Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Road to Cincinnati With Nina Matsumoto

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

This week we're joined by fantastic artist and friend Nina Matsumoto, for a very special occasion worthy of breaking our chronological format! Back in November 2019, we all attended a Simpsons table read for this very episode of season 32, and now that it's finally aired a year later we're ready to reflect on it and see how it compares to the original script! Listen along for this Skinner and Chalmers adventure! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

Good news everyone, Talking Futurama is coming back for Talking Futurama Season 2 Part 2. Fresher than a summer ham, this podcast comes every Friday and if you sign up at the $5 level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can hear each episode as it goes live. That's right, sign up today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for $5 to hear Talking Futurama every Friday throughout the rest of 2020 and also all the previous episodes we've done so far. So head over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons now or we're gonna clamp you! Shut up and take my money! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's good friends with Terry Bradshaw, but not the one you're thinking of. I'm your host, the semi-proud Ohioan Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today?

Hey, it's Henry Gilbert and Cinnamon on Chili sounds kind of gross to me, I gotta say. We'll talk a lot about that. and who do we have on the line? It's Nina Matsumoto, Soken and Ponzu. And today's episode is The Road to Cincinnati. You are the only ones having fun, just you! That's true. And today's episode aired on November 29th, 2020. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh boy Bobby the Croods a new age is number one at the box office everyone is trying to get their

hands on a PlayStation 5 and an Xbox Series X and president-elect Joe Biden got a hairline fracture from playing with his dog Major too hard that dog dog is going to come back and finish the job, Henry. I'm afraid. Are you saying he's got compromise on Biden? I think so. What if a cat rubbed up against Joe Biden too hard and just his knee snapped off? I was very amused when I heard that news, but it's very like Mr. Burns-esque. You're right.

It is. That rib always breaks. It breaks us back from petting a dog. Although I will say his dogs are adorable and i would die for those dogs so i totally get it yeah what a low bar it is to a cross of just like a president who likes dogs is like nice again it's like oh wow yeah remember when a president like could pet a dog that feels good he's not repelled by the love of an animal yes interesting he doesn't understand why people like dogs at all and so there's a new croods movie inexplicably and you know what i've heard the croods is in bed and uh there's a box office is my question there there is

a box office and we're counting things i mean it made like under 10 million dollars to be number one but technically 10 million dollars of business was done with the croods a new age in theater so it is number one in the box office last weekend any movie that comes out right now just go straight up to the top yeah you know not too long ago disney uh plus was like yeah all the movies are coming to disney plus this year and now as of this recording like just recently hbo max is like all warner brothers movies day and date on hbo max i know that's breaking news man i i wonder what uh disney you know they've been they've been doing some of their stuff day and date but they didn't do it they've been holding back their marvel movies so this was

like 2020 will always be remembered as the year with no marvel movies and theaters that's the most important thing what an awful year probably the worst part about 2020 i wonder if i can have access to those movies somehow because we don't have hbo max up here i want to see that new dune movie i didn't i forget that hbo max is not available across the border until friend of the show matt mcmuscles was talking about it too that he uh he is a huge godzilla fan and the godzilla versus king kong movie being on h HBO Max means he can't watch it. Can't you just buy it digitally somewhere, probably? Like any kind of marketplace?

Pay $10, $12? I think you'll be able to steal it somehow, but I think it won't be on a digital storefront. I think Warner will want you to either go to a movie theater and risk your life or sign up for HBO Max. If you can't do either of those things, I think you're SOL. I do want to warn my future wife, Nina, who's on this podcast right now, that I just got a new Kindle and I'm thinking about reading Dune.

So I'm going to become one of those Dune guys. I don't mind that. That's what you're in for. Is that a thing? Is that a Dune guy thing? I guess there are a lot of guys who get the fear thing tattooed on them. There are intense sci-fi fans who really love Dune. Have you seen the old movie? No, but I kind of want to.

I've seen it. I've been hearing my whole life from the Dune book fans. They just say, the movies all suck. It's only about the books. I'd rather watch Blue Velvet. It's an experience. If you want to see it, we can watch it. That new Dune looks pretty good, though.

And also that director, he did a very good job with Blade Runner 2049. Going back a little bit, I wanted to say it's very unfair how the new Animaniacs was animated in Canada, but we can't watch it up here. Oh, no. Only some of it was animated in Canada, so they should let you watch the ones that weren't. Just the scenes that were animated here. Yes. Man, how is Canada so outlawed on all these things? You know what, Nina?

You don't have HBO Max, but you do have healthcare. So let's let bygones be bygones here. No, cartoons and movies. I'll trade you. How about we give Canada HBO Max, then America gets nationalized health care? Once you move up here, you're going to get a lot of health care, Bart. But where are you going to get your cartoons from? I'll sneak them over the border through a little cable or a hard drive.

I guess what? You just sign up for a VPN and that just would do it, right? That's basically it, yes. We're brought to you by Nord today for all of your dark web needs. We've got to get on that vpn ad service thing yeah and uh and playstation 5 xbox series x everybody is lining up risking their lives also to get that or paying triple the price of them on ebay i have a ps5 henry has both and uh the verdict is you don't need either one of them right now absolutely not but i am i'm still loving walking around uh

virtual yeah virtual japan in in yakuza 7 or Like a Dragon. It's a lot of fun. But our listeners might be wondering, why are we doing a season 32 episode? Have we just skipped far ahead in time and just said, you know what? Screw the last 600 episodes. We're just going to do every episode as they are. No, we're doing this one because a year ago, a little over a year ago, we went to the table read for this episode, which was most of the actors

a lot of writers and various other folk joining for a live reading of the script so we want to thank uh mark malkov and nick pruer for hooking us up because without them we would not have gotten it we got a basically uh one seat plus two yeah three whole seats it was so nice of them directly behind uh dan castellaneta i think no no brooks oh yeah yeah we were facing dan the whole that's right that's right yeah but we have an entire podcast about that but because we went to the table read we have the original table read script and we're going to tell you throughout this podcast how this final episode differs from the script and it's pretty interesting to find out like see how jokes are changed and see why

scenes are changed and so on i found it a very interesting like exploration of like the writing process uh i wish the you know the that darn world series mess with simpsons again originally on the schedule it was basically a year to the day like because the the date on the table read is november 7th 2019 and it would have aired i believe november 9th 2020 and unfortunately the it threw everything off the world series and so instead it it came at the end of it at like as a nice little treat after thanksgiving you know and it was a treat for all of us because this is a very atypical episode about some of our favorite characters especially me because i love skinner and i was just thinking like this is the perfect table read for all of us but what if you were just

the casual simpsons we were like oh yeah i love homer and marge and stuff and you're sitting in here and you're like who's chalmers yes yeah why is part's principal on the screen for like 20 minutes i don't understand but yeah it was perfect for like the hardcore simpsons nerd and i think it was great because nina and i just watched uh planes trains and automobiles uh me for the uh like third or fourth time nina i think you've seen it before you never saw it before i've never seen it before no this is definitely i had no idea what the movie was even about yeah when i was watching this i was like oh it's kind of like that kind of premise nina it tells you in the title it can't be more clear it's about planes trains and automobiles

i didn't think it would be so literal. It is very literal. That surprised me. I wanted to mention that Chalmers is my favorite character. So this is perfect for both you and I, Bob. Yes. And by the way, if you're thinking out there, our relationship is nothing like that. So get it out of your mind. If anything, it's me.

It's the other way around. Nina! It's like a gay couple being asked, like, who's the Skinner and who's the Chalmers? I'm going to lied to cover up my follies all the time to you i uh well i also embarrassingly uh said afterwards that chalmers was my favorite character hank azaria when i was uh just kind of starstruck at the time but nina really meant it and i kind of i think i've ruined your chance to tell be original and say that to him when you meant it I I feel bad

about that now well then on on my script he wrote hi Nina from Moe Hank Azaria me too yours he wrote from Chalmers he did because you told him Chalmers is your favorite uh character so you have stolen Chalmers valor I'm sorry he's my favorite I know he's really your favorite you could have went I still remember I still remember when afterward I was like I didn't know Chalmers was your favorite character you're like oh it's not i just want to say something nice i'm nice and i was like what i'm sorry you could have went for a deeper cut like his most favorite character hollywood dog i should have said who told you uh if i if i were to say i my actual favorite azaria character is probably mo like yeah or wigum mo or wigum i think i mean i did say that mo was the saddest character in springfield and so i feel like i

have to stand by it mo is my favorite as well and that and mike scully you know we've we've talked a lot about our table read but we didn't say what was in the script because obviously we didn't want to spoil it so that was the the cool thing that scully told us like right beforehand when we said hello to him and we're like we never met him in person before that we interviewed him like two times before he told us like you guys are here for a special one and yeah part of me was like scared of like oh is this uh like a a tree? Like, oh, it's them trying out a new format breaker or whatever? We wrote this about you, Henry. Yes, yeah. Honestly, if we'd been there like probably a week or two different,

we might have gotten the podcast episode and been, I think, driven crazy by like, but we're not in this. Or after it's over, we like corner Matt Selman or Al Jean and be like, so, you know, we do a simpsons podcast and it's pretty popular sir it's actually pretty big oh i i wasn't on the recording you guys did about the the reading so i just wanted to mention one thing is that it was really cool getting to meet hangus area since i had a hangus area fan site when i was younger when i was like 13 years old and i followed his career career very very closely and I was too

shy about that to tell him I thought maybe it'd be too creepy if like some fan told him like oh I used to have a fan site about you I wasn't sure if I should say that but I did tell him that I've always been a big fan of his work like beyond just his voice acting role beyond the Simpsons now it was it was cool to be I think also he signed my thing saying like uh hey there hank or something like he i think he felt united in us being named henry us but us sharing in the name henry and and i mean scully told us it was a special treat that his area was there like we he's not normally there that's why scully even was like scully was busy on duncanville but he's like i'm making time to meet hank today and be there for the reading and julie cavender was there for her like 30 seconds scene uh i wish my biggest regret there was i didn't really i i said hello to hank azaria but at first i didn't recognize julie

and then i don't think any of us did it felt too late once i realized it was her i was like now i can't stand up and be like, hey, I was mortified. Because I really didn't want to tell her, you've been my TV mom my entire life. You mean a lot to me. I disown my real mother now. No, but I do relate them and my mom. But also with her short haircut, she, to me, looked a little like my mom, too. But I have a lot of feelings mixed up with Julie Kavner.

I felt really bad about her. You should have gone up to her and said, you look like my mom too but it's i i have a lot of feelings mixed up with julie cavner i felt really bad you should have you should have gone through and said you look like my mommy mom uh also not to go on too long about table read again we have a podcast about it but i want to thank mark malcov especially uh for driving us there uh in very uh harrowing traffic and also kind of just shoving us at matt granning and james l brooks because mark he worked for the david letterman late night show so i think he's more used to uh you know being around celebrities than we are or at least like comedy celebrities so he's just like shoving us at James L. Brooks so we got to talk to James L. Brooks we got pictures with Matt Geraning and it was lots of fun so yeah thanks again like super super thanks to Mark Belkoff one of the most amazing moments of all

of our lives he was far bolder than any of us yes uh i was a wreck the whole time it also all flew by i kind of wished i'd recorded it or secretly or something well just because like i was trying to i thought i'd never forget any detail of it but as i was going back over the script while watching the app i was like wait who did this uh stage directions i forgot in the room like because normally it was aljean but aljean was out of town like room. Because normally it was Al Jean, but Al Jean was out of town. It was Matt Selman. He was there. Yeah, Selman was there, but I thought it was a different guy reading the stage. It was someone else

reading it. We didn't know who they were. It might have been Jeff Westbrook. Who knows? I don't know what he looks like. It was quite a day. People have heard us brag about it a lot, but Nina has not been on before I think to talk about it too specifically. So I hope that's a treat for you listeners as well.

And this episode is all about Ohio. And I spent a little over 28 years in Ohio. I left about a month after I turned 28. So you might think I might have some insight on this episode, but I don't. Because where I grew up in Ohio is about a five-hour drive from Cincinnati. So Youngstown is in the northeast corner of Ohio and Cincinnati is in the southwest corner of Ohio. And there were like three other closer, bigger cities, like Cleveland was 90 minutes away, Pittsburgh was 60 minutes away, and Columbus was three hours away. So my world was very, very small then. And Cincinnati might as well have been the moon.

Like, I don't know what happens in Cincinnatiincinnati and has a very different midwestern flavor than the brown smear of the rust belts of post-industrial america that i grew up in so i have zero insights into cincinnati we still have never been there sorry which one's closer to pittsburgh oh uh youngstown okay uh so youngstown uh is on the border of pennsylvania and ohio and uh pittsburgh's on the other side of the border and like philadelphia is Ohio, and Pittsburgh's on the other side of the border. And Philadelphia is way the hell over on the other side of the state. So these states might seem small, but they're not. They're very big, especially if you grew up in the Midwest and have a very small bubble you live in.

Yeah, when I went to Youngstown, I remember flying into Pittsburgh first, and I remember thinking, why do they have so many bridges? That's because they have a lot of rivers. They have way too many bridges. You need bridges when you have rivers uh it's sort of like when I moved out here uh for about the first eight years whenever something happened in southern California my mom would call me I'd be like mom that's a six hour drive away I'd be like that's like where Washington DC is compared to where you guys live it's fine don't worry I I had a lot of fun watching this one to know it's like us the the simpsons go to a specific place kind of episode i you know cincinnati doesn't get covered a lot

in things it is it's like a big city and stuff but it hasn't really had much sitcom exposure since i guess uh well a reboot in the 1990s perhaps and uh i mean i want to know if any cincinnatians are listening out there but the city unfortunately or maybe fortunately is known best for its uh chili which is referenced in this episode i mean that's better than being known as the birthplace of charles manson which it is you don't want to be known for that they took that off the town sign years ago birthplace of charles manson but yeah skyline, I've had it, but not in Cincinnati. I had it at a steak and shake in my hometown.

And in case you don't know what it is, it's a special kind of chili made with slightly different spices and served on top of spaghetti, and then a bag of shredded cheese is just dumped on top. It's a whole bag, it looks like. It's a lot. And I mean, it is decadent. It is like a carb fest, but I mean, it's

fine. It's just like nourishing, comfort food. Isn't a lot of spaghetti sauce it is decadent it is like a carb fest but i mean it's fine it's just like nourishing comfort food isn't a lot of spaghetti sauce uh spaghetti meat sauce um basically a chili anyway yeah which is why i don't i don't know why people are weirded out by this because it's just like chili is a meat sauce i guess i guess it's just the name of it to think when you think of chili you don't think spaghetti with it it. It feels like a big, giant change. Well, then on top of that, the cinnamon quotient of it. Yeah, I mean, you're not like sprinkling cinnamon on the chili. It's just made with cinnamon.

