings a song called Smart Girl 6-3, which is sort of a parody of the reprise of Don't Cry For Me, Argentina, where she's dying I guess. If we stand together, we are strong!

Yay! Lisa Simpson, you have just been transferred to the Springfield Magnet School for the gifted and troublesome. Please climb into the idling bus. But, but I. Poor Lisa, poor Lisa. Don't cry for me, kids of Springfield. You can still reach me through email at SmartGirl63 underscore backslash at yahoo.com, but they

didn't bring it up in the commentary. When they invented an email address from Homer, Matt Selman took over the address and was replying to people as Homer. I think it was chunkylover52 or something at aol.com. Yeah, he actually put in the work. I don't know if they did the same with this Yahoo address. And Yahoo is still technically around, so maybe it even still works.

Can you have a backslash and an email address? I was wondering about that. Now that's why it doesn't work, man. I hope they at least got some sponsorship money out of using the Yahoo name on that. Which Yahoo for me, I have just been too lazy to fix it, but every time Chrome updates on my computer, on one of my computers, it makes Yahoo my default search

engine over and over again. And I've tried to change it over and over, and I just can't. That's incredible. Yeah. Maybe there are still web pages and only Yahoo is finding them. They haven't invested in giving you an AI answer that's a lie on your first page and hiding actual results. So maybe it's actually useful now.

Instead of giving you an article, we're going to write the article for you based on what we're finding. Sorry, slight digression. I just had this too with, I just recently tried to do a reverse image search like how I used to on Google, and it gave me fucking AI slop. And it's like, well AI says these are the pages. I'm like, I had to Bing reverse search it,

and it did slightly better. I think we all have to go back to an authority that for a long time was like the source we would turn to when we had a question. We have to start asking Jeeves again. Get him out of retirement. Yeah, bring him out. It's time.

Jeeves has been waiting for our questions dutifully all this time. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, good old Jeeves. Everything doesn't do what it used to do. It really, I know I sound like an old man. No, I mean, that's the thing is like, I think lately, I'm, you know, I'm like starting to think about this too

because I'm, you know, getting older and I'm like this too because I'm you know getting older and I'm like is it just that I'm getting older and everything seems worse or is everything getting worse and the answer is like I think both but it's way more of that everything is actually getting worse than I expected it to be. Yeah especially social media where the purpose before was to you know share links and ideas and whenever you share a link on social media they call the police. Right. You're trying to pull something.

Why would you want to leave? You have to stay here in our wild garden where also there's dogs and when they bark they shoot bees out of their mouths. Instead of promoting your Patreon, wouldn't you rather have an AI bot talk to you when you're out of that? Yeah. Oh I don't even know what that rock thing does and I don't want to know Yeah, so Lisa her death is being put into a bus that will take her to a magnet school This is where she gives her sad address and she's taken away This is basically her going up to heaven, which is what happens in Evita.

You know, actually I forget how the movie version ends. The musical is very, it's intentionally flat because it just ends with them saying they built a pedestal for her. A sick thing happens with Evita after she's dead. She is then embalmed and then to be displayed as a corpse for decades to come except her body is stolen and they don't reclaim it for 17 years and then they put it on display and eventually bury her respectfully so the musical just ends with they say they built a pedestal for her and embalmed her and then she

her body went missing it wasn't found for 17 years God then a musical just ends just like flat But this is a happy ending. Yeah, which by the way, wait. Yes. Yeah, actually when I was watching this again I had forgotten how this episode goes. I was ready for that tacky auto joke to be the last thing I heard Maybe it would have been better if that was what they went out on but it keeps kind of keeps going Yeah Well, they can't end it with Lisa going to this new school because then the status quo is disrupted. So sadly, we can't end on a joke about Otto getting jacked off as much as we would like to.

Uh, we have to just have Homer show up and be like, I'm not driving you to this school. And the end. Immediately the solution that was proposed to like, break the strike is to send Lisa away. She immediately comes back. to like break the strike is to send Lisa away, she immediately comes back. So then I guess the strike resumes off camera, but you know, well here, I'll play our last clip from the episode. Bonjour, Lisa.

