Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Springfield Files With Nima Shirazi

Episode Date: September 19, 2018

Citations Needed is one of the best politics podcasts out there and the show's co-host, Nima Shirazi, is lending us his Simpsons expertise to dive into this crossover classic episode! Homer sees an alien that may also be Santa Claus, and everyone from Leonard Nimoy to Scully and Mulder wants to see if the truth is out there in Springfield. Plus we explain a ton of specifically 1995 references and explore other conspiracies (as well as the musical Hair!). So listen to find out how a whale could be so heavy! This podcast is brought to you by VRV, the streaming network full of cartoons, anime and more. sign up for a free 30-day trial at VRV.co/WAC and help support Talking Simpsons! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

this week's talking simpsons is brought to you by verve do you like streaming classic cartoons like doug anime like jojo's bizarre adventure and dragon ball super original cartoons like b and puppy cat even classics like freakazoid that you won't find anywhere else those are all being carried by verve and you get a 30-day free and service on Talking Simpsons. If you just head to VRV.co slash WAC, check it out. I hardly endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons where we look at the fine stitching on dope I'm your host, the podcaster that couldn't slow down, Bob Mackie And this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons, who else is here with me today?

Henry Gilbert, and this podcast needs more dog And who is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert. And this podcast needs more dog. And who is on the line? This is Nima Shirazi of Citations Needed. And the most rewarding part of being a guest on today's episode will be when you give me my money. Oh, my God, no. Today's episode is The Springfield Files. Oh, Don, I'm glad to see you. I went for the morning paper and I got lost. No time for you, old man. Springfield Files. Today's episode aired on January 12, 1997, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened

on this mythical day in real-world history. Oh boy, Bobby, beloved leading men Mel Gibson and Tim Allen win the People's Choice Awards. Oh boy, Bobby. Beloved leading men Mel Gibson and Tim Allen win the People's Choice Awards. Oh boy. My home team, the Jacksonville Jaguars, lose the AFC Championship to the Eternal Assholes at the New England Patriots. And King of the Hill debuts right after this episode of The Simpsons airs. What a night for television. Let's not talk about sports, by the way. But we've done a King of the Hill episode for our other podcast, What a Cartoon. We both love King of the Hill.

And it went on for 13 amazing seasons. I don't think it had a low point. No, not really. I think my judge would disagree with you. And he feels like, I think it was seasons eight or nine, the ones where he worked on it the least. It was actually five and six, which I love a lot because the showrunners were sort of making fun of the characters and so you got some of the wackier episodes like you find out that hank hill is sexually attracted to his job oh yes that's what gets him off and all kinds of fun weird character stuff like that the show got a little more low-key after that but i felt like

there was never a low point and it kind of went out when it needed to go there's always talk of it coming back they just need to update some of the technology that's around them, but can always comment on... They kind of have it both ways on that show because they are legit complaining about political correctness in many episodes, but they also are making fun of the kind of like

absurdly boring suburban existence as well. It's great. And if it comes back, I hope they don't age anyone up. No. Bobby will always be a spoiled millennial. So, yes,

King of the Hill, everybody. I want to do a mini-series of that, hopefully in the future for our Patreon. But, Nima Shirazi, you're our special guest. Can you tell some of our folks at home, if they don't know who you are,

who you are, where you come from, and your relationship with The Simpsons? Absolutely. So great to be here with you guys today. Thank you. So thanks for having me. So again, I'm Nima Shirazi. I co-host the media criticism podcast Citations Needed, which takes a rather

critical look at our media landscape and the common tropes, narratives and stereotypes that kind of pervade our news, oftentimes kind of unbeknownst to us, that there are these kind of long standing narratives that really kind of thread themselves in and out of our media landscape. And we just kind of go along with them. And so on the show, which I do with my brilliant, brilliant co host, Adam Johnson, and it's produced by our amazing producer who makes us actually sound good and smart, Florence Burrow Adams, we kind of dissect these kind of broad stroke, like we don't do a lot of hot takey stuff, as we can help it. And, you know, we kind of do like more topic based kind of broad stroke, this is what you're hearing about Iran, and that's fucked up. Or, you know,

this is why our media is really into white supremacy, and you don't even realize it because they think they're not. I love how in the beginning of some of your episodes, you will have a bunch of news clips of like different networks spouting the same bullshit. It must take a lot of work to pull all of those together. Yeah, no, it surprisingly takes less work than you think, which is part of the frustration. This stuff is kind of just all around us, you know, and so oftentimes the truth is not out there.

One thing I love about your podcast on top of the research is just how you reveal things that I never really noticed in media, but then once I've listened to the episode, I just see it everywhere. I think one of the best slash saddest ones was just the passive voice of police violence of just like how a bullet will just fly into somebody. Yeah, like innocent bystander killed by angry bullet that was fired from a police officer's gun, which really just absolves anyone of any sort of agency or finger moving or decision making to actually fire weapons, as long as they are part of a police department. Yeah, no, there's there's there's all sorts of stuff like that. Like even the term officer involved shooting is one of my favorite things. You see it all the time. It sounds like this very kind

of innocuous, objective news voice kind of term for, you know, something that happens, it was an officer involved shooting when really what that means is like a cop killed a black guy who didn't have a weapon, like that's what that means. And if you actually look at that term, you look at the history of that term, you find out that it was actually created in the 1960s by the PR department of the Los Angeles Police Department. And so that that kind of stuff, you know, to kind of see where that term originated from when they were tracking when their cops would kill people. And then it kind of got into the media when there was a big story in 1979 about a woman in Compton who was kind of killed on her lawn by some cops. And that

news story kind of made its way to the New York Times because it was a big it was a big story. And the Times at that time used the LAPD's phraseology, their own construction officer involved shooting. And so when that happens in the New York Times paper of record, it then kind of goes out from there. And so you have passed, you know, nearly 40 years of that sort of reporting. And kind of when you track it back, you realize like it comes from a pretty, pretty vile place. I'm sure in about 10 years, it'll be called a police adjacent dust up. It's gonna go even further than that. What is your history with The Simpsons as a viewer? So I actually remember watching the very first episode when it aired live.