Sort of like how curry, you can make it with cinnamon and chocolate and things like that. I do like that. Yeah. Chili on spaghetti just sounds like it could be shortened to spaghetti with beans. Basically, it's what it is. That's all it is. Concept-wise, it's a really cool idea for an episode and like i i'm really glad we got that instead of of instead of a just the family episode especially because like you know uh nancy cartwright wasn't even

there so we didn't get to hear real bart though trust mcneil does a good not real bart and superstar celebrity impersonator Kevin Pollak was there playing Skinner and Kevin Michael Richardson was playing Principal Finch yes yeah which Hannibal Buress would play him in the final version of the show yeah so we didn't get to share the room with Hannibal Buress who's a very funny comedian and king of the landlords yeah king of the land I didn't like finding that out he should not have been uh you know telling on himself about that he was proud about that i'd say you know but there are so many episodes where the simpsons go to wherever are there any other episodes where it's like about characters going to another place but it's not the simpsons you know i think at this point it's it's there still

are very few episodes that are just about not the simpsons or you don't see the simpsons for such a long time. And definitely I don't think they've done, I mean, there are a lot of episodes I haven't seen, but I don't think they've done a travel episode about other characters than the Simpsons. Yeah. Yeah, this is a really unique concept.

This might be the least amount of Homer in an episode since like the one Halloween segment where he wasn't in it, we given a spoken line. Oh yeah. Which was Nightmare Cafeteria, nightmare cafeteria i think yeah it has it's been uh it was really something to not see all the actors there and not hear them be themselves the entire time it does give it the flavor of like almost like this is a stealth pilot for a skinner and chalmers tv series i mean hey sign me up uh i mean skinner and chalmers that makes more sense than Wiggum and Skinner

in the Nolans. Yeah, you're right, though, that if any other fan went to this reading, they might have been like, oh, man, what a ripoff. We barely got to hear Homer or any of the other Simpsons characters, but we were just like, oh, man, Skinner and Chalmers.

We were the happiest people in the room, I bet. It would have been great to hear Harry Shearer doing it live, but I definitely didn't expect to see Harry Shearer that day. I would have thought he might have called it in, but I guess I think the feeling was that Skinner is the lead of the episode that Shearer can't really call in for that kind of thing. So it's better to have a live person in the room, though it sounded like Pollock was called in that day by James L. Brooks,'s better to have a live person in the room though it's not

like pollock was like called in that day by james l brooks like hey could you come in this morning and read for skinner uh i think they do you think they wrote this because steam hams became such a thing i think steam ham showed them how popular these two characters were together and i think that did inform this i don't know if it's been set on the record but it can't have existed without the steam hams meme totally yeah but i i'm glad they other in in the script there is no steam tam reference in the episode there's a very brief one and i'm kind of glad if they especially if like if oakley wasn't involved in it it would feel weird if they just like did a full Steamtams tribute and didn't invite him back for it.

I'm glad they held off on that. Yeah. Though, I mean, and Oakley, you know, he was in the replies of Selman about this episode. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, Selman added him. He took a screenshot of the Steamtams sign in the episode

and said, you know, tribute uh at bill and at josh about it and and bill bill replied in there uh to somebody else saying uh a nice thing about it so i i think everything's i think everything's cool there i'm also glad that the dynamic between chalmers and skinners is different in this episode from steamed hams because it would be exhausting if the entire episode was about skinner just covering up his lies yes yeah i don't think there's actually a lot of that in this episode really is there there isn't that dynamic there's like one lie and that's it okay he's not really trying to cover it up that much either well skinner did poison someone and lie about that yeah that's what i'm talking about but he's not like trying to cover up the entire episode or anything he just

admits it without even being questioned. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So I want to do a mini writer's corner on the writer. So the director is Matthew Nastic. We've talked about him. We did a director's corner about him. I believe he debuted in season 10 as a full director.

The writer is Jeff Westbrook. And he made his premiere with the season 16 episode on a clear day. I can't see my sister. And I will tell you one thing about him. And based on that, I want you to guess what show he was on before this. he made his premiere with the season 16 episode on a clear day i can't see my sister and i will tell you one thing about him and based on that i want you to guess what show he was on before this jeff westbrook has a phd in computer science what show did he write for before the simpsons so he's a futurama guy yes he is also from harvard as well so uh there you have it so yeah he joined futurama late in its fox run and basically jumped from that to the simpsons has been there ever

since you basically have to have like a bachelor's at Harvard to write for Futurama, don't you? I think so. At the very least. But yeah, he was one of the four PhDs at Futurama. And yeah, 21 episodes, including this one, so far in like 15 seasons of The Simpsons he's written for. I saw on this ep he's up to co-executive producer. So he's like, no, I think they have a lot of co-executive producers at this point you know which hey if that if that gets people the pay they deserve for being there that long then that's that's cool but uh well this

is a selman run episode like yeah yeah and there's a great interview with him at a local cincinnati website and that is wvxu.org yes that's the name of the website because it's based on a radio station Cincinnati Public Radio and there's an entire interview with Matt Selman about this episode why he wanted to do it how was sort of his baby and some of the chili based regrets he has about this episode I that article opens with him going like I know you don't eat the chili in bowls something happened it was a big mix you know honestly you should eat that much chili out of a bowl the plate is just gonna slip and slide all over with that wet spaghetti i i wonder if the cincy people take

some pride in like yeah it takes finesse to eat that spaghetti on a plate with all that junk over it and we and we take pride in being able to do that and you also don't eat it like pasta you cut into it like it's a pie just like cutting in like big chunks of pasta and chili man yeah all right well good then when i have a layover in cincinnati and eat that chili i will uh i won't embarrass myself by trying to eat it pasta style i want to mention uh recently i've been going through all the simpsons episodes i've never seen before. So I just seen On a Clear Day, I Can't See My Sister. And that's another episode about one character not being able to stand another. And that's one about Lisa putting a restraining order on Bart. That's right.

It does follow the kind of feel of planes, trains and automobiles for sure. Like he's the Skinner is this, you know, needy guy, just like Del, the John Candy's character. But Del also has all of these like life hacks and travel knowledge. Yeah, he's he's better than this lame one. At least at least there is no, you know, gay panic gags in this one for. No, actually, I guess I'm touching his genitals briefly is sort of a gay panic gag. He doesn't really panic, though. He's just kind of ashamed.

Yeah, he's just tired. They're both just like Chalmers is just tired of it. He's like, yes. And it made me realize, yeah, they do both wear blue suit jackets. Yeah. Interesting. Someone looked at them and thought that's a plot twist we could do. Yeah, but Skinner's suit jacket is usually a very different color from Chalmers.

It's true. It's more of a like a turquoise it's a lot bluer in this episode i have not seen a lot of the the more recent episodes so i'm not sure if they changed the color subtly over the years or if they change it for this episode specifically oh on uh on twitter selman copped to they had to re so when the jacket mix-up happens they are colored the same blue but they had to change skinner's blue for that scene so if you look at skinner's suit for most of the episode it's what at least looks like the standard skinner color but for that scene it's the same color blue as chalmers and then when they meet up at the end of the episode on stage,

their blues are back to being the alternate colors. So they're like, I definitely noticed that and thought that was a huge cheat, but I'm just, I'm just saying like his color, the color of his Seymour suit to begin with is slightly different from what it used to be in like the older episodes. So I don't know if that's a recent change or if they changed it just for this episode to prepare for the scene. And the principal and the pauper it's described as an aqua suit and

a lavender shirt when he's uh definitely a turquoise yeah their suit colors are very different if you look at like even steamed ham so i'm gonna need some hex values on this podcast or we're shutting it down i need pantones give me pantones in the uh in the classic pathetic meme of skinner it's like a purple suit for that one like that's how deep the colors uh but that's in the claskey chupo days the colors were uh much uh in the first season especially the colors are a lot wilder like that's the era of purple trees which the show certainly doesn't do i miss the purple trees the simpsons will be right back trees.

The Simpsons will be right back. Fox Sunday. The Simpsons give the gift everyone wants. We're going to see improv Shakespeare. See it first Sunday on Fox. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care welcome to the break everybody and i'm living on the air on this podcast and a big thank you to our guest this week nina Matsumoto our good buddy who went with us to the very Simpsons table read that this episode is based on I hope you guys enjoy this little break from format this week we really had a great time reading through our table

read script version and going over what was different and what was the same in this really good recent episode of the simpsons and if you enjoyed this podcast and want to hear so much more and also support me and bob doing this as our full-time jobs you should be supporting us at patreon.com slash talking simpsons subscribers to the patreon which is so easy to sign up for by the way get to hear every episode of talking simpsons a week at a time and ad free you get here next week's mad mad mad mad march right now and the same goes for our sister podcast what a cartoon we cover an animated series in the same talking simpsons style here both of those a week at a time and ad free plus you get a huge back catalog of patreon exclusive podcasts these mini

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So many great ones. Please sign up today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons to hear it all but if you want the five-way chili equivalent of a podcast you should sign up at the ten dollar level all of that five dollar stuff i just talked about at patreon.com slash talking simpsons is yours. But that $10 gets you also each month our What a Cartoon movie podcast. Me and Bob do an extra long, often over four hour long podcast each month where we cover an animated feature film in the same Talking Simpsons style.

Last month we covered the stop motion classic W wiles and grumet the curse of the were-rabbit at the end of this month is the anime classic the end of evangelion and we have a ton more in the back catalog over two years worth over 120 hours of them you're gonna want to hear all of them and you can get that huge back catalog and a new in each month if you're a ten dollar subscriber who gets all that previously mentioned $5 stuff to boot, please sign up today. $10 a month. It's really worth your time. At patreon.com slash talking simpsons. and uh yeah i also saw in in selman in one interview about the development of it he said

like their early stuff was that it would be a kidnapping mystery set in cincinnati and that chalmers he says i think at one point it ended with Chalmers being almost fatally lowered into an industrial vat of chili as the climax of the show of course it's chili again I want to know people from Cincinnati out there are you sick of the chili stuff because that's all your town is known for to most people it's all we know about and I guess the Reds I know the Reds I mean I when I think Cincinnati because i as a kid for the brief time i was into baseball watched a pete rose tells you how to play baseball video and uh that was that is what i always think of with cincinnati i think pete rose and the reds uh but i guess uh well

why don't we start with the episode then uh with the principals having fun. Next item on the agenda, Principal Duggins. Well, I see that not one of your students was able to meet the national fitness standards. A light jog. Come on, Duggins. You got to be a role model for those lazy kids. Tell them you put in two hours a day stretching. Your lap band. Ha, ha, ha.

Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. stretching your lap band oh my goodness thank you principal finch well i guess we can cross hilarious joke off the agenda oh i've also got a funny thing dougan's wife was unfaithful. Skinner! Learn how to read a room. Sorry, Duggan's. Screw you! I will say in the room, I thought Kevin Michael Richardson did a really good job as Finch. I like him a lot. All the fun eating noises he made.

Yeah. And so this is one of several times we'll say in the script. But a good punch up on this joke because the original joke is just saying, you know him how you ate through your lap band which is just like a direct insult not even like a clever anything clever about that at all i like the act out of the chomping down on stuff i think and burris is good at it too like he's uh he's a funny actor but i i i will say in the room i actually thought finch might be a recurring character. Like this wasn't his debut. I was like, oh, I guess Kevin just plays Finch all the time.

And this is the new Skinner rifle. But he was an invention for this episode, I believe. And I saw Selman said that Finch is named after David Brent's rival Finch from the UK office. That's the only other Finch I know of in fiction. So I was thinking of him and I didn't know the connection. Though this Finch is much more likable than Finchy from the UK office. Finchy's the villain of the show. Yeah, he's the actual worst person. The only way you can like David Brent is if you saw a friend of his who's 10 times worse than he is.

That's a good point. Sorry, I've only seen the US office. Who is the US office equivalent of Finch? Oh, David Koechner's character yeah yeah yeah cod packer okay that's it i i hate that character so much on the u.s office that i completely erased his name from my head i think he didn't come back finch he came back more on the uk office than that guy did on u.s office right oh yeah todd packer didn't come come back very often that's true he's just a bummer character. There are like, what, 12 episodes of The Original Office,

so he's on like three of them, which is 25%. The description of National Administrators Convention, and then it's paired down to EduCon. It's like, why is it called that? How is that the shortening of it? Or EduCon. That doesn't make sense to me. Chalmers reveals that he has been invited

to give the keynote speech in the proctor and gamble room yeah added to the episode i'd like the added boring humor yeah that's it's funny and it's a joke about i guess proctoring being a thing for teaching right or it's a teaching thing and uh that's that's better than in the in the script it's like the last person who gave that speech become america's superintendent general i also also i think it's more like at these uh at these convention centers like rooms are named after corporations who like you know paid to sponsor the building of the center so it's like oh we're in the uh the rb suites or whatever that's right have you guys ever met your superintendent at your school

yes i think i've ever met one oh really and it really was like a chalmers style situation in which he was brought around to the classes and i remember horrifying him by telling him how much tv i watched in a day because he was asking like kids how much tv do you watch in a day and i was like it was bart's like seven hours 80 if there's anything good on i wasn't quoting him but i think i was just like eight or nine hours a day so you were kind of like the the ralph in that situation basically uh he didn't know that'd be my future career, so screw him. Yeah, you taught that superintendent. He's probably dead now. Oh, he's got to be. No, I never met my superintendent. I think you'd hear about him as the scarier, the guy above your principal, but I never got to meet him.

He's allowed to assassinate one child a year. You know, I'm not exactly even sure what a superintendent does exactly i i just assume it's a layer of management above principal he's the final boss of school chalmers reveals he's going and skinner is hopeful uh needlessly so in this next clip well as you all know the budget allows for a plus one. And I was thinking I would bring the principal with the highest test scores, Finch. Well, that's not fair. Finch runs the magnet school for gifted test takers. Sorry, Seymour, but I have made my decision.

If it makes you feel any better, you were never in the running. Hey, we are going to light Cincinnati up. I got a buddy who used to be the longstopper for the Bengals. He co-owns this amazing poke place. Seaweed, furikake, soaking in ponzu. I got you, Kuro. That's a lot of ponzu sauce. Does it taste good when it's soaking in it?

I don't know. Poke is usually like a moist meal. I guess so. A wet meal. I miss poke. So in the script, I will say, in the script, I don't know. Poké is usually like a moist meal. I guess so. A wet meal. I miss Poké. So in the script, I will say, in the script, I don't know if I like it more or not, but it's implied that Chalmers has already chosen Finch, and he's not talking about the plus one.