Regardez notre bibliothèque. Oh, this place is paradise. Well, I guess this story has a happy ending after all. Just like my last massage. I'm not driving 45 minutes a day. You can't go to that school. But this is my dream. Oh, why can't you have a normal dream, like being an Olympic figure skater?

OK, let me take figure skating. Are you crazy? I'm not getting up at 6.30 every morning so you can prance around a frozen pond and think you're better than me. Well, what can I be? I don't know, how about a horse whisperer? Okay.

Over my dead body. It at least feels legitimate in a Dana Gould style that it's a father destroying a child's life and it holding you back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess over the shot of the school, we get some epilogue stuff. The first one is funny enough.

I don't like that they're jokey about what they just did. It feels like it lacks confidence to me. They didn't have that message after the Sherry Bobbins episode. I don't see why we need it here. Well, at least they had the like Ricky Rouse and modeled muck. Yeah.

That's like a funny joke built into the meat of the show. Yeah. Instead of like, oh, it's the end of the episode, we should have just say the word Ava Perone. We should just say that. But also, yeah, I hate the late 90s or early aughts. Whenever one comedian learned that you could be jacked off at a massage parlor and they learned that it was called

a happy ending, it ruined comedy for years. There was even the show happy endings, which was not about being jerked off. That was just five years of dead air. Just terrible. Yes, the Happy Endings show is a funny show that has nothing to do with being jacked off at a massage parlor.

But no, I mean, I remember, I've complained about this a million times because it was so hacky. But I was watching that Caribbean enthusiasm season that was also up against the Mike Binder show the mind of the married Man, and I watched both because they were on after Sopranos But both of them at the same time in their season Both had stories about getting a happy ending and it confusing them in they're like did I cheat on my wife now? What do I do? Like I was like

every Confusing them and they're like did I cheat on my wife now? What do I do? I was like every Is it because several comedians got caught by their wives and they're like no it was I got turned it into a story I Don't know I'm led to believe that it actually hasn't happened that much and 90% of the time. It's a police sting Like hiring a hitman Yeah, there are no happy endings and there are no hitmen. The FBI are waiting to arrest you. When I went to the Clerks 3 fan Q&A, it was gifted to me. Poor soul.

Yeah, I wasn't like, that wasn't a dig on you. I was like, oh boy, that sounds tough. I know, I know. It was at the Castor Theater, but Kevin Smith, even he told to let you know how Kevin Smith didn't catch That because this was a few years ago only He told a happy ending story that also involved him like his story was he went to a place for a legitimate massage He was offered a happy ending at the end and he was shocked. He was like wait, no, no, no No, I don't want that when it's like how does a dirty dirty boy like Kevin Smith then be like

I've never heard of this happy ending thing in a massage, who told me about that? Like, I accidentally came in here. I only went in here to find out a way to get out of here. What about Otto says he'd be a guy who pays for a massage? That's not Otto, like, that's not his character, that's not a pothead thing. It's like Moe, that's Moe, right?

Yes, Yeah. I've had enough of this happy ending joke. It sucks. Moe can't drive Lisa to the school. I guess they try to think. I mean, Dana Gould loves Moe. Yeah. You think he tried to...

There's no Moe in this episode, right? No. He has a photo of Lisa and lifts his fist in protein. Okay, okay. Weird. But that is it for Moe, yeah. Yeah, no, the ending is just, they canceled flue shots

and sold loose cigarettes, which is not as funny as making the school a prison. That's a funnier, darker ending. One that changes continuity, but then they ignore it completely, and it's a joke. Yeah. That's at least a good joke about like, oh yeah, our prison system is horrible.