I was upstairs. I'm from New York City. And so I grew up in an apartment building. I was upstairs at a friend's house, the neighbor's house on the eighth floor. I grew up on the second floor. And we knew that there was going to be this new thing airing that had had some stuff on the Tracy Ullman show, obviously. And so I went up to to

that apartment, and we watched and really loved it. And so I have been watching The Simpsons since the very first episode. However, I then kind of lost touch with The Simpsons when I graduated from from high school into college, I kind of stopped watching, it was no longer a regular occurrence. So So while I've seen many, many episodes in the past, whatever that may be, maybe it's 20 years, maybe it's not 20 years, the initial episodes and the kind of first eight to 10 seasons are very, very near and dear to my heart. I have so many, so many favorite episodes. That is really this incredible prime era, obviously, as your listeners will already know and probably agree with. But once it kind of hits season eight, I was, you know, fully entrenched. I was recording episodes

on VHS tape when they were airing on Sunday nights, pausing at commercials and unpausing when it came back and really kind of doing that on Sunday evenings, really always looking forward to watching The Simpsons. So being on your show and especially talking about this episode today, Springfield Files makes me really, really excited because when it came out, it was instantaneously one of my very, very favorite episodes. I did want to ask everybody what their X-Files relationship is. I have barely seen it because I had a friend in high school who was obsessed with the X-Files. And every Monday, would it air on Sundays? It was a Friday show at first, and then became a Sunday show. Whenever it aired on Sundays, Monday morning, I would be bored into

oblivion by a shot for shot retelling of the episode followed by, dude, it was so freaky. It was so freaky. I couldn't sleep. It was so freaky. I'm like, I'm 14, but nothing on TV could be that scary. So I've sort of had this disdain for the show. I realize people like it. I think it coming back in a not so great way has sort of damaged the reputation and having a second crappy movie that no one really asked for too. Yeah. No, I was a regular viewer of it. I didn't get into the first season of it in 93. But by the second season, I started watching it a lot. And even to the point of like watching, I had a local video store that would rent out seasons, I actually would put them

some episodes on VHS back then way before the DVD boom. And by the point of this episode airing in the fourth season of X-Files, I was deep, deep into the show. So the idea of an X-Files Simpsons crossover was incredibly exciting to me. Yeah, I actually was not watching X-Files at this time, or much since. But I, you know, obviously knew about the show and kind of growing up at that time and being in high school when this episode aired. And of course, when the X-Files, you know, came on and got huge, I knew about it kind of tangentially, right? Like it just kind of seeped into pop culture. So definitely knowing about Mulder and Scully and the Smoking Man and, you know, all this random stuff without actually having watched the show so really my introduction in earnest to the x-files is this simpsons episode oh wow and i well the timing couldn't have been more perfect for this episode to happen for fox as a

corporation because x-files had been their anchor friday night show they actually tried to have multiple shows on friday night it's actually funny because this episode's all about fridays but uh anyway the x files was the only show that would do well on friday and they tried to couple it with other weird shows like mantis and strange luck and uh db sweeney strange luck everyone loves that but this fourth season they had gotten chris carter to just make a second show millenn Millennium. Oh, right. Right. And so they had moved it off of Fridays to Sunday to couple it with The Simpsons. So it would be 8 at 830, Simpsons, King of the Hill, and then X-Files at 9 o'clock to 10. So by this time, it had moved in September. So it had been X-Files on Sundays for about five months at this point.

And the show, I mean, the show was huge. The movie would be coming out within a year of this, I believe it was. I think it was 98. Yeah, that's right. So a year after this, it was David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were like big time sex symbols, at least in the nerd communities at the time. I don't even know if it was just the nerd communities. I mean, this was huge at the time i think you know you kind of had that you know friend celebrity uh bump a few years earlier i i feel like in a way dukovny and anderson sort of took over like the uh aniston swimmer also like clooney on er like this was it was a wonderful time for tv and i and i remember it fondly back when there was a monoculture for that stuff and they'd be on like sexy covers

to Vanity Fair and everything and David Duchovny, which they play great jokes on in this, he was sexualized more than most men were in leading roles like that on TV shows. I think partially because he literally came from a soft core background of red shoe tires.

He had a real life sex addiction? Yeah, I'm pretty sure Californication is just a biography of him. But the show was a lot of fun. I liked it a lot. It was, now it's so funny to go back and watch it because every show now is just a linear thing. While meanwhile, X-Files

then, it felt like they could only get permission from the network to be so linear. And they're like, no, no, no, most of these have to be episodic and Monster of the week and occasionally you can tell a longer form story now that is totally the inverse of television today and the x-files was really ahead of the curve there on that and uh yeah the show is created by chris carter who according to some stories sounds like kind of a jerk um but they have nice things to say about him on the commentary actually tv show uh creator and producer uh is a jerk yeah hold on i it's hard to believe actually there's a fun story on one of the commentaries in which steven hawking was a voice actor in one

of the episodes and uh chris carter comes in and puts an x-files hat on his head and gets a picture with him it's just like that's kind of uh crossing the line that's a guy whoiles hat on his head and gets a picture with him. It's just like, that's kind of crossing the line. A guy who can't move his arms and legs just dropping a hat on him. Who also can't prevent you from taking a picture with him if you're fast enough, which is a very gross story.