But as this meeting is going on, Skinner is paging through like a manual, looking up the fact that Chalmers has to bring a plus one. So Skinner is the one who brings it up in the table read script. And in the final version, Chalmers announces that finch is coming with him because he's got the highest test scores uh you know i think i might like that the the script version a little better because it's like skinner already being annoying and needy of him realizing like hey wait i could come with you and he's like i i already made the decision he's just finding opportunity to like suck up to his boss yeah uh but i do like the unfairness of him having the highest test scores

because he has a magnet school of high test scores yeah uh finch's line here is also very different from the script that's like the first major change i noticed oh yeah he describes they're gonna do a hookah bar crawl and a silent disco yeah and then midnight poke yeah but they put more emphasis on the poke this time he's like just a poke monster this whole episode okay monster come on what are we saying here i you know i was thinking with finch what's interesting with him he kind of reminds me of you know like in lard of the dance or summer of four foot two when the characters meet a then current person it's like it's one of those marking time type episodes where like lord of the dance was lisa hangs out with a millennial child who's different than a 1990 child and here we have you know skinner and chalmers virtually stuck in the same

type of way they've been written since the this for 27 years in chalmers's case and then here they have this very 2019 person in finch just being like the coolest dude in modern cool ways but his cool stuff is just like barely cool like he knows about poke which is like enchanting and exciting to characters created in 1989 yes yeah well i was wondering is poke like the new sushi i think so i think it's it's much cooler than sushi has been around so long it's boring old school now i mean every restaurant is now closed and uh won't be around anymore except for all the big chains but uh when the world was normal like every restaurant turned into a poke place around here like everything it was it was sushi burritos was the first trend and now it's poke and now like

i said uh every restaurant is closing because no one can go to them i do love poke it's great it's great it's basically like a disassembled sushi uh bob i think was the finch in my life turning me on to poke i i had my first poke at bob's suggestion it's hard to screw up too i had good poke at disneyland i want to know what a silent disco is is that a real thing oh i did i looked this up it is a real thing what is that uh so it's a rave except everybody has on headphones and you're hearing the music in your ears but it's not blaring anywhere so uh to an outsider without the being able to tune into the music they're just seeing people dance silently but in your ears you're getting to hear the cool disco music that everybody else is so oh my god what is the point of that

though i i mean to be different and uh like a unique way to party i guess i i don't know i want to see you at silent disco now that must look ridiculous if you're just watching it with no uh earphones on i guess those have gone away too at this point. I'm sure there are still hookah bars around, but that strikes me as an old fad because I remember going to them during the George W. Bush administration. Oh, yeah. You're like, hey, I'm smoking something.

I'm cool, but actually I kind of feel sick. I did one hookah bar once with friends and I was like, yeah, this is... It felt like a thing that just like stoners did to be like, well, this is a really smoky weed, weed but i do that too if there were any of those around still uh i'm sure the pandemic killed those oh yeah pass that mouthpiece around let's all see the vapor sucking in people's vapors well honestly watching this episode had like 18 times where i just thought like well that's not a 2020 thing that's not a 2020 thing like all these

like travel yes like travel like sitting in a restaurant like uh all those all that stuff i convention yes a convention having a convention then the next scene begins a detention which you know honestly if i if i could do a rewrite on this i wish this was millhouse or nelson talking to skinner that way there was no simpson the entire episode yeah i i kind of agree with you henry and in the script there is more bart to be found in like fantasy sequences but i feel like they thought they still needed some tie to the core characters but i would have liked to see a clean like no simpson script maybe that one scene at the end could have been aired just as a gag no it's funnier when at the very very end you find out what the family's been up to yeah yeah if you didn't see bart if you by seeing bart it lessens the funny impact of a final scene

it's like hey the simpsons are finally in the show called the simpsons well not only do you see bart you see lisa too oh yeah that's right right with the double dutchers which uh you know rare rare that Sherry and Terry are nice enough to Lisa to let her play in those games you know there's only so many girls at Supreme Court Elementary with voices yeah yeah once you've got Sherry Terry and Janie there's there there's nowhere to go uh after that I guess you could pull Sarah out oh no not Sarah the uh Taylor. Allison Taylor. She's talked with a different voice before. You know, it feels so weird walking by a school now when the kids are out for recess or lunch or whatever. And they're like all kind of like wearing masks.

And some are some actually, you know, some are wearing masks. Some aren't. I'm not sure how effective that is. And I think they try their best to play games that require social distancing, like passing a ball to each other. Perhaps you could bounce it. And all you can hear is ring around the sea.

Double dutching is a decent social distance thing, I guess, unless you're in the middle. If the jump rope's long enough, yeah. I do like the change line in this scene because the double dutchers are making fun of Seymour the middle if the jump rope's long enough yeah i do like the change line in the scene because the double dutchers are making fun of uh seymour and in the uh the script uh he says they could jump to the late bus and that verse would still undercount my tears and uh in the final version of the show he's like as usual the double dutchers have zeroed in on my pain so i like that the double

dutchers are always outside of his window mocking him it's a normal thing yeah uh yeah well in general i this script i feel like is 85 what's on tv it is not the heavily i mean maybe the rewrites came before table read and it's like rarer to do the re a big rewrite after table read but i guess when i was in that room i expected more changes in the final aired version i suppose just from all the stories you hear about like oh oh, we changed that. We changed this. The biggest changes are things that are just removed, like scenes that are just cut out or the ends of scenes are cut out. They cut in a different place.

Well, maybe it's because the reception was so good in the room. Like people were laughing at everything. It was because of us that they didn't change the script. Like, well, these three nerds seem to like it. And one child really seems to like Chalmers. I sometimes worried I was laughing too hard in the room. You were laughing it up. But it was legitimate.

Henry, you won the laugh off. Your trophy is here. The laugh meter was off the charts thanks to you. But yeah, there's also fun dancing of pinch joining in with the girls as well and good good animation on his dancing i like that uh but yes bart uh is really feeling pity for skinner as he fails once more with uh with a high five and he gives him some tough love in this next clip we'll see more are you ready for some tough love is there any other kind being around you sucks.

No one's ever gonna invite you to anything. If there's a party you wanna go to, you gotta crash it. Or you'll spend the rest of your life sitting around with your hands stuck in a pelvis. It's too late. The plus one has been invoked. Dude, you're Seymour Skinner. No matter how badly you're treated treated you keep coming back for more that's your superpower use it you're right i will oh look at you grazing the thumb i'm really glad he didn't hit parts but growing that would be a

very different joke there good choice yeah he was practicing on the skeleton the high five but i also found in general the script is a lot meaner to skinner and the final show is nicer because in this script before he says you're seymour skinner it you know your your superpower is you know to bounce back from things before that in the script he says you know your mother hates you your uh everybody hates you you suck to be around like a lot of a lot of complaints up front for seymour you're right yeah this is a bit the script is a little bit meaner to seymour they they let him have much more uh more wins in this i think it seems like bart actually is rooting for skinner instead of instead of just being mean to him also the way the scene ends is um there's a little thing at the end in the script where nelson opens

a ceiling panel and lowers a rope for Bart. Then Bart escapes through that. What is that? Like, is he just escaping from detention? That's what I read. Yeah, just detention escape. Yeah. But isn't Skinner leaving the room anyway?

That I yeah, maybe that's been a good cut because you just wonder like, why does Bart need to escape? Skinner just left like it. Yeah. Bart need to escape Skinner just left like it yeah it does it would work is a good joke that like Bart only said that to get Skinner out of the room so he could run away from detention and he didn't mean any of the nice things he said hmm yeah in that way that makes it less mean to Skinner as well and I also love that Skinner knows no love but tough love he's just he's had a hard life uh and and yeah I mean definitely definitely i i love a bart skinner friendship kind of scene like that also goes back to uh one of bill and josh's best episodes of the

show so yeah yeah they definitely define the character with that season five episode and they're drawing upon all of our feelings from that really yeah the i mean especially in this episode the the strict no-nonsense disciplinarian that dave merkin really enjoyed writing like that guy is just long gone it's it's just a pitiful sexless man is what he is and i i guess in these i will say in these classroom scenes it is where i feel really bad that krabappel's gone. I don't. It does feel wrong to say recast, but the show really needs Miss Edna Krabappel on the show again. Well, Bart does have a new teacher,

but I forget who it is. I mean, yeah, it's just, it's always, I don't know. Eventually, I get the Phil Hartman stuff, but Edna is such a big character. I feel like it's insulting, but I feel like you got to recast at some point uh so

that scene ends we get to the next day where chalmers is waiting to be picked up by his buddy finch uh but things aren't looking good for old finchie finch where are you we're going to miss our flight can't make it gary i ate some pre-chip poke last night and it's blitzkrieg in my intestines i'm firing salmon eggs from both ends. But you're my ride to the airport. My car's in the shop being winterized. Sorry, dude. Yeah, cool. Up in, sir. We still have time to make our flight. Skinner, what are you doing here? Well, I saw in Finch's insta-snap story that he's firing salmon eggs from both ends, so I rushed over here at once. You want to come with me to Cincinnati?

No, thank you. Very thoughtful, Seymour, but I wouldn't want to. You wouldn't want the school board to find out you wasted the transferable but not refundable $65 plus one registration fee? No, I would not. Skinner wins already thanks to his knowledge of uh bureaucracy like how do both of you feel about uh now his name is gary and it's been gary for a long time i just accept it i don't it doesn't bother me as much as say jeff anderson that that that bugs me

more i think i mean they just revealed his name as a joke. Like, yeah, didn't you know his name is Gary? But I feel like Superintendent Chalmers is a mouthful. And if you want to have a lot of dialogue with him or to talk to his character, it's hard to just cram that in and make it sound natural. I think Gary is a perfect name for him. I think it works really well. I don't know why. It just sounds right.

It's a lame white guy named like Bob. Bob Chalmers. Bob Chalmers bob chalmers how would you feel about that you know that could work too i kind of like how their dynamic is a bit reversed in this moment uh because chalmers is kind of trying to cover up and talk his way out of something and skinner uh pulls him into it you're right i didn't even read it as that that is such a the skinners actually is calling him on his bs in that moment it's because chalmers is uh we don't find out until later but he's trying to cover up the fact or trying to hide the fact that he intends to fire skinner they both have a lie they're trying

to cover up i really enjoy how everyone is having their car winterized or just had their car winterized when i owned a car i never lived anywhere where anything had to be changed in florida your car is your car all the time like there might be like in in jacksonville florida there may be occasional like flash freezes and you're like ah man my car is iced over briefly but in a way it's more of like a a fun side quest you're like oh man an iced over windshield this out is for people in other parts of america all the time i love warming up my car for 20 minutes in the morning before leaving lots of fun it's snowed a bunch in ohio parts of ohio recently really oh in the early early winter man that's that's how it should be that's how it was when i was growing up like cincinnati area but

this is more like a cleveland area yeah that's about where uh near where i grew up i don't know if that tends to be like colder than the other part it's not that much further to the south okay and this is talking simpsons weather corner i love the line firing salmon eggs from both ends it's such a like graphic image i remember getting a huge laugh at the table read as well yeah i just think of him being like a contra boss well hearing skinner say it again and also the way skinner says it you know that he already heard finch say that exact phrase on a separate insta snap story in addition to him just repeating it to chalmers again seymour would not be that filthy on his own he's just quoting finch yeah i like the idea of him like broadcasting that to the entire world through insta snap yes to all his friends they need to know how sick he is like i and i love how finch in a very just like rude hang up way but a very

modern way of like okay cool and then just stop like just cool like i guess the call's over now we see him uh returning to the poke at the end of the episode so i don't think it really affected him too badly it didn't turn him off poke this bad experience at all i would think if i was shooting salmon eggs out of both ends i would not i wouldn't i'd take a break on poke for a few days at least oh but salmon eggs are so good though i love it i will say i never i had sushi places uh before i went to japan i always thought the salmon eggs were like they were gross i never wanted to try them and then when i had you know a chef's choice uh sushi plate at a place in japan i had these salmon eggs and i was like well i got i gotta just go with it and that's when i finally

had i was like whoa that is really tasty like i i really did like it their nature is flavor balls but also the phrase transferable but not refundable in uh is is pretty fun is a good skinnery phrase and and that was in the script too i almost thought like oh that sounds like a rewrite but no it's right there in the script it just shows how low the stakes are yes yeah 65 will be lost if they don't do this uh so then they get in an airplane which was also fun to do on that day because you know we were flying we had just flown and we were going to be flying back that within like six hours i think of when we were there and it was the shortest flight i've ever taken in my life it was amazing it's so fun to just go like sf to la and in the in the before

times when you can just do that like uh yeah i think i think a couple times in the in the games press i would do the uh like two flights in the same day like yeah i woke up in san francisco i flew to los angeles and then i would come back home that night and still sleep in in san francisco it's almost like there should be a train between the cities well that'd be pretty cool who's paying for that that, Bob? You can only hope that Elon Musk finally builds that train. He'll build a train that moves one person every hour, but they'll be safe from homeless people.

That's the important thing. Bob, you're going to be flying to see me soon. You're looking forward to it? Yes, I am. I totally miss all of the inconveniences of flying. And I do miss the feeling of just immediate comfort. Once you get through security, you're like, all my problems are gone now.

I don't have to do anything anymore. Yeah, I think next time I fly, whenever that'll be, I would also enjoy all the little stresses and inconveniences of like, oh, I miss this so much. Yes, please be rude to me. Please tell me I didn't put the things

in the right containers. Oh, I take off my shoes this time? Okay, the rules change every time and I love it. It's a fun surprise. You need that like school kit that Lisa has. Oh, yes. When I was in school, went on strike.

Oh, yes. Is that gum? Is that gum? Is that eight ounces? Is that eight ounces? Sir, what is this device? That's a Switch, sir. Having to explain all your devices to people are like,

is this iPad counting as a laptop now or is it not which which is it's all it's all my why does your fiancee live in canada oh explain yourself whenever they ask me that i say i ask myself that question every night uh the the canadian fiancee for me is having to explain my cpap machine just like not do it must i take it out come on we know what this is how have they seen a billion of those by now you would think so yeah but and yet i feel i feel like it's it's every fifth time i'm i'm told to take it out just keeping you on your toes because what if you put a bomb in it one of those times uh god uh hey c-pap bomber i also i love the description of uh the 2018 movie game night is like it was made

for the low res seat back screen i love quite quite a diss on game nights but uh i like that jason bateman is in this episode he wasn't in the script yeah well this i guess is this the biggest cut of the script to this bit here i think there's a there's a bigger scene cut out later but this is a pretty big cut because in this original version in the script uh there's a there's a bigger scene cut out later but this is a pretty big cut because in this original version in the script uh there's a there's a safety video on the plane hosted by a buzz lightyear uh style figure named uh sorry fuzz parsec yeah who describes i love his thing of like to cincinnati and nowhere else no more that's i think what it is and i like skinner's comment about this he says teaching with humor i've often thought how badly that would go in our schools. That's a good line.