I guess a good joke too. But yeah, instead we end with at least a nice credits medley of Alf Claus and at least enjoying all the songs he wrote which You don't even hear these at Universal Studios by the way when you walk around Springfield We heard that loop of songs 80 times as we were eating their fob But yeah the Sherry Bobbin songs all really get back in your head when you go to the theme park This is not part of the I don't know eight minute loop of songs Maybe it was past the cutoff date of what songs they could pay for,

or they're like, ah, do we need to pay for the Evita songs? Good. Maybe that. One way or the other, one way or the other, Dana Gould was screwed out of getting some money of it being played at a theme park. That's true. Yeah. But, but yes, it's, uh, yeah, it's a messy episode. I, you know what I wrote in my notes, oh, you know what? This isn't so bad, but as we've talked about it, I think it's not that good. Yeah, we complained a lot.

People 21 years ago writing this, pay attention to what we say. Yeah, you could learn a lot from just listening to this. This episode made me watch a really mid, kind of boring movie, so I'm angry about that. And it doesn't really follow Evita enough for you to be excited to see references or to hear your favorite songs, Perry.

I feel like it's a huge missed opportunity. And again, if you're gonna go for it, make the entire episode an opera. They have not done that yet, and that would have been a big stunt for The Simpsons. Yeah, I can't believe they haven't done that. At least a little later, they would hire back Jeff Martin to try to do something like this and actually go for it

But I would suggest folks, you know If you can watch a filmed a stage performance of it or you know Hey if your local local theaters doing it then the $300 on Broadway tickets or just listen to the original 79 version British people might say you should listen to the West End edition that was done in 78 I say the Broadway version is better But perhaps I'm being chauvinist American here saying or stop Patti LuPone in the street and demand she sing And then ask her for spoilers for the next season of Agatha all along

And see if she slaps you for asking that question And she'd be right to do it too. Yeah, I guess the final thoughts, Maren? Yeah, I mean, this was definitely near the tail end of when I stopped watching The Simpsons. I was trying to think today, like, have I ever had cable or like network TV as an adult? And I don't think I have. Like, I think after I moved out for college, you know, I lived in a dorm and then I lived in a house where we just sort of like, this was in like the mid 2000s. And so everyone, the way we watched TV, especially in Canada

where like we didn't have Hulu or anything for much longer was just on Russian pirate sites where, you know, you'd have to find a new one every week because it got taken down. I kept watching The Simpsons a little bit into that but yeah basically I would watch it every night with my family on Sundays on Fox until the mid-2000s and then that was kind of it so this would have been one of the last seasons that I watched. This episode is not one that I have thought of sort of ever since having

seen it the first time but when I rewatched it I was like oh I have seen this before 20 years ago but there this before, 20 years ago. But there are other episodes 20 years ago where I think of them all the time. So not a strong entry, I would say. Just weird use of some side characters, like weird use of Chalmers, weird use of Willie, kind of trying to do this comedy thing where they're like,

we know what the bit is, we just have to make everything fit that, but it's like, but that's not a good bit to begin with like why are you trying to doing all this like labored work to make this happen well believe it or not the Regina monologues next week is worse it's worse folks stay tuned yeah I mean there's a few lines I liked a strong ish like an okay start and then just kind of everything falls apart but yeah we're Johnny monologues is worse this episode mentions Harry Potter that episode has JK Rowling in it. Okay It was a different time, you know, you could do the ding-a-ling thing

You'd JK Rowling. I mean they might still do that right like or is she beyond the pale for the Simpsons at this point? Oh, I don't know. That's a good question I feel like you could still make Harry Potter references on the Simpsons at this point? Oh, I don't know. That's a good question. I feel like you could still make Harry Potter references on the Simpsons, but I don't know. Normal people don't even really know about this, I feel like, still. She's successfully quarantined it from... I do think they have enough millennial online writers

who might grouse at, like, guys, we got her back for another appearance, and they might say, but would Al Jean listen to that? I don't know, that's the question. But yeah, I'll say, hey, we'll always have Homer acting out Elvis kissing Gash. That's great. That's great.