And he's the main driving force behind the newer seasons, which is why people say they're not very good. They're the worst. They are the worst. Vince Gilligan, who would go on to make Breaking Bad, I think he was in charge of some of the better seasons and episodes too they

were the best some of his uh his episodes were some of the best yeah like and also frank spotnitz was uh part of this as well yes yeah he he was a real driving force on too and glenn morgan who's one of the only writers who really came back for the later seasons which in all the reviews i read like well most of these episodes suck when they're in by Chris Carter, but the Glenn episodes are good. There's a couple other good ones. Why you can't bring back the X-Files

is because it is so a pre-9-11 show. It is when the conspiracies of the tech boom and the Clinton years, that now after 9-11, it's just like, well, you don't believe in aliens anymore. We have different imaginations. It's the deep state, Henry. It's the deep state. Well, and that's what really fucks up the first episode of season first off they have to

explode all the conspiracies from the first show because they're like well we can't count on everybody to remember all the bullshit we made up in the first nine seasons so we just have to say you know what none of that was true it's all a new thing but the weirdest thing in the first episode is that they have an info wars alex jones type guy except he is played by joel mckale which is like dream likable for that yeah exactly and and the info wars guys are correct and they're the good guy oh no yeah that move solid yeah that's kind of like a like a pre-2012 signaling there you know where like who is it woody harrelson it's like kind of the the pre-2012 signaling there, you know, where like, who is it? Woody Harrelson?

It's like kind of the conspiracy theorist in that movie that no one saw. Oh my God, you're right. Yeah, I forgot all about that movie. I remember all the bad jokes about the world ending in 2012. It's too bad it didn't. I miss those years. Those were heady days. But yeah, no, I think that it's a really important kind of thing to point out the obsession in the 90s with both emerging tech and also aliens.

Because, you know, post-Cold War, as a kind of singular superpower, the United States really didn't have very formidable enemies. And so you saw this real kind of influx of alien invasion stories and alien plotlines because what could be superior to us? Well, it's no longer the Ruskies. And you know, it's not like we don't really have other threats. And so you kind of need this otherworldly thing, which then does not really play into like Cold War alien stuff, like from the 50s, which is really about nuclear war and Armageddon, like really making that kind of connection. It really just became about like, well, no one on earth can actually fight us.

So we have to always be fighting aliens. And the fear of our own government in, but a different kind of fear that there's, well, you could trust our government if it wasn't run by aliens and people who were taken over by aliens and the men in black and all that now i think you see that a lot more in major media during democratic

administrations of the the fear of government as opposed to in in 2001 the show ended right after 9-11 and they it just wouldn't work then you couldn't have a distrust for the FBI and them searching through secrets that the show was built upon. Yeah, no, exactly. I think the, the kind of consolidation of U S government supremacy and like benevolent really came, really came out of nine 11 at least in terms of pop culture. Not that that is correct. I dispute that version of it but um but no i think

that there was this real sort of you know everyone needs to stay in line because because the terrorists and so before that in the clinton years there was so much messaging about corrupt government or that you can't trust the government the government is too big the government's doing this government's doing that and you see kind of this world building going on from the right which really suffuses even uh you know supposedly liberal hollywood or you know tv kind of production um but you also see it in so many other formats as well i have this kind of long-term goal of changing my media criticism podcast citations needed into a full fledged wwf wrestling podcast yeah and so and it so, and it's being met with a little bit of resistance at this point, but I think I'm going to win out in the end.

If you watch WWF wrestling from the 90s, from the Clinton years, you can see that Vince McMahon was so anti-Clinton. And, you know, Vince as the megalomaniacal driving force behind wwf you know completely kind of almost monopolizing wrestling uh in the in the 80s and then 90s and then kind of had a challenge from from ted turner and eventually won out and is the kind of supreme lord of wrestling at this point but in the 90s there was so much work being done week after week on Raw, the Monday night program, that it was so full of anti Clinton messaging that he was a dope, he was lecherous, Hillary was terrible. They really, really glommed on to the Monica Lewinsky story, of course, which was,

you know, right around this time that we're talking about, and to kind of realize how this extreme anti-Clintonite message, which unlike a, you know, wrestling show, but it was so, it was, it was so, you can't miss it. If you watch those episodes, which I urge everyone to do, you cannot, you cannot miss it. And then you realize that this idea of clinton's being bad and pro-corporate anti-tax uh republicanism being good you see what that eventually led to in 2016 and like there's a there's a through line like there's a reason why vince mcmahon's wife linda who like ran wwf at the time is in the fucking cabinet like there's a reason oh yeah i was to ask, is this the era in which the anti-Semitic villain wrestler or, or Renar shyster was created? Yeah.

Well, yeah, that was a little earlier than, than 97. But, but yes, no, that was,

that was earlier. He was portrayed by Mike Rotunda, who was formerly part of the very, very pro American WindhamRotunda tag team, who were eventually beaten, lost their titles to who else but the Foreign Legion of the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkov, which makes sense. And then Rotunda wound up being IRS, Urban Arshaiser,

which is actually a fantastic character. You know, getting booed. The bad guy heel all over the country for saying like pay your taxes you know everyone you all belong in jail actually that anti-clinton thing not to turn this all into wrestling i'm i'm looking at my watch okay but the last thing that anti-clinton thing you mentioned i forgot that at wrestlemania 14 jennifer flowers is there like she interviews the rock that was who was in 19 that was 1998 1998. Who is still even booking Jennifer flowers on stuff in 1998. Apparently Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler.

That's that is precisely what was, what was happening. No, there was tons of Ken star talk. Uh, Paula Jones, um, old kind of legend, uh, wrestler, Bob Backlund had a, had this like ridiculous storyline where he was running for president in the mid-90s. And so they actually got a Clinton impersonator to be at a lot of events and have his arms draped over these kind of ring-wrap girls to really hammer home how Clinton is bad and then everything opposed to Clinton is good. Well, fortunately, we don't have any more womenizing politicians.

No. Yeah. It never happened after that. Thankfully, that ended. It's all over. But okay, let's bring Phil Pyle. Now it's time for the most exciting part of the show, production information, everybody. So you're going to hear a bit of the same story when we get to the Sherry Bobbins episode in a few weeks.