We were robbed of the new character Fuzz Parsec, unfortunately. Yeah, I wanted to see what that character would look like, how far they would go with that design. I was trying to imagine what the designers would do with that there. Instead, we just got like extra game night jokes, which is a film like i love how forget what a randomly specific forgettable film that would be like uh at least in a 2019 air uh flight you'd be like game night i guess i heard some about that sure it does feel like every is that a real movie it is yeah it does feel like every jason bateman movie is made for an airplane yes yeah well that just goes to show how much impact it had if i had no idea it was a

real thing i thought it was just a funny movie they made up they they even got the poster kind of similar it's him him and rachel mcadams he has a gun and there's a dog too it's about it's about an adult game night gone wrong with uh with kid with a fake kidnapping and i all i know is that like i read i read a w a Wikipedia plot synopsis. I have not seen this movie. Okay, I'm looking at the poster now, and it looks like a fake movie. It does, right?

Yeah. Well, now these movies are just Netflix films at this point. They only go on the streaming. They're not going to be in theaters anymore. But yeah, I kind of wish Fuzz Parsec was there. I think it was, what was it? Dan fuzz parsec was there i think it was uh what was dan was fuzz parsec i think i think like yeah he was doing a uh i think a higher pitched voice no no he was doing a buzz lightyear voice that's right yeah yeah we then find out that chalmers

uh is similar to marge has a fear of flying where'd you put my carry on i'm going to pop an anti-anxiety pill oh i, I gate-checked your bag. It's free and you don't have to fight for precious overhead space. Another classic Skinner travel hack. My pills were in that bag, you idiot! Oh, okay. I can do this. Ooh, it's just a short domestic flight. I'm completely safe, right?

Sure. And if you're stressed, you can take comfort in the passenger's many emotional support animals. Pig! I'm going to die in a flying zoo! Everyone around you is taking their shoes off. Hey, no one is safe. No one's safe. That phone is not an airplane mode. The pilot dresses like an alcoholic.

Somebody's yelling. Who is yelling? Where in the name of God is the air marshal? He's bagged by the TSA threat sack. That's a funny thing thing i love that threat sack uh is chalmers gonna like papa xanax or something i wonder i think so yeah is chalmers secretly has a pill problem in here and a pill popper maybe got it from mecca i think half of america is zanned out sure yeah well like mommy's little helper we all need it now i mean

i never do carry on luggage anymore. There's never any space. It just makes everyone annoyed at you. We're going up and down looking for a space. I just like check everything. I don't want to turn this into Bob's travel complaint hour, but I will say I can't stand the people and I know fly is expensive, but the people who can barely lift their luggage and it's also too big

trying to cram it in above my head because I'm always in an aisle seat by my choice. And there are always like 85 year old men trying to bench press their luggage and just try to get it up in there. And just I'm seconds away from being my spine shattering when that thing falls on my head. So, yeah, no, look, I don't like the people who have a gigantic bag i will say the previously mentioned cpap machine that is a thing like i can't sleep without it so if if i don't care about i don't worry too much about luggage getting lost except for that i don't want to lose that and so i do do carry on stuff but i always have it like i either have a tote bag that slides it can easily slide between everybody's gigantic plastic rectangles that cannot move or i have a backpack like one

of those two so i at least try to have an easy thing i don't mind carry on but you should be able to lift it and also not hit me in the head with it yes yeah i want everybody just gets so tense about it and when but i love that skinner not only likes to check his bag, but gate checking. Like he's such a lame-o that he loves. He thinks it's so great to gate check a bag, which is what everyone else hates doing. I mean, I've seen people feel like defeated and impotent giving up their bags at the gate check. They're like, no no i got it this far please don't take my bag i would be annoyed having to like haul my luggage throughout the entire

airport and then having to check it once you got to the actual airplane it's like well why did i haul it around for then well you know the beginning skinner's right though it is free though it's true yeah and it always. Someone always has to do it. There's never any space because everyone tries to bring their luggage onto the plane with them. Oh, these airplanes are not equipped for these newer bags. Build new ones. Yeah. Build new planes.

Bob, there aren't going to be airplanes anymore. Oh, true. Not with all the must tunnels running around the country. Well, speaking of things that don't happen anymore in 2019 emotional support animal like tweets and viral stories they were all over the news of like that you an emotional support animal was a as a joke or not joke but like people do really need them and it's not like snowflake culture whatever uh but there were there were people sharing things of like i've heard of a dog but a pig or whatever a peacock a peacock i think was the big the craziest yeah people share that's my favorite one yeah uh and i mean hey i want to feel comforted by a dog

on a plane or a peacock if that peacock takes up so much space though no they can fold their tails in how much though it's really long just bring rubber band it's fine a scrunchie for your peacock yeah just tying it up well here's some breaking news guys though i like at the time of this recording yesterday oh it was announced that government american government rulings are from from now on, on airplanes, only dogs can be classified as an emotional support animal. Nothing else can count as that. It goes into effect in 30 days. So at the start of 2021,

as far as emotional support animals go, only dogs are allowed there. You think they'd be having less rules on planes now just to encourage people to fly? you know what find a stray dog on your way to the airport bring it on the plane we're gonna have fun well half price for that dog seat but bob you can't put louie on your lap anymore then he never goes on my lap not since the accident and that was you can really tell it in hearing it isolated a sound but julie cavner voicing the turkey is very funny yeah and that's what her credit goes over that until i read i didn't know that until i read the article yeah that's what her credit goes over at the end of the episode the turkey i don't believe the

turkey made a noise at the at the table read though i i delight in seeing so uh when i walk over to henry's i always choose the path where i see wild turkeys and they're adorable and i love them and i i try to see them every day whenever I come to record. So shout out the turkeys. They're so cute. They are cute, but they also look scary. The male ones have these really huge spurs. And they have a turkey cord hanging out of their chest.

When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care you want to pull that cord that's how you flip them there was a really funny day where i had missed bob at the doorbell a couple times to let him in and uh nina let me know like we were chatting in dms about something and nina's like now let bob in he's cold and there are turkeys after him it's true they've never tried to attack me i keep my

distance and i admire their plumage oh yeah also in the script there's a little bit where skinner tries to like massage uh his earlobes which he says he does to mother there's more creepy mom stuff in there which i think they they probably made a good choice to tone that down for this episode because you can do weird mom stuff if skinner's like just a one-off joke but if he's got to be a full human for the episode you can't get too weird you want to soften it you don't want to turn into an ear mother ear massager overall they cut out a lot of uh stuff from the airplane scene probably because they just wanted to get on with the actual road trip but how do you guys feel

about the shoe taking off on a plane i i won't lie i i've done it on occasion usually on a long flight but i i regret it now i don't think i'd do it uh in in if i'm ever in an airplane again i don't think i'll do it unless you have some sort of medical uh thing you need to take your shoes off for i don't quite get it i don't feel that much more comfortable when my uh my socks are out well then you have to put your socks shoes back on and it feels even worse i think i do it every time wow sick freak i yes but i mean on planes i don't like when there are bare feet next to me of a person I don't know. Sure, sure. What do you have against feet? Come on. Also, after they get kicked out, in the script, it was an emotional support marshal that was throwing them out.

But yes, they're running out of options. And oh yeah, I guess actually this is where there's another big cut, isn't there? Like a whole scene is gone. So once they get off the plane, there's a scene between Skinner and Chalmers. And Chalmers is like, maybe I'll just go to Cincinnati on my own. And in the script, the control tower, which is very conspicuously behind Chalmers in that scene, like, very, for whatever reason, in the script, it turns into Bart. And Bart's like, you heard him. He's saying, maybe.

That doesn't mean no wear him down so in the final version there's like a very distracting air control tower in the background so i think they just cut the scene off i think it was animated i think you're right i think it was animated yeah and instead of uh you know the scene where chalmers sees the line at the rental car place and it's full of people in the support animals he actually goes into there he finds out his credit card is maxed out he doesn't know how it was for airbrushing an airbrushing kiosk car place and it's full of people and the support animals he actually goes into there he finds out his credit card is maxed out he doesn't know how it was for airbrushing an airbrushing kiosk and then we cut back to his house and his daughter shauna which is apparently jimbo's girlfriend

is getting like a frank frisetta style mural of jimbo painted on the side of the house uh that would have been a funny gag too i i hope no animators had to you know fully design this frank frisetta like because to imitate frank frisetta is a difficult uh piece of art like it's not it's no easy task to do that you know i like the character of shada i'm not sure how you guys feel about her but um there's been always been so many like rebellious uh shoddy boy characters it's cool to see like a rebellious teenage girl character in the show. I haven't seen enough of her, but this is the first time I've learned that she is related to Chalmers.

Yeah, I can't remember like when that comes up exactly. I like, yeah, I was introduced to her a few years ago from watching the Halloween of Horror episode and she appeared. Yeah, and I was like, wait, what? Who's that with Jimbo? Again, i am not kept up with the current lore as much on simpsons but i'm learning and i yeah she made her debut in 2009's the good the sad and the druggly season 20 man wow she's a decade yes old character at this

point i it would have been a good gag to just see the chalmers has no money like that kind of screws him even more in the episode but uh you know they they they are kind of trying to just get them on the road and get them out uh i guess you know the the they got to get to the first commercial break soon too and that happens once they're on the road uh and so chalmers he's of luck, but Seymour's got a plan. All right, where is your car? It too is being winterized, but I know where to get one. Oh, no, you're not borrowing my Buick. I just had it winterized. But, Mother, this road trip is my last chance to become friends with the man I admire most in the world.

Please. Well, you did do such a nice job rebeating my eyeglass chain. I guess a boy your age should have friends. Man, you, me, and the open road, huh? Yeah. Maybe some music will make the time pass more quickly. Timothy, Timothy

I hope you like this song because it's stuck in the player and there's no volume knob. Timothy, Timothy. I hope you like this song because it's stuck in the player and there's no volume knob. Timothy, Timothy. So in the script, Agnes is much harsher to Skinner, actually. Oh, yeah. And Skinner is a lot weirder because instead of saying, you know, you fixed my, you rebeated my eyeglass chain, a boy your age should have friends in the script. She talks about how her Mother's Day coupon book that year should have a lot of toe hair plucking. And then Skinner brags about he's going to pluck, peel, and pumice her feet.

So crueler Agnes and grosser Skinner. So they soften that as well, which I like, to make Skinner, again, more human. It was weird seeing such detailed pictures of the background hanging on Agnes' walls. I mean, I know they can do that now because the show is HDd but to me it's just distracting when the the pictures are so detailed yeah i think i mean they have the power to do that now with the hd like you said but i find it too distracting because your eye should be drawn towards the characters but instead there's like a very

distinct drawing of skinner right by the other drawing of skinner in the foreground i'm glad they got away from the toe hair plucking grossness and instead went with a specific of having eyeglass chains. Like you just think of like, oh yeah, old women like Agnes have eyeglass chains and they have beads on them for some reason. Like I like that and that it would need a re-beading instead of just buying a new eyeglass chain for her. You should get one of those, Henry.

I do. You'd be the coolest guy on your block. I, you know, I prefer putting them on top of my head. But then again, some of my hair, then I pull them down and my glasses are slightly dirty from just like hair grease. That's gross. I'm as gross as this toe hair you put them on your head and you go uh walking around going has anyone seen my glasses uh i mean let's talk about i timothy was like shouted out in this table script that's something too that i i would have figured

if i'd seen this on its own i would have think like well i wonder where all these songs came in but in most cases as if a specific song in half the cases specific songs are said in the script and they are played on screen and timothy is written by rupert holmes the guy wrote the pina colada song or escape but uh it is about a cave-in uh and two men eat their companion who is not a duck they lied about that to get the song on the radio yeah that's uh i only know that as part of the story because on mystery science theater i believe it was monster gogo because the every sketch couldn't be about the movie because nothing happens in the movie so the the characters just have small talk and they talk about the pina colada song just ask him ask joel to explain the plot of the pina colada song and just ask him ask joel to explain

the plot of the pina colada song and then they ask him to also explain the plot of timothy and but i'd never really heard that song before when it was shouted out in the script i didn't know that song in the room by name didn't know it until i heard a gilbert godfrey podcast and when trupert holmes was on it he's on several of them. So I can't point you to which one it is, but he explains the writing of the song, Timothy and the controversy about a song about cannibalism being on the radio. But it is largely known as like

one of the worst songs ever. Like we built this city in MacArthur Park. It's always on those lists, like the boomer list of the worst songs of all time. I know not, oh, I knew nothing about this song until I looked it up. I had no idea it was about cannibalism.

And well, you said it's like regarded as being a very bad song, but you know what? nothing about this song until i looked it up i had no idea it was about cannibalism and uh well you said it's like regarded as being a very bad song but you know what um it's my first time hearing it like watching it on the show and i love any song that's like super cheerful but then when you actually look at the lyrics it's really dark that's like my favorite kind of song so i don't know i'm for us that's gonna be first dance at our wedding. Well, I got to say I'm a, I'm as lame as Skinner in this regard. Cause I do. I like these cheesy,

uh, power pop kind of songs from the seventies. Like Henry did look wounded when I said MacArthur park was bad. I like that song. I know it's like, I know it's an annoying song. Like I went to take it up with Dave Barry. I didn't say that.