Absolutely. But thank you so much for coming back to the show, Merit. Please let us know where we can find you online and please remind us of your upcoming game. Yeah, thanks for having me back. It's always fun. And I am on, you know, I'm still on Twitter inexplicably despite the fact that it is almost completely useless and within a year I expect will be what Facebook has been

since 2016. Decrepit wasteland of aging users hanging on to a scam-ridden wasteland for no discernible purpose. I am on Twitter and BlueSky at Marrickk. The game is called Fledgling Manor. It's available to wishlist now on Steam. And there is a demo out as well on Steam. You can also get it on itch.io if you prefer that site. But yeah, wishlisting is the best thing to do right now. And otherwise check out the demo and yeah, let me know what you think on social media,

unless you hate it, in which case keep it to yourself. And hey, Fledgling Manor 2 Night Friends coming in 2026. Absolutely. That's not on Steam yet, you can't wishlist that one yet. Yeah, looking forward to that. I'm gonna download that demo of Fledgling Manor on my Steam deck very soon, and you're one of the blue sky superstars, Mary.

I see you posting on there more than most, and good stuff. I post on there too much. It was funny though, when that site first kind of popped off I know it started a while ago, but then it first popped off like in 2023 spring or so I hopped on it and then I got a ton of followers and for a while I was in like the top 10% because actual celebrities weren't on there yet And then you know actual famous people got on and you know, John Scalzi has just like 100,000 followers. I'm like, Oh, John Scalzi. Okay. He's a sweetheart. What a nice guy.

I think I have low T when it comes to posting now because I don't have the stamina to be on Twitter and Blue Sky right now. My Blue Sky has one post, but I still have 2000 followers. So thank you if you follow me one of these days. Yeah, I just have my dual tab. I'm just like firing him back, back and forth. Blue Sky is sort of more of my like, I can be ready to jump over. I just have, I dual tab, I'm just firing him back and forth. Blue Sky is sort of more of my, I can be a little more experimental on there, I feel like. The audience isn't quite as hostile. Then if something does well in the testing market

of Blue Sky, then I rule it out nationally on Twitter. So. See, this is the kind of strategy that makes you a top 10 Blue Sky user. I am completely insane. Do not, don't, please don't tell anyone how I live. Well, well, but thank you,ritt. It was great having you back. Thank you, guys. So thanks again to Merritt for being on the show. Please check out her work and

also please wish list fledgling manner on Steam or hey if it's out by the time you're listening to this why don't you buy it. As for us, if you want to check out more of what we do and get these episodes ad-free one week ahead of time and then access to nearly 200 full-length bonus, go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up at the $5 level. And when you do, you get all that stuff again, ad free podcasts one week at a time. You'll also get full length episodes about Futurama, King of the Hill, The Critic, Mission Hill and Batman the Animated Series.

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really like three podcasts in one that we release at the end of each month where we cover an animated feature film, just like we do an episode of the Simpsons. This month we are getting in the Halloween spirit by covering Hotel Transylvania, which has a very interesting story about how it got saved after six directors by Gendi Tartakovsky. There's a ton of interesting history I've been learning in that.

And last month we covered the horrible B-movie where Bob did more research on B-movie than any human has ever done, and that includes Jerry Seinfeld. You will learn so much about B-movie, and that more research on B-movie than any human has ever done and that includes Jerry Seinfeld. You will learn so much about B-movie and that is just the tip of the iceberg of our six years of what a cartoon movie that we have been doing. You will get a giant back catalog if you sign up at that $10 level. Us covering so many of the Disney classic films, every Disney Renaissance film, every

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cool things that you will stay up to date on if you follow at Talk Simpsons Pod. And don't forget that all of our previously released free episodes are easily findable at TalkingSimpsons.com. Thank you so much for listening folks. We'll see you again next time for season five's Rosebud and we'll see you then. Well, I guess we're gonna need a new student body president. We're from Acme Amusement Rental. We're looking for Principal Skinner. Uh, yes, we all are.