But this episode was run by Al Jean and Mike Reese. They wrote on the first four seasons of the show and then they ran seasons three and four and fox wanted more episodes and their initial idea was make four clip shows every year for a while they're making one every year and they hated them and they were bad so their solution for seasons eight and nine were to get old showrunners to come back and make episodes with a small staff separate from the current showrunners of the time yeah while the current showrunners made 22 episodes as usual they still would have 25 to 26 episode long seasons because of the satellite staffs and al gene and mike reese at the time were technically under contract at disney to make shows but they got an exception

to make two simpsons episodes at the same time which production wise two on the simpsons it kind of meant they just needed to shepherd a show through writing two animators who were not a satellite team it was just the animators who worked with the simpsons they'd go through that for a few for the nine months it would take and algino mike reese would put the finishing touches on it as they also did in season six with the critic episode and round springfield but those were the entire critic writing staff these episodes are for sherry bobbins and the springfield files it is for writers uh al gina mike reese david stern and reed harrison we actually we actually interviewed reed harrison last year for a patreon that's on our patreon right now patreon.com

talking simpsons it was a great chat but i think because of that they don't have the machinery of the simpsons writing team at this era like the machinery of like 15 to 16 writers that will punch up everything and make everything better so there are a few issues with this in the sherry bobbins episode i will say what they have in common is they each have a speed reference reference to the movie speed they each they each have a song from hair and they each have a joke uh that a reference to the movie Speed. They each have a song from Hair, and they each have a joke that's a parody of the No Fat Chicks t-shirt. Yeah.

So it's easy to see with four writers how you could all be on the same page about certain things. And each episode sort of ends with the second act, and the third act is like kind of a shrug. By their own admission, by the show's own admission, it's just like, well, what do we do now? Yeah, and they're both high-concept concept direct parodies of another piece of media, X-Files and Mary Poppins. They say on the commentary that they had sat on this one for a couple years.

I think the... Well, and then it was like a 95-ish type, or 94 thing, which would definitely fit with the many references to things from 1995 or 1994, like Waterworld, The Budweiser Frogs, Red Dog Beer, and Speed, which... And the alien autopsy. Yeah. Yeah, that too. Yeah, I was listening to... So Everything's Coming Up Simpsons did an episode on this,

and Mike Reese sits in on it. He tells a story about the pitching of this. They pitched it earlier, but no one wanted to do it. Same with Sherry Bobbins. And Al Jean says he got the idea because during a writer's retreat, he was in the bathroom. He saw a TV guide with the X-Files on it. And he's like, that's an idea for an episode. And I tried to find that TV guide. I believe it was from 1995. So probably the previous year, they tried to pitch this and nobody wanted it. But when it was time for more episodes,

yes, we'll take your idea. And also the X-Files is huge and we can use this to help launch King of the Hill. So it was good for everybody involved. Yeah, no, and I think good for the viewers, because honestly, whatever issues there may be in this episode, and I'm sure we will dissect those piece by piece, it still winds up being a phenomenal, a phenomenal show. It is hysterical from top to bottom. So you know what? Even with the stripped down staff, they nailed it. I totally agree. I mean, it is a very, very funny episode with lots of memorable jokes, but compared to the tone of season seven and eight, it's very off in that season seven and eight are very about like a solid through line and a solid plot construction from beginning to

end. And this they always make jokes about like, well, the story is over. Leonard Nimoy left. The X-Files people have left the show. What do we do now? And it's also so reference heavy. I mean, it's like they can't get through two sentences without like a cutaway or like a reference to some other piece of pop culture. It's actually remarkable how much there is in this one show. Yeah. And Al Jean and Mike Reese are sort of fresh off The Critic and they came up writing parodies for National Lampoon and Harvard Lampoon, so they are very much of the parody mindsets. Yeah, yeah. I think it's weird that it's in the middle of season eight, so you kind of can't not compare it, but totally this would be completely fitting in season four. If you saw this in season four, you wouldn't bat an eyelash at it in tone wise because it has just as many scenes of them watching TV and wild, crazy things and Leonard Nimoy, who was also in season four.

But seeing it next to it as we're digging deep into Oakley and Weinstein, it does make the, it contrasts it much stronger than it did when I first viewed it. Yeah, I find I have to look up much fewer references with Oakley and Weinstein stuff than I do with Merkin's and Gene and Reese's episodes. That's not a problem. It's just they like references and parodies more than Oakley and Weinstein did. Well, I was also thinking when I was kind of reviewing this episode,

knowing that I was going to come on today, just kind of almost how dated the references are. Like, I still get them because I was, I was 16 when this, when this came out. So like, I re I remember, I remember all those references, um, you know, like the, the Budweiser frogs. Right. But I can't imagine new viewers or even viewers who started watching 10 years after this episode aired, like they would probably miss most of this stuff one thing lost of time is the the then new blue eminem which was a then new color people voted into the bag to get rid of tan like we don't need two kinds of brown eminems people i get it i yeah well we'll get to that

one too but yeah this i think the reference is i couldn't i had to remind myself a couple times to like, yeah, Red Dog beer, my dad drank that, I think. That was one of his favorites. It was the era of the dry beer, and I don't think I've ever had dry beer. I don't know what that means even. What makes it dry? I don't know. I don't know, but I was always very in favor of Bud Dry during the Bud Bowl. You know, I usually supported straight up Bud. That was my flag. I was waving in the Bud Bowl. You know, I usually supported straight up Bud. That was my

flag. I was waving in the Bud Bowl. I guess the advertising for Bud Dry told you to not ask questions. Like, why ask why? What is dry beer? I want answers, dammit! Just drink our product. Just do it. The Simpsons will be right back whether you're a fan of tgif or the saturday night cbs craparama we hope you're enjoying

this week's episode of talking simpsons we especially want to thank our guest neema shirazi and we said it a bunch and i'll say it again Citations Needed is a great podcast he co-hosts with Adam Johnson it's one of me and Bob's favorite political podcasts out there please check out Citations Needed they even have a Patreon and speaking of Patreon that's what supports this show as well we're able to get guests like Nima Shirazi and so many other cool folks because of your support on patreon.com slash talking simpsons making us able to do this is a full-time job but it's more than just that if you support us for five dollars a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you'll get access to so many things you'll get this podcast a week ahead of time and ad free and the same goes for our sister podcast what a