Uh, when Krusty was so negative to it yeah about it yeah just kept going i like i was like but it's good so long now you've been dancing through a lot of 70s stuff on just dance i know i've uh i got just dance unlimited and instead of playing the current songs that are even songs from 10 years ago like katie perry songs i instead mostly dancing to songs from the 1970s the ones made for the old people on it yeah and i also love in the shot skinner is not annoyed at all at timothy he's like hey when he says there's no volume knob he's like anyway yeah

enjoy it like he's like yay timothy also in the script the specific model of buick in 1984 riviera is shouted out and i think they they did it for real and it's only a buick for a joke later like that's the only reason that's right do you think skinner was listening to timothy in vietnam it came out 1971 yeah he must have or or when he just got back and had stolen the name of seymour skinner that must be one of the first songs he listened to with with agnes well i mean again for that timeline to work now skinner is like 70 he's too old to be a vietnam veteran i mean he's too young to be a vietnam veteran at this point yes yeah so is a joke that he likes a lame song or is it that it's like a dark such a dark song i mean the joke is

like i said up front it's known as one of the worst songs of all time and it's not a song you want to hear over and over at max volume on the road okay yeah i think i think it's just that he's he's not bothered by it at all he's not well also like i guess neither agnes must like it too or she never listens to music actually i could see her just she never turns on music and doesn't care for it like you could replace that with like the crazy frog song and the joke would still work yes yeah but i guess it does fit more the age range of like the selman i i always remember this on a commentary where selman's like you want jokes about transformers watch family guy i didn't i didn't grow up with that stuff selman is too young for uh for timothy it came out before he was born or like when he was three yeah yeah he must uh i

guess he only knew it as a post-modern joke on a cheesy song just on cheesy song he was born the year timothy came out i take that back okay and uh i saw selman uh says this was a lucky coincidence but when it says 800 miles apparently somebody noted noted that from Cincinnati to Springfield, Massachusetts is 800 miles thereabouts. But not intentional. And I've never been to Missouri, but is it full of outlet malls? Is that what it's known for? Basically, yeah. Okay.

And Branson, of course. Oh, yes. Yeah. We're second encore every night from Andy Wilkins. And lots of opiates uh that's most of america though yeah they're they're not special anymore the the gag of uh skinner reading the lonely person is uh reference to the lonely planet uh guidebooks and i like that it's a logo of a person eating alone i like that i never heard of these lonely planet guidebooks before i looked

them up online i was like i've never even seen these wellely Planet guidebooks before. I looked them up online. I was like, I've never even seen these. Well, there's like eight things in this episode that it's like, well, wait, you guys have phones. Like, why are you looking in a book for any of this information? Yeah, I was actually thinking that like, oh, I think it's cool that he's actually reading from a book and not a phone. But that's probably because it's easier to show what a person is reading when they're just holding up a book. If it's like on a phone, you have to like aim the quote-unquote camera over their shoulder and maybe it's more awkward that way yeah smartphones have made all fiction uh more boring frankly yeah yeah well same with like uh chalmers is note cards it's like let's just have that on the on the cloud chalmery why why you why do you have note cards in this day and age but i think that makes it work better even as a a throwback to road trip films like planes trains and automobiles are also like

midnight run those kind of movies that you you need these physical things if everything is on the internet then it is a more boring episode same with like uh you know the travel problems that happen in planes trains and automobiles multiple of them would be solved by an internet connection. Yeah, yeah. It's a trite statement, of course, but every sign fell. It's like if you guys could text message, there'd be no plots. It'd all be over. I will say I still write down my shopping list on a piece of paper.

And I also, if I'm going somewhere new, I will actually draw a map showing where it is. That's impressive that i i that's a lot i would not put that much extra work into a new place it's just faster to pull out a piece of paper and pull up my phone i still have a paper schedule i'd lose i can never find uh you know i'm kind of a cluttered person it's hard to i if i put something down on paper i often just end up losing put it on a chain around your neck, Henry. A beaded chain. Like your future glasses.

But yes, as we learn in the next scene begins, there's a whole lot of ways to eat Cincinnati chili. Oh, did you know that in Cincinnati they have four different ways of preparing chili? You don't say, huh? The two-way chili with spaghetti. The three-way chili with spaghetti and cheese. Please shut up. And there's two kinds of four-ways. I want to die. Hitchhikers. Oh, thank the Lord.

Hitchhikers, sir. Is this safe? They can bury us in a shallow grave as long as they don't talk about chili. Thanks for picking us up we're on our way to a gig oh a gig are you uh musicians oh no we do improv shakespeare improvisers in the style of shakespeare that seems impossible we fix this noble lord doth doubt our wit we must perform or else be deemed unfit a A word, a word. My kingdom for a word. No, no, don't give them a suggestion.

Cup holders. To grasp a cup would seem a great ordeal. When one must keep both hands upon the wheel. The pentameter checks out. Your parents must be so proud. They're not. Huge laugh in the room for that one. I love being able to see Pamela and Yardley do a very rare thing for them, which is playing adult women. That felt really special. And I think Yardley does a really good job as this type of very intense, overly twee, improv Shakespeare person.

I love that. I normally don't like comedy writers bashing improv because there's lots of good improv out there, but this is worth bashing. Yes, yeah. There was a whole episode they did about improv. Did you watch that one? Oh, no, I don't know.

Is this a recent one? I watched the Homer clip that you told me about. Yeah, that's the episode that ends with 30 seconds of Dan doing Homer improv. Oh, the live Homer. He took questions live on air. Yeah. yeah that's the episode that that ends with 30 seconds of um dan doing homer improv questions live on air yeah i remember the live homer gimmick i think i watched that but i didn't see i didn't see the adjoining episode it's always hard when a show or a comedy show does any episode about comedy like stand-up or improv because then they have to write jokes that are funny within that universe that are also funny to the audience but then you're just watching like when it comes to

improv you're watching improv that's not actually improv so how do you make that funny but that's why it could work better here that it's just it's bad it has to be bad it's funnier to write bad jokes yeah i well it's funny too this divide of like you know some comedy writers look down on improv people but others others come from a background of improv like you know some comedy writers look down on improv people but others others come from a background of improv like i know that selman like he's i i believe he's a friend of the like the ucb guys like he he likes improv improvisation but but improv shakespeare is annoying yeah and that's because traumas is right like no one is having fun but you yes i do like that it's, but it's also impressive.

No, it's not. No, it's so challenging. No. Improv Shakespeare. No, no. You have to make it rhyme. You've got to have the right pentameter. They're wasting their lives.

I did too. I've got a master's in literature. I always figure those improv Shakespeare people have a lot of rhyming couplets in their back pocket. Yeah. There's some cheats. That's true. Well, I mean, like also most improv actors are like, oh, yeah, this is all improvised tonight.

It's like, well, they probably just, you know, I remember going to one that was really funny. But I think afterwards, I think, well, was this a scene you guys have done before? But this time you put it in front of a barn because somebody said barn? Sure, sure. Which I don't begrudge about. I'm not slandering all improv. I'm slandering the twee, like, self-indulgent improv Shakespeare. But, yeah, this chili talk.

Oh, I have chili info. So I can talk to you guys all about the different ways to make Cincinnati chili. Oh, boy. So two-way, get this, spaghetti topped with chili. That's called chili spaghetti, nicknamed. Three-way, spaghetti, chili, and cheese. So a little spicy. You got an extra ingredient in there.

Four-way onion, get this, spaghetti, chili, cheese, and onions. Then we have four-way bean. Guess what's added to that one? That's going to be some beans. So spaghetti, chili, beans, and cheese. And we got five-way. If you want to just lose your mind and we got five way if you want to just lose your mind we got spaghetti chili beans onions and cheese if you are like the king

of cincinnati for a day you're allowed to eat that you can go that far with a five-way beans and onions i i can't imagine them together i it's it's uh it's a new food concoction in my opinion i i try it i think i would be full for the rest of the day but i would try it no no i mean it's a new food concoction in my opinion I'd try it I think I would be full for the rest of the day but I would try it no no I mean it was a good meal it was just like every carb imaginable on a plate I think I would take a nice nap afterwards the three of us can split it someday

let's do that I think one plate's enough for the three of us that's western okonomiyaki this skyline chili once it's safe to travel and safe to split food again. But I only plan to do a layover in Cincinnati. I'm not going to stay there. You have to leave the airport to get Skyline Chili.

But Skyline, it's got Sky in the title. They should have a Skyline in the airport. It's not the same. There's so much talk about the Cincinnati Skyline in this episode. I didn't know it was such a thing. Yeah, i don't get what's so special about it either i have to say i mean in general skylines are boring to me i don't know what's so special about other than the other than the needle i don't know what's so special about the fraser skyline that starts every episode i think these eastern cities like cincinnati uh and even my hometown of youngstown they were the first cities to have skyscrapers some of the first skyscrapers so i mean every city has those now

but turn of the century turn of the last century not so much so they were just like wow tall buildings like people literally thought the skyscrapers would blot out the sun so they were afraid to build buildings that tall we we challenged god in that day that's why we knew god was dead that they could build it that tall i also uh i remember the table read there was a slight miscue at that crosstalk joke but it's still kind of funny so lots of laughs yeah i did like skinner try sorry chalmers trying to humor skinner and then just saying i want to die yes yeah and and that chalmers yes wants to shut up skinner but he ends up with a person more annoying and that and that skinner also has never heard of such a thing as improvised shakespeare like he's so boring he's never thought

about this in his life so he's like wow i've never thought of such a thing before is it a real thing oh yeah yeah i i had no idea i'm like skinner now i'm like wow that's impressive you've never listened to npr that's like half the humor i yeah well i mean obviously i i like improv i like shakespeare i've just never seen the two merged together well they're awful but no i'm gonna i'm gonna seek this out now we're gonna go see an improv date night's getting planned right here we're getting drunk in the lobby uh me thinks nine doesn't like this shakespeare bob that was the wrong pentameter damn it uh it was not a hard you know what i i appreciate them

now too after after flopping there in the script uh skinner actually goes like he says it out loud the syllables to count them but in the the final verse he just like waves his finger just to count them in the script in the next scene where they cause the car crash they say like cast thine eyes upon the road ahead but i i prefer the ides of march reference to uh to good old julius caesar one of my my favorite shakespeare joints and also chalmers calls them jabbering donkeys which i i actually prefer him saying no you're the only people having fun it's it's more underlining how annoying this is she's like it's only for the sake of you no one is enjoying this and they crashed the car into a silo of uh genetically engineered soybeans i love the like basketball size soybeans and and seeing a small

town sheriff like take a bite out of it like it's a peach that's very funny and i i think uh castellaneta does a really good job with this he's handed a character that is small town sheriff getting the city slickers who also has to be midwestern skinner as well he has to work as both of those things i'm honestly surprised dan didn't try to do a skinner impression yeah it's a different voice than that maybe he tried that at first and they told him to go a different direction and uh and this is where the entire reason it was a buick comes through which is the guy gets to say alas poor buick instead of poor yorick the the line from hamlet the famous skull man yes uh and so we head to the courthouse with the funny sign gag,

fleecing city slickers since 1922, which was in the script too. A good, there's a, I, again, I was like, wow,

there's most of these sign gags are in the script as well. Like they, they had hashed it out that much. And yeah, so we then, what a treat it was that we got to see live not only tress mcneil do agnes skinner but also bring out her southern mean old lady voice as well she does like eight different old ladies it's great yeah she is the queen she's she's been doing great old ladies

since she was our age and she's only gotten better with them over the years. But yes, in this case, she takes a liking to old skinny boy. Who dragged me in here on a Saturday in the middle of my Lifetime movies? I'm missing my Lifetimes. An old woman who's enraged by my very existence. Don't worry, sir. I got this. Your Honor, permission to observe that your poor cuticles are raw and torn. Thanks to my idiot son. He made my manicure appointment with Tanya P. instead of Tanya G.

Well, that boy's as useless as a shaved frog. Now, Mother. Hesh up and empty those spittoons, Fenimore. You know, I always travel with cuticle scissors and jojoba oil let's get these ladies ready for their close-up now you have fun at the convention boys you just bring it back whenever mother you never let me drive the cutlass my car is for good boys i like my car is for good boy the one joke they cut from the courtroom scene which i think was a good cut was the the sheriff fenimore saying but i frisk you because he frisked skinner and he would have found the uh the kit but apparently he didn't i did like skinner's

little reply like you did your best fenimore like but that's a little that is sillier than the scene needs yeah i i i mean i like that he's a better suck up son to her than than fenimore is and that uh and then also this they they shout out specifically a 1988 cutlass convertible in the script as well which the animators got right they did a good job there it freaked me out seeing fingernails on something's hands yeah i'm trying to think of if there's ever if you've already seen that before maybe i mean you need it for the joke but it is weird just like they suddenly emerge from the fingers just for like the sake of a close-up just like oh i'm not used to that not only fingernails but cuticles yeah i thought about what the yellow skin one because it's a agnes style old lady she has like a lighter skin tone as well

from the normal yellow because of her age any kind of hand extra hand detail on simpson's hands it's disturbing it's sort of like in in season two in old money when uh grandpa's looking at his hands and they suddenly have way too much detail he looks like a ninja turtle yeah i was exactly thinking that even then you don't see his fingernails no and yeah they say drive off with another car uh and it's uh the literal halfway point of their trip you see the 400 mile sign which uh that's that's a fun marker of time for the episode and i also i really like that chalmers this was in the script like chalmers is moving his hand in the air in the convertible. Like just a fun trip thing.

Sing along with Timothy. Yeah. And it's not even playing. He's just remembering the song. Like, yeah, what did we do? And that's when they drive by the steamed ham sign, which is very, very brief. I think it's just, if they didn't have any steamed ham stuff people would have given them grief over it so i i like that it's just there's a steamed hams stand on the way

to cincinnati i would rather that steamed hams don't exist at all it's a completely a skitter invention it's gross that they do exist i've, I've watched people make steamed hams recently on a YouTube video. And I just, it looks, if I'm going to eat beef, I'd like a char on it. I do not want steamed beef. Wet beef. Yeah, the wettest of beef. Like, not only do they exist, but there's a whole restaurant about them. Although, I guess it could just be a restaurant called Steamed Hams.

And they don't actually serve hamburgers. Yeah, maybe they actually like steamed literal hams at they don't actually serve hamburgers yeah maybe maybe they actually like steam literal hams at that place yeah which that sounds gross too like i at least want a smokehouse ham uh but yes then comes the biker section of it which is i mean that's again what happens in these road trip movies is the characters go to a biker bar but they found a really clever spin on it for this one i guess that was a pun i meant i didn't mean it it's a very fun set piece and they managed to get like every super specific uh cycling joke in here uh which i really like and like i am learning things about this world now based on this episode did you see that uh whole breakdown about all the

cycling jokes in this episode yeah one of our uh commenters on on patreon pointed me to it that canadian cyclist magazine the website had had a full breakdown of the pros and cons of it i did did you check it out too nina yeah i mean i i think it's a a good analysis of it and i appreciate that they did that it seems like they mostly got things right so there must have been a cyclist on the staff or maybe uh um jeff westbrook like cycling maybe jeff westbrook is annoyed by cyclists based on what we see in this episode but he knows so many specific things about it it's true it could it to me feels like the spirit of one writer in the writer's room got really into cycling and everybody else is sick of hearing about whoever comes in very sweaty every day you know why it's actually really easy to cycle to

work every day guys you know you gotta get rid of these cars there were some of those guys at our old office henry people who cycle yeah i mean look i'm not against the cyclist it is probably better than owning a car but like i felt above then i'm like well i didn't even i don't even owning a car. But like I felt above then I'm like, well, I didn't even, I don't even own a car. I take Bart everywhere. Bart's a train by the way. Oh yes. Yes. I,

every time I say Bart on our Simpsons podcast, I forget that I, people might think I'm referring to something. I take the tube. The tube. I have never gotten into cycling myself. Like I used to bike a lot as a kid, but I've never been like a cycling commuter and I would like to get into it, except I'm too scared of cars. Yes.

The only time I've done that, like biking on the road, was in Minneapolis, actually, because a friend of mine cycles a lot. So she was just leading the way. And that was a lot of fun. But they have way better bike lanes than we do in Vancouver. Another thing that helps is they're way flatter than we are in vancouver another thing that helps is uh they're way flatter than we are like vancouver has so many hills like i can't imagine cycling through all of that i would only really cycle on bike trails and there are a ton of them around

at berkeley which is nice but whenever i try to be like okay i'm gonna ride my bike places the cars are like way too aggressive especially in ohio cars like what is a bike doing on the road what's even happening this should not be and uh i do it's at the end of the scene but i do like um uh trauma's like are you pedestrians are you vehicles as a pedestrian like the bike should not be on the sidewalk barreling at me but when i'm crossing the street the bike should stop for me yeah i don't i don't like that as a pedestrian to bike riders i'm not a fan there's dave foley has this amazing kids in the hall bit way from like 92 or something that i always think of anytime a bike rider goes by me on a sidewalk i think of him his letter to the guy i clotheslined hazy's like and what were you

even doing on the sidewalk anyway sidewalk come on i do have sympathy because i've been a cyclist and i know like how terrifying it can be to be in the street but also i don't want to be run over and i always like when i'm walking well i always i always enjoy this by the way when i'm walking on the sidewalk and then just someone just comes cruising behind me right past me like a hair's breadth from my body yeah it's like's like, you don't have a bell? Get a bell? These are just my grievances coming out on this podcast. I'm also annoyed by cyclists on the sidewalk, and I also totally understand why,

because there are some areas here where I would not feel safe biking. But yeah, at least use a bell. At least let us know you're going to pass by. And one thing I don't like about Japan is there are so many cyclists, and they never used their bell. So if you're walking, you've got to be really careful because they'll just zoom right past you. Man, I didn't know that they're as silent as we are on these bells. People should learn how fun bells are like Homer does when he gets his bike. Yeah, you can giggle like a little girl when you ring your bell.

I did see the biggest gripe in that canadian cyclist magazine i believe they're like a thing they got wrong where one where they're like well bike bicyclists do drink beer they don't not drink beer but also they said they they were like why would you have you would either you'd have a head unit or a bpm wrist yeah wouldn't have one you wouldn't have both apparently was was the issue the cyclist magazine took with it well it was just so they can do the peewee's big adventure joke where the thing's domino that's also a shockingly low bpm that guy has yes yeah i was gonna say 30 i've got my fitbit on that guy must be in amazing shape i'm in okay shape and my my resting heart rate

right now is 75 but i'm also drinking coffee and being excited on a podcast well like an athletic uh super in good shape bpm is like in the 50s range so 30 is like superhuman uh and uh this was another thing that changed in the script the the script shouts out a specific song that would be playing when they enter the bar. Oh, yeah. I've got a clip of that in the Slack. Ah, okay. and in the final episode you get kind of like a bad to the bone style riff which i guess is meant to mislead you up to the point where uh they realize they're in a cyclist bar and not a biker bar but that's a creepier song to enter to and like you know for fancy cyclist type guys i that uh i i can't pronounce that's okay tombe de l'amour okay thank you i took french

apparently nina knows french did i say that i say that correctly nina the tombe de l'amour yeah yeah there we go that's uh the singer's april march and that's uh that sounds made up it's a a 1962 french pop song that uh i think uh it's most famous use is in the moonrise kingdom film okay i leave the uh the kids the kids dance to it i'm not watching that twee crap uh come on it was made for uh we've we outgrown him now i think i have he's fine i i was just playing up my anger i don't really dislike him and uh and in this bit here it's where kevin michael richardson Richardson gets a few lines. So I was glad that even though he's not Finch in the episode,

that the guy who was so friendly to us at the table read at least said some lines left in the episode. But yes, they piss off these cyclists. You two oil burners might want to skedaddle before my resting heart rate elevates to 60 BPM. That's beats per minute, oil burner! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Uh, why don't you calm down there, Slim?

What did you call me? The bike computers! All our stats were on there! They hadn't synced yet! You still got the exercise, right? He doesn't understand. I got Nina into the world of stats, body stats. And curse you for doing that. That's exactly why I didn't want to get into Fitbit,

because I tend to obsess over numbers and stats, and I did not want to do that. But when you sent me your old one, so I could keep track of my number of steps during the whole pandemic, because I want to keep somewhat know, keep somewhat fit. I started obsessing over numbers again. And now like if I go to sleep without my Fitbit on and I wake up, I'm like, no, I didn't get a sleep score.

How do I know how well I slept? I need my sleep sticker. Yeah, you can turn your life into a D&D character sheet. It's great. I love that. I mean, all you're doing is giving a big corporation like you know market research about you and they can you know then feed that into computer and they could tell you what kind of products you want in the future it's the same

with any kind of stat tracking you do on anything like good reads or anything but i still i like it i like knowing that progress is being made in some way i like it but it also drives me mad well i'm happy that i helped uh that uh alter that aspect of your life uh henry you should get a fitbit too i i you know my phone you guys are half selling me on and half scaring me about it i my phone my phone tracks my steps i it's inaccurate inaccurate you need a fitbit hooked up to your gps every stat is measured stat is measured stat step is measured also when you do just dance it uh the fitbit picks it up as a aerobic exercise and it tells you how many calories you've burned we need a sponsorship already for fitbit

me uh me and ina did talk about this with just dance where it's like she you pointed out uh correctly that like the videos are just on youtube and you can just play a video and dance where it's like she you pointed out uh correctly that like the videos are just on youtube and you can just play a video and dance to it but you wouldn't know the score and you wouldn't know how many calories it said you burned or if you did it in the right timing you need teacher to tell you you're good yeah i never even thought of that like oh yeah wait i could just watch i mean if i wanted to do exercise videos i could just watch every sweat into the oldies on youtube or taibo it's true that jane fonda tape has got to be on youtube that got banned it's too dirty for youtube yeah in the actual just dance game there's no like pause or slow down or tutorial function so in a way it's actually better to just follow along

on youtube because then you can like stop anytime you want slow it down like if there are really hard dance moves I just slow it down to like half speed and follow along to learn the moves they don't let you do that in the game yeah just play it for free on YouTube but then you don't get the points the sweet sweet points or you unlock new

stickers all those fun all those fun Euro comedy stickers like it's the it's a silly panda with a feather boa this this is so whimsical i need to unlock things otherwise what's the point uh but yes the the the scary biker bar full of cyclists is i it's a good little gag i i also love dan's maniacal laughter like that was great i believe he did that at the table too he's like a griff tannin style sidekick yes yeah yeah that he's just called aggro sidekick in the script yes yeah they get chased after by

the cyclist there is a good gag about uh the not respecting the rules of the road they just drive through a stop sign i i like that skinner is shocked by it. That's good. And they crash. They crash two cars in the same day, which, again, very road trip movie kind of thing. And Chalmers is stuck in the car and seemingly Skinner abandons him. I love the joke. It took a lot of animation to execute, but just all of the different angles of their GoPros as they surround Chalmers. Really cool joke. They have to do six different angles of a scared chalmers like it's

really the animators uh did a great job on that and and i also love azaria's delivery of the of a worried version of skinner like that was that was good there are so many different ways he says skinner's name throughout this episode it's great and uh and also they actually use skinner's military background for a plot point that skinner saves the day and the i also it's a funny idea the showdown of people with giant arms and small legs against people with giant legs and small arms it's uh it's a funny mashup wheel team six is an okay pun but i do like that skinner skinner would have a booklet of vfw events and and keep abreast of him wherever he went because probably because the vfw guys are like the only uh adult friends he has other than chalmers i think and uh and i also love i do

love them scaredly running away to the support van that's them sucking orange slices looking out the window so i did do some math and uh skinner uh the youngest vietnam uh veteran would be uh have to have been born in 1947 so that would make them 73 today wow that would be if you got drafted as young as you could be at the latest time the vietnam war was going on and like 23 years ago with the principal and the pauper they made skinner like a kid getting arrested to make it make sense that a 42 year old man could have fought in vietnam like he was like one of the youngest recruits i bet one day they're gonna make him like a 9-11 vet a 9-11 vet i i think he'd have to be in it at this point he could be an event afghanistan war guy for any time in the last 20 years you know that's true it works well we'll never get out of there so we'll always

have the afghan veterans that's uh i've noted that with the character the punisher in marvel comics that he he had the same skinner problem of being tied to the vietnam war and when it got into like the late 90s people had to do the math of like, well, Punisher is at least in his late 40s at this point to be a Vietnam vet. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance,

I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? But then once our forever wars began at the start of the 2000s for america then he got to just be a veteran of recent wars again and that's and that's been the case for uh

old frank castle ever since yeah skinner apparently he's 46 so uh if he was 46 in 2020 he is still too young for even the gulf war yeah he's i guess he'd have to be then one of the older guys in afghanistan or iraq or you know we've got lots of theaters of war there's a there's a bunch of wars yeah they're gonna have to retcon that and one day they're probably gonna retcon homer and marge having gone to high school in the 2000s yes yeah wouldn't that be fun all right i mean already that 90s show doesn't work for the continuity and even that's how much time is let's move forward so they head triumphantly to a bed and breakfast after that encounter and it's it was wild to me in the script every detail of their sitting thing is is there

like even down to the cats on their laps yeah all of the bed and breakfast stuff was identical and that's good because all the jokes were so good and specific. Yeah. Obviously, in the year 2020, it makes me like, oh, boy, I wish I had gone to a bed and breakfast when those existed. All of this makes me miss my grandma because I have no exposure to old lady culture anymore. And I guess modern old ladies are different than the old ladies that Jeff Westbrook and the older writers are thinking of. Yeah. In the script, there is a very specific type of chair written in here. Adirondack, yeah. I'm not sure what that is.

That's the kind of chairs they're sitting in. That's all I can tell you. Okay. I mean, I've never had elderberry wine, but this may be one or two. It sounded really, you know, I like sweet wine. I like sweetest, the sugariest of alcohols. Elderberry sounds like it'd be tart. They do kind of have a tart shiver to it, don't they?

And in the script, it seems like they're disgusted by the wine, but in the show, they like the wine. That's true, yeah. That is a big change. But the description is like thick and sweet. Yeah. And so, yes, after this scene, Skinner is feeling good. They're eating scones in the breakfast nook. And I think they took a real care into the patrons of it.

It looks like a mix of old straight couples and gay couples. That's who fills out a bed at breakfast. When they were skinning across the room, I was like, oh, is it a joke? It's all gay couples? But no, there are straight couples there too. The only of younger ones are gay men, I think. They could have easily done like a planes, trains, and automobiles scene where they have to share a bed or something.

But I guess at this point, they're supposed to be getting along, so they didn't want to do that. Yeah, yeah. This is the happy moment before the next problem comes in. And this is quite a dramatic end to an act break here. Ernest, I've never felt more independent and strong. Can I use your phone to call Mother? There she is.

Just make sure no one's using the upstairs extension. You're back in the office already? Principal Finch, your gut biome is a wonder. So how's Sassack Seymour and the Cincinnati Snooze crews? Vintage Finch, but believe it or not, Skinner has shown bursts of utility. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You better not be getting

cold feet, Gary. We made an agreement. Skinner gets canned and I leave my tiny little magnet school for the big time. Springfield Elementary. Pumped! Yes, I know, I i know the plan was to fire skinner and uh i am a man of my word fire skinner chalmers oh dear so in the script uh this phone call goes on for a bit longer and i kind of like it a bit more because it's not necessary,

but Finch tries to dig into Skinner a little bit more, and you can see Chalmers is very reluctant to make fun of Skinner now. Yeah. And I do like that, but we get one instance of that, and that's kind of enough. I mean, it's a fun take on those kind of conversations you have where you're talking to a friend you used to bag on another guy with, but you've turned on that person and you like

them now and but your friend is going like no come on let's make fun of this person together and the the other guy has to like pull back and be like well you know he's not so bad uh yeah i wonder i wonder if they set the scene in an old uh bed and breakfast place so that they can have uh skinner listening in on the phone call. Yeah. He's using like old phones there and he can't really do that with smartphones obviously. I feel like they would have found a way anyhow but I feel like someone

probably Jeff Westbrook really liked the Airbnb not Airbnb sorry the old B&B humor Old B&B. And wanted to squeeze that in. I mean I'm sure they would have found a way for Skinner to overhear things if not but that's a good device to use like just having an old landline with, you know, picking up the phone and hearing the other side of the call. And I like the layout of that shot, too, that, you know, it's a two shot of Skinner and Chalmers. But the thing, the line that cuts across it is a corded phone.

Yeah. And it pulls taut when he screams Chalmers. And I like what I like about the phone cord that crosses the screen is like there's a little bit of it that's kind of flawed like one of the loops isn't perfect like how you always get like one funky loop on those old phone cords yes i noticed that too i was thinking oh the artist must have had fun with this and it was also fun to see dan castellanet alive do his walter brennan voice i i really i really enjoy that i also uh in the script there's uh there's a reference to him telling he saying he wants to call his mother because to tell her that her car exploded yeah that is not addressed in any way the rest of the episode or like what's

going to happen to the judge's car yes yeah which i guess mean, it's near totaled in the episode. Yeah, it's also fun just to hear Seymour say, Chalmers! That was fun. And I do think, you know, for Harry Shearer, he does a really good job with Skinner. His Skinner sounds more like Skinner than his Burns sounds like Burns to me now. Yeah, I think you're right, because it might be easier to carry that deeper voice character than it is to carry the lighter voice Burns. But yeah, I like his Skinner.

I mean, everyone sounds much older and you can't get around that because of the ravages of time. Makes fools of us all. But yes, they come back from the break and Skinner is reading Chalmers, the riot act. It was shocking to me to hear Skinner say son of a bitch on,

on a TV show. I mean, you can say whatever on TV now, but it's still Skin to hear Skinner say son of a bitch on a TV show. I mean, you can say whatever on TV now, but it still feels weird to me. Skinner himself. But yes, the truth is revealed. Fire me, you bald-painted son of a bitch. If you two gentlemen could please. Stay out of this, Trudy. For years, this man belittled me.