cartoon if you sign up at patreon.com slash talkingSimpsons, $5 a month, you'll get access to that a week ahead of time and ad-free, where you can be listening to us do the Talking Simpsons treatment to King of the Hill, Batman the Animated Series, Steven Universe, Cowboy Bebop, and tons more. And at the $10 a month level, you'll get access to the premium video

me and Bob do each month and all the previous ones before, such as our commentary into all of the original Simpson shorts that aired on Tracy Ullman. Check out all of those at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. This podcast is also brought to you by Verve. the streaming service verve is pretty great and you can get a 30-day free trial of it if you sign up at vrv.co slash wac that's verve.co slash whack if you sign up there you can get a 30-day free trial of the service that gets you access to so

many different streaming shows including the anime of of Crunchyroll, exclusives like Freakazoid, and 90s classics from Nick Splat. Those classics and many others are available at Verve, and you can get a free 30-day trial of the expansive service if you sign up at Verve.co.wac. Now keep watching the skis, I mean skis. Well, so this episode starts out with the returning r.i.p well i guess i do have to play the death jingle here since that's right we're talking uh but with leonard nemois so this opening is a parody of the 1977 to 1982 series In Search Of. And I believe I talked about this on some other podcast and I don't remember when. So I'll go over it again really quick. It was sort of the unsolved mysteries for kids of the 70s.

Like we had unsolved mysteries they had In Search Of. And it was very much like the stories about Bigfoot and ghosts and UFOs and things like that. And I watched a bit of it on YouTube. And even on the commentary, they point this out. Like Leonard Nimoy is not sitting at a desk in the intro to in search of he is like on sort of a steve brule uh kind of set like uh with a black background and like little video plates behind him or whatever those seem like easy days for nimoy they filmed them all in one day yeah he's just like okay now it's a bigfoot leonard okay and i think yeah we'll do well and and he actually wound up uh

picking up hosting duties uh after rod serling who is the who's the initial host uh hosted like three one-hour specials i think that they turned into in search of and they got nemo for it and i think them getting the set wrong is just a product of pre-internet research because it was just like well where where was neoy sitting during this? But now you can just pull up an episode on YouTube and be like, okay, that's what the show looks like. I think, too, there was a little Criswell from Plan 9 of a guy sitting at the desk to introduce something

and they just kind of conflated all of them together. But let's hear Leonard talk us into Friday. Hello, I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true and by true, I mean false. It's all lies, but they're entertaining

lies, and in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is no. Our story begins on a Friday morning in a little town called Springfield. TGIF, guys, I'm off to Moe's. But, Homer, it's 10 in the morning. Don't worry, I have a plan.

I saw this in a movie about a bus that had to speed around the city, keeping its speed over 50. And if its speed dropped, it would explode. I think it was called the bus that couldn't slow down that's a great that's a great little joke yeah no that um opening is actually has long kind of maintained itself i think at the very top of my favorite since an episode beginnings i actually wound up having having the Nimoy intro as my outgoing answering machine message for a period of time when I was in college. Apparently, I didn't expect any girls to call.

But yeah, no, I have always loved that so much. It definitely has this kind of Criswell plan nine. This is based on test a secret testimony. It also has that like in search of think part of the intro for in search of was like, this is based on theory and conjecture. And like in search of think part of the intro for in search of was like this is based on theory and conjecture and like so they really kind of run with that and then the music that they use is is almost exactly the in search of intro music it is so it's so perfect and that's a show that i actually didn't know at the time but kind of have since revisited in light of this episode and it just furthers my love of the way that they that they open this the you know and by true i mean false that's that's so amazing and then just the the wrap-up of oven

isn't that the real i i do like the uh the book device which they made up that's not part of insertion but i like the little like sort of wood cut of homer drawing and i like i enjoy the set piece of like, what are all the characters doing on Friday? Like what is Friday like for Springfield? It's a really smart, you know, there's a lot of first act things that have nothing to do with the rest of the episode gags.

And this is one of my favorites that it's just Friday around Springfield. Oh, the last thing about In Search Of, I want to say though, is that I would think that Nimoy had some fun at saying, no, this is all lies. This isn't true because because on the show he kind of had to act like he believed it even though he probably didn't he's just like well who is to say about aliens or sasquatch perhaps actually i have a clip of him talking about ufos from an in search of episode right here

on june 24th 1947, an Idaho businessman named Kenneth Arnold was flying his private plane near Washington's Mount Rainier. He saw nine disc-like objects moving rapidly along the horizon. Arnold said they moved erratically, like saucers skipped across a pond. Flying saucer thus became part of our language.

After the Mount Rainier sighting, unidentified flying objects were reported all over the country, an astonishing number of them. By pathetic lowlifes? No, he has another funny bit in there where he actually says, there is an interesting reason why all these rural areas reported more than others. And I was like, well, yeah, because they have nothing going on right alcohol poisoning yeah but no he said the reason was because there's clearer skies and it's easier to see things at night ah clever nice no lights more time to see aliens and at the end of it he basically demands that the government do more work into researching aliens wow they're not they're too incurious it's fun i miss those kind of conspiracy theories like

the kids today should be seeing stuff like that in unsolved mysteries instead of all of the suggested youtube conspiracy theory videos they're getting i have to say i certainly agree and and actually to to piggyback on that actually this past summer in july i they they've rebooted in search of except now it's hosted by, who else? Zachary Quinto, our new Spock. Of course, new Spock. So it seems like only,

only Spock is allowed to host the show. And the very first episode that they ran was obviously about aliens. I saw that it had a, like an eight episode reboot in 2002. I don't even know when or where, but it existed. You know.