Humiliated me. In exchange for my unwavering loyalty, what was my reward? Whoa, to be pushed out by some scheming magnet school keister kisser. The brochures nobody takes. I'm the one who deserved this trip to Cincinnati, not Finch. That's why I put black mold in his poke. You did what? Ooh, the Rocking Chair Museum. I've heard good things.

Skinner! You know why I was going to fire you, Seymour? Because your neediness, it sucks the life out of me. After all these years of trying to spare your feelings, I'm gonna say it now i don't like you so yeah that uh that song is in the script yeah ballroom blitz it's uh you know it's a little of a standard choice for a fight scene but i guess the comedy is that ballroom blitz would be playing in a bed and breakfast fight scene. That's two old men, middle-aged men fight. Yeah. And it's fun animation on that.

But yeah, we got to see Hank Azaria in a script that says, biggest Skinner ever. And I feel like he really went for it. He brought it, yeah. Maybe it's because I'm the one who doesn't swear, but Skinner saying SOB felt kind of out of character to me. Well, he's been brought to be enraged, but still. He's been brought to like his lowest moment. And a real Skinner wouldn't start like a fight like this either. Yeah.

Regular Skinner. And in the script, actually, he calls Chalmers a butthead reluctantly instead of a keister kisser. I like keister kisser because he goes from son of a bitch to keister kisser yes he dials it way back to like fuddy duddy seymour and i also love his like whoa before he says it like that's that feels like a good sheerer reading of it too and and also yeah those brochures nobody takes i i think of them in hotels too you just see like this but this thing of brochures as a little kid you're like well these are free and i would just grab every all these free tiny books full of phone numbers uh all the gags are amazing they use like every element of b&b humor uh again i miss old lady culture i have not seen a pot of potpourri in like 25 years

a stinky pot of potpourri that the forbidden soup do not drink it potpourri to me is soup. Do not drink it. Potpourri to me is kind of gross because it just gets all dusty. No, it is gross. There's no way to get rid of the dust. My fondness is just misplaced nostalgia and missing my grandma. No, my grandma was not a fan of potpourri, so I don't have an attachment to it. I do like the old-timey bed warmer.

That's fun. I had to look that up. I only knew it was a bed warmer from the script. Shouts it out me too yeah and if you google bed warmer the image that pops up is identical to the one in the show so i figured the artist was like what is a bed warmer apparently how is it even used i don't understand in old timey times before there was centralized heat in a house you would fill it with embers and then stick it in your bed but the fumes were noxious it was not a good time geez that's very dangerous yeah and later you could fill it with like sand or like hot water but uh i think eventually over time we

got like centralized heating systems and uh life became much better the best bed warmer is a loved one it's true or a buckwheat pillow in the shape of your fiancee i like to chalmers you know throwing it at skinner it's not that Skinner is like even annoying. It's that he's needy. Like he's, and that, that fits for the character Skinner. Who's a very lonely man who also like,

you know, if you want to talk about his biography, part of it too, is that he had a lover who left him for Ned and then, well, actually left him for comic book guy. And then, and then,

uh, and then she died. And it's like, that probably make it would lead to Skinner being and then Ned. And then she died. And it's like that probably would lead to Skinner being very needy. Poor guy. The best gag was when I referenced up front in the show is there's a break in the fight. The music stops and Chalmers is slamming Skinner's head at the guest book. And he sees Terry Bradshaw's name like, oh, Terry Bradshaw stayed here. And they are B&B guys.

Sorry, the B&B guys like not the one you're thinking of. So, yeah, I bet he gets that a lot. He's got to let people down easy. That was, I think, one of the biggest laugh. I think that's the biggest laugh I did to a joke in the table room. I think I laughed harder at a thing that comes later. Well, he needs to stop leaving it open at that page. It's just, it's the heavily creased page that everybody ends up on. he won't even lie to make the guests feel special he's just too honest it's

like now it's a different terry bradshaw i thought this whole scene was very well animated yeah this is cool yeah the uh i mean the potpourri like being blown in the face as a weapon or the the waffle make your own waffle maker and the waffle iron burning skinner's hand that's great and uh and yeah the fight just ends because they're like exhausted nobody really wins but and also they must owe this b and b a million dollars like for the damage they made they're both criminals yeah they're allowed to walk free uh and especially the skinners on first name basis with the people there like they they're gonna get him for this. I think, yeah,

this is the scene where their suits are the same color blue for, for this scene. It doesn't, cause it does not really work if they are the set different colors of blue. They normally are colored as it's a massive cheat. And also Chalmers is much whiter than Skinner is. So there's no way they could not know. Nina,

they're both angry. They're both seeing red. They don't know what colors are. No, it's wrong. It's fine. I'm just kidding. It's fine. I understand they had to do this for the joke.

Not the setup at the end. And Skinner quits. He says, you don't need to fire me. I quit. He leaves with a car. And then Chalmers has to uh hitch a ride in a spaghetti truck that's going to cincinnati that's funny that it's like an oil gasoline truck yeah i love that you the thought of just turning on a spigot and fully cooked spaghetti must come out

of it sounds delicious uh and uh that is the real roebling Suspension Bridge that's being referenced in the establishing shot. And same with the Duke Energy Center is a real place in Cincinnati. It made me want to go to Cincinnati. I kind of miss these mid-level, sorry, like mid-size Midwestern towns. They're fun. Cities? They're cities. They're real cities.

They're real cities, yes. Aren't you cute? You've even got a Major League Baseball team. Isn't that sweet? I love St. Paul. At night, I felt like I was the only person outside. No, this made me appreciate just, I guess, really, too, it's that we've all been under house arrest for a long time.

It made me appreciate the idea of just visiting a place and seeing new things. Ooh, a bridge. I've heard Nina is sick of bridges, though. Yeah, too many. Henry, where do you think you'll travel to when it's safe again? You know, the boring thing to say, one of the places I've been to many times, like Tokyo, we had planned to go there in January.

That's not happening. Or to Los Angeles again. But, I mean, I definitely would like to go to Orlando and other parts of Florida, visit my brother in Florida. But also, after doing, it stuck with me. After doing the Deep South episode of Futurama, I actually really do want to visit Atlanta. Like, Atlanta just seems like a really cool place still. I've really, I grew up near Atlanta for a few years of my childhood and i have i have

a personal connection to it in that way so i think i really would like to visit atlanta that's that's high there for me i would like to go somewhere with nina to experience actual winter or actual fall somewhere nice you might experience some winter here let's see well you will you guys have a white christmas i hope so uh unlikely Unlikely. Hey, let me have my dream. I'm sorry, it rarely snows around Christmas here. Maybe there'll be a miracle. I'm hoping for one, yes. So yes, Chalmers arrives in Cincinnati for EduCon.

There's a fun sign gag, welcome non-teaching administrators. I like that. And this is where there's a big cut in another brand new character as well that didn't come into canonicity. We missed out on Superintendent Mel, who is Sideshow Mel's brother, I think it's implied. Yeah.

But they're both named Mel? I guess so. It's weird. I was actually wondering how they were going to pull this off. I felt like it would be just kind of confusing. Are they going to make him look exactly like Mel? Is he going to sound exactly like Mel so i'm glad they changed it yeah they gave some of his lines to just another random character played by dan but uh yeah he talks

about how uh he became a superintendent because he doesn't have a flair for the dramatic like his brother but he says it in a very dramatic sideshow mel voice he just says yeah it was it it sort of let us get to see Dan do a sideshow Mel scene too which I I always love I always want to hear from Melvin Van Horn and I think at that point when we meet superintendent Mel he calls Gary Garibaldi which you know that Garibaldi bit that it wouldn't fit if they hadn't cut that scene uh that revealed he has like hispanic heritage in uh the oh yeah senor senor chalmers oh sorry that's later in the uh in the scene but uh it is it is the person who was given uh superintendent mel's lines who calls him garibaldi meanwhile skinner gets pulled over

on his drive back he i like that uh philmore asked for his mother's registration instead of like uh that but i think fenimore should be madder that he's like what did you do to my mom's car but he's he's just mainly smug about it and that's when they noticed that well at least skinner notices he has chalmers uh index cards for the speech and uh then we cut back to gary as he's being introduced and that's when he realized he's missing the cards too he pulls out what he must have felt the weight of some cards in the same place which is why he never checked but it's a bunch of conversation starters that skinner created and i like how he gets the name of the city wrong because yeah there are two big c cities in ohio cincinnati and cleveland i would think the people in both those cities get real mad if you

mix them up i would think and this is when their jackets magically change color yeah so they go back to what their colors should be i i to answer the two of those questions in there though for me it is sock sock shoe shoe and my favorite seinfeld episode i, is the Bizarro episode, if I had to pick one. What's your sock procedure? I'm curious. I put two socks on and then much later in the day, I put shoes on when I leave the house. I think my favorite Seinfeld episode is the Bizarro one as well. Really?

So we're on the same page there. I think mine is the Rye. The Marble Rye. That's a good one too. That one's also good. I also like the opposite. Which one's the opposite the that's when uh george decides to do everything the opposite of what he would do yes yeah and changes his life around and meanwhile uh elaine becomes george that's right yeah he's

well if everything you do is wrong then if you were to do the opposite of that then it'd be right uh not to go too far into seinfeld but i really love the uh the parking garage episode oh yes that one's really a favorite of mine too just because they get out of the apartments I love any of their bottle episodes uh Skinner was right that that is a great conversation starter yeah yeah smart look at us go let's spend another 45 minutes talking about this this just turned into talking Seinfeld all of a sudden also the dinner party is really good I'm gonna stop talking now I am all for talking Seinfeld uh the a sudden. Also, the dinner party's really good. I'm going to stop talking now. I am all for talking Seinfeld. The marble rye is one episode,

and then the dinner party has the cinnamon babka. Oh, that babka, right. Yeah, with the hair in the babka. I just love that word. Look to the cookie. But yes, as Chalmers is about to, he's forced to give a speech without his notes, and that's when he comes to a realization.

Well, it's an honor uh to be here in uh cleveland it's cincinnati look at the skyline you just you won't believe what's happened i'm well maybe you will you've all got that one principle that one that gets you into such ridiculous situations maybe even on the way here yes quite this guy skinner he screws everything up he took my jacket and my speech he left me with the useless garbage in his pockets a mommy manicure kit. A VFW event calendar. A B&B rewards card. Calico level. And conversation starters like, how can I make your job easier?

He sounds like a good guy, you jackass. Well, I suppose he is. He's loyal and resourceful. Oh, God, help me. I respect Seymour Skinner. In fact, I like him. Ditto, Gary. Very sweet.

Yeah. In the script, the realization is I don't dislike Seymour Skinner. I like that they actually... They're way meaner to Skinner in the script. Yeah. It is a much more cynical and mean choice to be like that is what moves skinner to hear that he's not disliked by somebody so i like that gary's just like i like this guy and i i really like the uh the read from hank uh just like seesawing because he wants to be mad about skinner and then he sees something that touches

him like oh the calico card or whatever oh that really helped us and he's like okay fine i'm actually mad at him he reads the next one and he tries to get madder and then he sees like the conversation starters or whatever how can i make your job easier so it's like seesawing between like trying to be mad and being touched and trying to be mad once again and being touched once again also the guy who says he sounds like a good guy uh originally it was superintendent mel saying he sounds like a good guy. Originally, it was Superintendent Mel saying, he sounds like quite the tool. Yeah, and Chalmers has to do a yes, but. Yeah, you know, totally that maybe fit more in a like a Mercanera one to be that mean, to be like, I don't dislike you as an ending.

But for the story they're telling here, I think it was better to go genuine with it. Like actually just have a touching moment just have a hug like just go all the way with this road trip parody thing which is where two guys at the end realize they like each other they did add some jokes though

when Chalmers is talking about you like we've all got what that one principle that you know drives us crazy in the script there's only the mention of the principal and superintendent duo being like covered in kelp in the final version of the show they add like three more scenarios around them like by visually you could tell what happened to them yeah the the chain gang one or the people constrictor yeah the i like to think that this is just in the world in the reality of the simpsons every superintendent has one principle that

annoys them and they all have wacky adventures off screen and then in the script before they all like turn to hug their principles like they all say their principles names like in an affectionate way but they cut that out i kind of wish they cut that in there yeah it was fun to think that even they also the superintendents say their principals names in the tenor of da da da da uh and and yeah another bit in the speech that i like is that when he resumes his speech it is very bland and boring it was not a very good speech that is perfect it's like it's a speech that can make or break my career and is the most like cookie cutter professional conference speech which as a a PhD in computer science, Jeff Westbrook probably went to a lot of these conventions.

Listened to a lot of very boring professional speeches at these convention centers. I mean, a lot of academia is having to go and give speeches and be published and do all this boring shit. And he must have experienced a lot of that. Have you had to give a speech like that? No, because i was a coward who dropped out after my master's program so no phd for me yeah yeah no when i learned all the boring crap that was ahead of me for absolutely no reward i was like i don't want to do that uh and uh in the script too when he finishes telling the story everybody they met along the way is in the audience but uh that's not there either which you know there was a joke that the vfw guys and the cyclist had now befriended

each other and yeah i was confused by that which that would have been funny but i guess that that is again more wackiness this really uh they they turned down the wackiness in general like by about a few notches from the script. I like that they let them have a moment together, even though it's undercut by the joke of the speech being very boring. It's like, I'm glad they didn't piss all over Skinner's little moment with Chalmers. Yeah, they gave the episode way more heart in the end. Including, I have a clip here of the happy ending for Skinner with Bart.

I've got something that belongs to you. Now go give the greatest keynote speech of your life. Well, maybe I already have. But if I must. Educational infrastructure, ability grouping versus blended learning. Now, a survey of public administrators over a 15-trimester period

showed clearly within the standard deviation of course. Well, you did it, dude. How does it feel to get what you've always wanted? Thomas loves Skinner! Bum, chili, dinner! How many ways did Skinner try? One, two, three, four, five! It feels just like this.

Maybe you and me were never meant to be. Just maybe think of me once in a while. Aw, and they're eating chili together i love that song i like legitimately just love that song yes the theme from wkrp in cincinnati yeah we can talk about that in a second uh in the original script that has another like sour line that that has a bit of sweetness to it but i like that they again they play for sincerity so in the script uh skinner says the last line is that cincinnati chili was horrible but it was the best meal of my life uh i i like it just feels like this and he does the correct high five and then we cut to the

scene of presumably in the past of them eating chili together doing the correct high five was a good callback yeah that doesn't come back in the scripts uh him not knowing how to high five yeah it's just sending it's way better yeah no i like uh i like that he finally gets the high five on the on the uh skeleton too and then like uh the krp stuff i saw selman just say like he just loved that growing up like he thought the opening scene was great the opening theme was great too and that uh he feels that bit there maybe you and me were never meant to be but maybe think of me once in a while that's what he feels like the relationship of skinner and chalmers is defined by like you know maybe you're not supposed to be the best of friends but you can have a nice time yeah they had a moment it's good that that

it's good that the show takes place in cincinnati and that song is so perfect for the scene and in case you don't know but you probably don't because the show is kind of buried because it used so much licensed music because it took place at a radio station. So every show has real songs in it. They're like pulling out of and going into because they're at a radio station. So this show has a very weird history in that the first run of it was from 1978 to 1982. It did fairly well, but not well enough. 1982 it did fairly well but not well enough but it did so well in syndication it came back almost a decade later for two or sorry three more seasons from 91 to 93 so there was a 10-year gap but the syndication was so popular that eventually they just made

more of its first indication sort of like uh mama's family i guess yes yeah i that's how i knew it is the new wkrp and i i watched some episodes but i didn't watch a ton of them i i think i watched a few when it got on e in the late 90s like me too yeah yeah though i watched more one day at a time of the 70s shows that they would put on in the afternoon or rhoda i watched uh so much i watched a lot of kate and ally selman shouted this out about the specificity of skyline chili a real place uh a real chain that is the clifton location uh and he says uh selman said this about it as research for this episode we got a bunch of sweet mail order skyline chili and then a pandemic came and i took it all home for the end times so just thinking of uh you

know four five months after this uh table read we went to selman just raids the kitchen cabinets in the uh in the writer's room and leaves with cans and cans of chili he's a big foodie matt selman oh yeah the skyline chili twitter account is verified with 45 000 followers and uh you know what they're talking about this episode yeah they they should they that i mean honestly i think they'll you know is it as big a deal to be in a modern simpsons episode than be referenced in a classic maybe not but i i feel like they're gonna get some people heading over to skyline chili i mean were I to ever eat Cincinnati Chili, I'm going to have to do it at Skyline

to get the legitimate thing, to get the legitimate Simpsons version of it. I need to know if there's a vegetarian version of this because if so, I'm down. I love vegetarian chili. I make it all the time. It's delicious. So maybe I will make the Skyline vegetarian chili

in my own home. I really had no idea before this episode that Cincinnati Chili was such a thing. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. dejaden.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care it's really what defines the town and not charles manson as many people have alleged maybe it's because i'm just not a big chili person. Oh, we're going to become a chili family. Oh, no. Oh, I'll eat your chili. I'm fine with that.

Well, that just sounds disgusting. Throw it out the window. I still think of Pete Rose. I'm glad there was a Pete Rose gag in there. I did like the Cincinnati article or the Cincinnati specific article that was written on it. They had good humor about the Pete Rose gambling stuff so that was like the end of the episode but there was still one minute left in it and this was where I think there was the biggest like applause and laughter in in the room it was that you know Julie Kavner who did not honestly did not need to be there i guess she had just had nothing to do that day or just was like i'll go hang out at the fox lot because

she she had maybe 20 seconds to shine yes and but so when she finally gets a line at the start of the scene the whole room just blow broke out into like half joking, half meaningful applause of like, thank you, Julie. That was a great line reading there. You've been silent for like 30 minutes in this room. And it's such a nothing line too. Yes. Yeah. Here, I'll play the clip.

So guys, what have you been up to? Oh, went on a field trip to the fire station, but nobody told the firemen we were coming. Practiced my sax, went to school. Oh, we learned about Peru. Oh. I went to work. Lenny had a cold, so he wasn't there. Carl was there, though.

Well, have I got a treat for you all. Tonight, we're going to see improv Shakespeare. Washing machine. Out, damn stain, for there is a tide pod in the affairs of Shakespeare. Washing machine. Out, damn stain, for there is a tide pod in the affairs of laundry. Can you imagine Shakespeare using a tide pod?

No. I, I, okay, the biggest laugh I remember was after Lisa says Peru, Marge, like, Julie at the table where he did a much bigger like everybody just exploded with laughter the uh the the line reading sorry the direction of the script is uh interesting in quotes noise so interesting noise like i also remember at the table read like her delivering that washing machine line so well she was really into it uh she

was pointing uh in the air oh yeah she was actually there in the audience she was charging up her voice that entire uh the entire table read just waiting to bust it out and her final line there was uh added after the script yeah it's funnier that they the the last scene in the script was that uh Skinner and Chalmers are there and they clink their glasses but I think it's better that just you don't see we saw the great last shot of Skinner and Chalmers at Skyline Chili to to see them again in the 40 seconds of Simpsons footage would I think take away from it a little it's better that this is just like the 40 seconds of Simpsons that scene of them eating chili uh in cincinnati was not in the original script so they they actually had their final scene at the end of the episode but i like where like their story's over slam the door now

like this little simpsons bookend for like the the cold clothes i guess also julie gets to have another line at the end yeah yeah the more more for her in this episode that she was the like the least served of the regulars in this one i i like that they gave her another they gave her another line and the turkey noise yeah i like that even lisa hates this shit she's just like i also appreciated that while it was cut for the show and i think it was funnier than homer's just silent we at the table read did get to hear one live annoyed grunt and i i really appreciated that to get to hear a homer it made the table read experience complete for me i think i'm looking actually at

the skyline chili i'm very hungry by the way i'm looking at the skyline chili menu and it does seem very unhealthy and it is but a small skyline chili uh plate is about 400 calories a regular is 800 that's uh that's a sometimes food i will say but a small one seems reasonable so you know what 400 is not too bad not too bad and uh yeah the then the credits music starts to play and they just took the end theme from wkrp and the font and the font and also the the style of a wkrp credits is showing a shot of an actor with their name under it and so they took you know dan's the shot of the finnamore character and they put dan castellanet under it when it's julie cavder they show the turkey instead of marge like and it was also fun just to go like to let viewers know yeah yardley was that

improv person though you probably guessed it as a viewer but it's weird to have a yardley voice character in the same room as lisa yes it is strange i want to point out because i feel like someone will say i can't believe you didn't point this out but i will point it out that i know i knew about this series because in the adventure game day the tentacle richard sanders who plays less nestman plays bernard in that game it was a big gits wow yeah let's he's such a funny guy in that show i love him as the uh the most the most the biggest prude in the world he's very funny less nestman is a very fun name too so is there no way to watch this show uh i mean i think i think there were some dvds but the problem was...

They changed a lot of music, I think, that they had to. Yeah, it's hard to get onto streaming because no one really cares about it, number one. But number two, there's a lot of music to deal with. That must be weird to watch. It's like when I'm watching the 90210 DVDs where they replaced all the 90s music with like stuff that sounds way too modern it doesn't work yeah no dawson's creek has the same problem i found watching watching dawson's creek and i remember all of the the top of the pops hits none of them are there in it i apparently there's a very good set from shout factory which should not be surprising to anybody that's what

factory does and uh many songs integral to certain scenes or plots are kept in uh so they are very careful with which music they license and i when looking up the end credits theme on youtube somebody did a great i i really appreciate the video person who did it because they took they took the long like 90 second version of the outro song and then they just clipped together of guest characters from a million different episodes so you get to see the you know the main cast and then it's just like guest after guest after guest so you get to see like four seconds of like oh wait that person i saw i saw edie mcclurg and i'm like she was of course she was i love i love edie she's i i mean i just re-watched the uh the classic

planes trains and automobile scene with her you're fucked oh that's uh but yeah it was it was very important for selman to use the wkrp sound uh the track for it it was just it was big for him i thought it might have been like a slight brooks thing because it was an mtm production but actually james l brooks left mary tyler moore productions the same year that wkrp premiered he'd left to start taxis okay yeah he didn't work on wkrp to my knowledge but i I would have to think Brooks was friends with some people there. Yeah, they know the showrunner or something. We met and I am shocked to find out he's 80. He's been a constant in television since the 50s, actually.

I kind of just forgot that he is the creator of the Mary Tyler Moore show and everything else. He's not just a writer. He made that stuff. But yeah, that was was the episode we were at the table read for i i think it came together really well and i i liked seeing uh i i like seeing a chalmers and skinner episode played you know like a classic uh road trip movie with all of the beats in it well yeah and yeah i liked there were a lot of good boring specifics which is a hallmark of a good seymour skinner episode we were so lucky that that was the episode that we got to sit in on i feel so lucky and in case anyone's listening on the show

you're more than welcome to invite us back oh yes if it ever happens again we'll even join the zoom chat oh please yes this time we will leave uh four hours early yes even two hours wasn't enough to get there uh well we got there but like it was very stressful getting there i guess not unlike skinner and chalmers's trip to uh to play there thankfully mark's car was fine yes yeah we had no music just conversation increasingly conversation yeah increasingly stressful but also it was like meeting someone for the first time small talk while also we're all trying to not be stressed out even though we're all super stressed out traffic is really bad now i really like this episode and i feel like sometimes even us even we get into the trap of going it was see it's good it's still good

and our voices rise as we try to defend something but this like just very funny jokes in this one and i defy anyone to say that it's not funny i defy you to say it because it was very funny and yeah like i it makes you feel confident about like the show as it is now and uh still not renewed as of this moment for season 33 is that correct that's right yeah i expected uh it happened in january last time so if it's gonna happen happen, I think January or February. If I had one complaint, I would be like, you know, like, could they sound not as old as they are? But that's impossible because people age. There's not much you can do about that. Go back to a podcast I made 10 years ago.

I sound like an infant. Oh, God. Just putting the microphone in my mouth, shaking my little rattle. Everyone gets older. This episode made me wish I had a two-syllable last name. It's very hard to say my last name with anger or affection. It's too long. Frankly, your name is too complicated.

It is. Four syllables? Yeah, you guys both have two-syllable last names. I'm jealous. I get my entire name out in three syllables. Very efficient, yeah. I envy people with like a one syllable first name and a one syllable last name the most.

I know Matsumoto is actually really cool. I'm jealous. Super cool. Doesn't sit there like a banky. Actually, the scene that was cut where all the superintendents are saying their principal's names with affection, there's a Yamamoto in there.

That's right. So I guess it doesn't have to be two syllables. I go Matsumoto. Yeah, I forget how it was said in the room. Like Yamamoto. It was said with affection, though, because that's when they're all hugging. That's right, yeah. It was something like Yamamoto or something like that.

I really wish they kept that in there now to give people like me a chance to have their names said affectionately. More fun facts. William Howard Taft, also from Cincinnati. So put that in your back pocket. It's not just Charles Manson. I'm sick of people slandering Cincinnati

for the birthplace of Charles Manson. He did other things. He left Cincinnati. It's fine. He did it all in LA anyway. But yes, thank you for listening to Talking Simpsons. We hope you enjoyed this look into the present of the show, and I'm sure

maybe sometime in the future we'll do it again if we're invited back for a table read. So Nina, you're our special guest. Where can we find you online, and what are you up to lately? I'm on Twitter at SpaceCoyote. That's SpaceCoyote with an L at the end instead of an E. I'm a video game merchandise designer

for Fangamer. So if you go to Fangamer.com, go to collections, sort by artists, go to SpaceCoyote. You can see all the cool video game merch I've made. Actually, we recently released stuff that's not from a video game. We released merch for Homestar Runner to the surprise of

everybody, and that's done really really well i designed a talking strong bad plush and a trogdor t-shirt i love that trogdor t-shirt it's ameth plush they look great i i knew i couldn't get that plush it sold out almost immediately the strong bad ones flew off the shelf yeah the strong bad plush sold out within 24 hours we're working on reprints uh The shirt sold really well, too. I think that's coming very close to selling out. I like the Homestar Runner thing, too. It reminded me of how me and Bob did a whole Homestar Runner thing,

and then I learned that you were a big fan of it and would have been a great guest on that one. I was shocked when I found out that Bob never watched it. It is shocking. I know we talked about this, or you guys talked about this on the episode, but it felt so perfect for Bob. Like for a comedy and cartoon nerd,

who's also super online, like you somehow miss Homestar Runner. It's like statistically impossible for it to miss me. And yet it did. And I don't know how, and I can't explain it. But yeah, I totally missed that cartoon. But you to nina for being on the show you're always welcome back and you might be welcome in my life at some point soon permanently so thanks again to nina for being on the show please check out all of her stuff as for us if you want to

check out more of our stuff and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up there you'll get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall and that includes everything we made in the past three and a half years you will have instant access to all of it the second you sign up on patreon that includes all of our limited miniseries the most recent one is currently happening right now it's talking futurama season two part two it's currently unraveling through the end of the year that's nine new episodes of talking futurama and we'll have two new mini series coming up in 2021 ready for you in the spring and the fall and those are only available to subscribers at the five dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there's also a ten dollar level if you sign up for that you get all the

five dollar stuff but also access to one make a long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry you're talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast you know our sister podcast what a cartoon covers a different animated series each week but what you might not know is that each month we cover an animated feature film in the same in-depth style going scene by scene through a film and all of its history often for over four hours our most recent one is the waltz and grumet film curse of the were-rabbit and if you sign up this month you'll not only get to hear that but our one for december for the end of evangelion and a huge back catalog on top of all that so please sign up today at patreon.com slash talking simpsons at the ten dollar level to get

all of that plus all the $5 stuff bob mentioned so as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that at retronauts.com or wherever you find podcasts and also we have a patreon there at patreon.com slash retronauts sign Sign up there for two bonus episodes every month. Henry, how about you? You can follow Henry Gilbert on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. I'm always tweeting up a storm on there.

And you know, you can also follow on Twitter at TalkSimpsonsPod, at TalkSimpsonsPod, which our guests Nina really helps us out with that too. You can stay up to date whenever new stuff goes live on the Patreon on the free feed. When there's a poll, when we've got news, when we go to a table read, you'll learn about that whenever it happens.

If you follow at talk Simpsons pod on Twitter. So please do. Thank you so much for joining us folks. Next week, we're going back to Season 11 with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge. And we'll see you then. ...

...... I said, good, I did it. I had better than him. I said, good, good, it's good that I did it. Two, four, get up. I said, I did it. Seven, eight, I did it. I got better than him. I said, good, I did it. I have been invited to give the keynote address. Oh, well. Yes, Sunday.

Main auditorium. The Proctor and Gamble Room? Crust it! Well, that couldn't have gone worse. I agree.