Or did it? That Quinto Spock, that reminds me that they just cast a new Spock, a new, new Spock for the Discovery Show. And that just kind of disappoints me because I feel like, look, Zachary Quinto, he should have the career he wants to have. But if you get cast as Spock, that is your job for life and no one else should play Spock but you. You should be chained to Spock.

Exactly. And then you write a book called I Am Not Spock. But Henry, I'm surprised we didn't hear a discontinuity alert from you because- I was about to. Oh, man. you should be chained to spock exactly and then you write a book called i am not spock but henry i'm surprised we didn't hear a discontinuity alert from you because i was about oh man all right but yeah uh in the surveillance footage that they loop it's clearly they're all in the 70s but in the seasons that algin and mike reese ran it was clear that bart was born in 1981 or 1982 and that's when homer started working yeah at the plant and if you move the timeline ahead with the seasons it would only be later so yeah i'm up i'm furious homer would not have worked there in 1978 not only that but also vhs ace surveillance tech wouldn't have been as regular then i'm not

saying they didn't have it but overwind have had his access to it i'm just i i get it i think they wanted to just have a more specific date and it's fine signifiers but they could have had him just wearing like a frankie says relax shirt or whatever like the same gags are there i it just it does annoy me as the continuity freak on here i knew you i knew it i knew it would get to you yes no i think that that's a really good thing to point out i mean i was thinking the same thing, but at the same time, you know, who's to say that Lenny and Carl did not dress like that in the early 80s, right? That's true. I mean, you know, maybe they were just really, really groovy.

The 70s sort of lingered into the 80s for like three or four years. So perhaps, I mean, Happy Days was on until 83. Wasn't one of them wearing a sit on it t-shirt? Sit on it, yeah. Homer, Homer. Yeah. But that speed gag, that was actually what led to me reaching out to Reed Harrison to interview him because he retweeted a fan made t-shirt for speed that had the speed poster, but it had the bus that wouldn't slow

down on it. And he retweeted like, boy, it's weird to see the internet take this joke I made in 1996. That's what led me to reach out to him. But Reed was pretty clear on this, that he was a new writer to the staff. And so he was given a pretty clear outline of what they wanted. So he didn't add a ton of things. And then some of the stuff he added in his draft just got rewritten anyway. And now he's writing for the great new series, Disenchantment. Matt Groening's Disenchantment. But I think he's also living in, is he living in France? He moved back to LA for Disenchantment, but he mostly lives in France now.

At least that's what he told us. Right. He's like, don't look, as long as there are no follow up questions. But other people have Friday plans in Springfield. So another Friday is upon us. What will you be doing, Smithers? Something gay, no doubt? What?

You know, light-hearted, fancy-free. Mothers, lock up your daughters. Smithers is on the town. Exactly, sir. It's an easy gay joke with Smithers, but the acting on harry shearer really makes that joke there in all the years they could have done this joke this is the first time they've ever done a gay equals happy confusion to an old man yeah i would say

it yeah i did like that it's pretty funny but just his like what what like you know i'm what yeah reading of what is is amazing we all love tangents on this show. This reminds me of a scene they cut from Back to the Future in which Marty McFly is asking Doc Brown, if I kiss my mom, won't that make me gay? And Doc Brown's like, why would you be happy, Marty? And then it was a joke. But that kind of makes Marty an uglier character. So I'm glad they cut that out.

Yeah. I'm stealing this joke from Eugene Merman, but it is similar to a j fox movie there's the scene in teen wolf there's a scene where he's coming out to his friend his cool friend that he's a werewolf and then his friend says oh i thought you were gonna call me a slur i thought you were gonna tell me you're a slur and then eugene merman's joke was like oh no no no i'm not gay i'm a magical creature i'm an evil demon then we head to the arcade which this is a critic joke these are all critics yeah yes they very i i that's that is one of the weirdest things in this episode that

they wanted to be like oh an alien that's too weird for this but in this episode donkey kong exists in this world a jasper can turn into a werewolf if he takes the wrong pills on it so it's springfield is a little odder than usual in this episode yeah this and sherry bobbins like magical things can just not a draw anymore. Hey, he's still got it. 38, 39, 40 quarters. This better be good. Game over. Please deposit 40 quarters. What a rip!

That was a pretty good Kevin Costner by Dan Castellaneta. I love the Costner. Who did it? Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer. That has to be him. It's just empty. It's like, please deposit 40 quarters. Later, they'll do an episode where they go to a Best Buy and Waterworld is playing.

And Lisa activates the DVD commentary. And it's a video of Kevin Costner going, I'm so sorry i'm very sorry i think it's hank is area on that one not it could also be the postman i don't know if they're making fun of that movie yeah i think it was the post i think by then they knew it's like bit more recent kevin costner bombs to make fun of than waterworld but we brought this up before there was still the waterworld uh stage show sea show water show at Universal Studios. If I may bring it back to pro wrestling again. Always.

Well, there is this indie pro wrestler who, well, he's just never wrestled in WWE. But Christopher Daniels, he is currently also a stunt performer. He's like the lead villain in the Water world show on top of being a pro wrestler amazing it's just so weird it's just so weird to see all of this modern ip like minions and transformers and then be brought back to 1995 with the giant water world gates you know we talked about this just on another episode too i know it just it stuck in my mind yeah it shouldn't be well that just shows you the strength of it as a stunt show that it's so good it has outlived the water world ip or any mocking of water world like to show you how old this joke is about water world even for the simpsons two years before on radioactive man

they were doing jokes about water world going over budget like that's how that's how old this joke is in 90 in early 97 even hey you, you know, when it works, keep it. Yeah. Well, now Waterworld is so, I think its budget is quaint now. I think Infinity War was literally like a billion dollar movie. Yeah. Like the cost. Oh, yeah.

No, I think when Sideways came out, like the one with Paul Giamatti about wine, I think that cost about $15 trillion to me. So things have changed. Then we check in oner and the kids on their friday night plans bad dog bad cat bad phone show show all right it's time for abc's t. Lise, when you get a little older, you'll learn that Friday's just another day between NBC's Messy Thursday and CBS's Saturday Night Craparama. Another Duff, Homer? Nah, it's Friday night, Mo. I you go. Doof from Sweden.

Go! Wait a minute. This is tough. You got me eating you. All right, here you go. Red tick beer. Old, refreshing, and something I can't quite put my finger on. Needs more dog.

Now that needs more dog, one of my favorites. That might be my line of the episode. It does remind me of dinner dog. It is dinner dog. Well, so the CBS craparama, in case you wondered what was on at that time. No good. It was Dr. Quinn, Medicineinn medicine woman touched by an angel and walker texas ranger that was before cbs just dominated every network with their blame i mean

that those shows were kind of bland but they really perfected bland well i mean i gotta point out here i think right that i guess bart does not share homer's affinity for dr quinn medicine that's true that's a special night for homer at large more of a mommy and daddy experience i mean that is that is dr quinn well i mean all those shows dr quinn touched by an angel and walker texas ranger they are similar and that they star people who used to be movie stars who would be remembered as movie stars to older people yeah that's right so it's a real touchstone for the aging in CBS time. It's like those

magazines you see at the grocery store for old people like, this guy's still alive. He's doing it. And I have a lot of really fond memories of TGIF.

Oh my, yes. By the time I was maybe 11, I realized like, oh, all these shows are bad. But I was still addicted to them and just sort of making

fun of them in my head as a mystery science theater fan. 97, I was on the internet and I'm like, I have better things to do. But I was watching, you know, Family Matters, Step by Step, Full House, all of the other like one season losers they made. Yeah. I had multiple sleepovers where just like Bart and Lisa, I parked myself in front of the TV on Friday night of like TGIF time. And then I would stick around for 2020 to hear John Stossel tell it like it is

i'd be like i'm getting smarter i'm so smart yeah no i actually have very few memories of watching tgi i was thinking about this i was like oh right that was huge like family matters was huge and obviously urkel was like this you know pop culture touchstone but i definitely was not watching that every friday night at the time. Then again, I might be a little older than you guys. So maybe I was already out on the town. I had pretty much given up with it by 97. I knew it was bad by then.

And now it's whenever they bring one of those shows back, I'm just like, no, we all remember it, but it wasn't good. Like it's not. And yet, yeah, Fuller House got to come back and for two seasons. Now I saw that and I'm like, whoa, they brought this back and made the show horny. Like,

just like, look at all these boobs. They've all, they all got, they've all got like low cut, like shirts on all the time. Yeah. I mean,

that was not the appeal of the original show. No, no, it's not. I mean, celebrate your bodies. Fine. But it just feels weird to put that on full house.

Yeah. I mean, I would have much rather celebrating Dave Coulier's body at this point. Yeah, and what's that woodchuck puppet up to? Yeah. So Red Tick Beer, that is obviously a parody of the Red Dog Beer, which I did not know until looking this up now that obviously it wasn't a new beer company. It was a second brand from Miller. Miller was like, the Miller brand means a certain thing, and if we want to sell a premium beer at a higher price, it can't say Miller on it. People won't think that.

So then they make up Red Dog, which had ads with the phrase, you are your own dog. Good. It was a real rebel of a dog. He wasn't exactly Spuds McKenzie. He was more laid back, red bulldog who was just like, hey, I chill out and I just drink beer. Be like me. I remember a lot of commercials of the dog walking around and talking about how he's independent and how he's unique and a dog.

Whistling at poodles. Yeah. Oh, you're right. Whoa, boy. Yeah. Not cool. You are your own dog. You are so cool.

You're the coolest. The coolest dog. dog. You are so cool. Or the coolest. The coolest dog. Cat calling. Try it today. I like, I more prefer the red tick beer. Suck one dry. That's a better expression. And yeah, I think too, Red Dog was introduced because there was kind of the emerging micro

brew market in the mid 90s. And so it was kind of Miller like, hey, this is sort of a micro brew. It tastes different. It disappeared in the early 2000s, but apparently it sort of made a comeback in 2005. I think if you go to a liquor store, you might be able to find it. It's like how Zima came back. Yes. Yeah, I was actually just about to say that at this time,

I actually don't recall ever sort of sneaking out and drinking Red Dog beer, but I definitely remember consuming copious amounts of Zima and Bartles and James wine coolers, which apparently I and my friends were able to buy at Bodegas in New York City at the time. But maybe they weren't carrying Red Dog or they only had Rolling Rock as their kind of sole bad beer. I don't know. I don't know if I've to date ever had a Red Dog beer. Yeah, like Bartles and James and Zima and Mike's Hard Lemonade are your real intro to drinking class. They're made for underage drinking.

That's who they're really selling it to. Tastes like candy. And hey, I'm fine with that. As Homer says, it's for teenagers with fake IDs. It's fine. So Homer gets super drunk boris yeltsin drunk which uh you know i'm so sick of vladimir putin jokes like i miss boris yeltsin drunk jokes they bring me back to a nicer time you get a little bit yeah kinder gentler time exactly sure

at least at the very least like i'll prefer a drunk joke to uh your gay joke but uh so homer heads out on the town we get uh also get a psycho theme reference like as if there aren't enough musical movie references this you also get the psycho i swear to god there's a similar thing in the mel brooks movie high anxiety i didn't have time to look right yeah i think yeah yeah you know the diet gag sign is it's simple but effective i the double scream is pretty good there too and i like in the psycho music scene that they went to the effort to record just a violin playing i like how that one player is just walking off into the spooky woods is really great i i also should point out and i think we'll probably get to get to die and diet scream but in terms of kind of in show

references you know this this reminded me of also one of my very favorite episodes the the cape fear episode um and the kind of die diet gag oh man you're right yeah diet cola diet ice cream or something like that she's clipping coupons yeah i'm going to get you some ice cream at the store this coupon and there was another Gene and Reese. I mean... This episode's on trial now. Gene and Reese, I mean... These are all good things.

I bring it up out of love. I actually... There's two jokes later in this. I'm like, this is a... Not stealing from yourself, but a heightening of a joke done before. And we were talking before the show. I really feel like they were not in a great place,

maybe personally, because the critic just got canceled twice. They were in the middle of a terrible deal with Disney. All LG wanted to do was work on The Simpsons again. And they were basically doing this on top of their full-time job, what, producing Teen Angel? Yeah. Or starting Teen Angel? I should have mentioned that when we were talking about TGIF.

In six months, so at the time this aired, they must have been working on the pilot for Teen Angel because the show began in September. So they're making fun of TGIF while making a TGIF show. Yes, a very short-lived one that did share Simpson's guest voices, including Marsha Wallace. Marsha Wallace is a regular on it. She was great. Well, yeah, so we get the diet scream, and then Homer has an alien encounter. Please, don't hurt me. Don't be afraid. Yeah! I love him dotting the I.

The extra little jump. The extra effort on that jump to dot the exclamation point is wonderful. It really makes the joke, too. And I have to ask you guys, did you guess the twist just by hearing Harry Shearer? I know I didn't. I did not. Definitely not. You can hear Burns' voice just a tiny bit in there, which that's the skill of Harry Shearer as a voice performer.

I do love on the commentary they will bring up at the end. They're like, boy, that's a real cheat that you just have to slash a flashlight on him and the green glow goes away. It's obviously Burns. But it's a really good mystery, actually. Like it's then the design on the character. It works that it would be Burns with the shape he has, but it's also specifically an alien for them

and the type of alien that you would see in like they drew into the credits of an episode of x files right well yeah when they come back from break we get to see that no one believes homer marge everyone is rightly reacting that he is drunk though it's also funny that this came written by a different writing staff but this comes just months after citizen kang you're right a very similar moment in it too i don't think they were talking to each other about this stuff but uh yeah you're right about that yeah citizen kang also is homer having actually met aliens and then not believed because he smells like booze sure thing rummy sure thing not uh but uh but this time, no one believes Homer for legitimate reasons. Dad, according to Junior Skeptic Magazine, the chances are 175 million to one of another form of life actually coming in contact with ours.

So? It's just that the people who claim they've seen aliens are always pathetic lowlifes with boring jobs. Oh, and you, Dad. I am the thing from Uranus. with boring jobs. Oh, and you, Dad. Hello. I am the thing from Uranus. Oh, it's Bart. I can't believe it.

I'm being marked by my own children on my birthday. It's your birthday? Yes. Remember, it's the same day as the dogs. Santa's little helper, it's your birthday? We gotta get you a present. Yes, we do.

Yes, we do. We love you, boy. Good doggie. Good doggie. Lousy, lovable dog. If I could ruin a really funny joke. How did they know his birthday? They adopted him on Christmas.

Yeah, maybe it's Christmas Day Oh my god, so much is happening in this show They followed through with the owner later, I think They gave him a call With my childhood pets, we didn't know when they were born, we just adopted them. We adopted don't shop

folks, but so with my cats, we kind of just guess, we're like, well, they were kind of four months old when we got them so let's just pick a day in april and call that the pet's birthday yeah my i know my bird hatched in july so i just picked the day and that's his birthday july 4th right uh july 27th i don't know why uh but he gets presents oh that's very sweet lousy lovable bird yeah i i like hom Homer's distaste for that dog, too, that he's sissy, but he admits he's lovable. And well, then Homer explaining his events with the aliens to other people. Again, pedantically, I must say, like one, he was not probed by them.

So that joke doesn't work when he thinks he was probed because we saw his alien encounter lasted eight seconds. And then secondly, when he's telling Wiggum that he shows up every Friday night oh yeah he can't possibly know that because he only saw him on one Friday but he's elaborating see that it's a tall trail it is gaining as it as it goes it gains different components this is how myth making works so actually I was thinking that too and I and I have come to the conclusion obviously, when you're retelling this kind of encounter, you're going to add in more specific details to kind of bring the story more energy, more life, you're going to make it fuller. And red tick beers, which I assume have a higher alcohol content. And a much higher dog content. Yes.

And I am not as big as Homer or as big of an alcoholic as Homer, but after five beers, it's hard to walk. So I'm surprised he made it home. Yeah, well, I'm not a regular beer drinker. I know that Red Dog had a 4.8%. Is that high or low for beer? That's not very high. Most IPAs are like 7% to 8%. That's sort of where it tops out.

I'm more of a cider and rosé, guys. Yeah, actually, the scene with Wiggum... I still only drink Zima. But the scene with Homer and Wiggum, it's cute. The alien has a sweet, heavenly voice, like Urkel. And he appears every Friday heavenly voice like Urkel and he appears every Friday night Like Urkel. Well, your story is very compelling. Mr. Jackass. I mean Simpson So I'll just type it up on my invisible typewriter

You don't have to humiliate me. I just torched a building downtown and I'm afraid I'll do it again. Oh, yeah, right. I'll just type it up on my invisible typewriter. I have to step in to defend Urkel and the good name of Jaleel White. I feel like he was a great comic performer, even though his character was very annoying. And I feel like the fact that he dedicated his youth and young adult years to playing that character really shows just how his pure dedication to acting. Yeah, committed to his art. you go yes i was looking for a synonym but it's funny how we talked about this before i'm sure but family matters started as let's look at the life of this black family trying to make it in this workaday world then by season four it's like okay it's about robots and potions and time travel and then by the end of the show it's like there's pirates involved and they're shrinking uh but it's

like they really retooled the show to be about carl and ur. And I think Reginald Vell Johnson is awesome, too. He is great. They were good, played against each other very well comedically. They had a fantastic cast. And yeah, Reginald Vell Johnson, I don't know how much he was on board for it becoming slapstick. But in the early shows, they had an episode, the mom gets laid off and they're worried that they might have to get on welfare and not food stamps and they had an episode actually in an urkel episode where someone writes the n-word on his locker and they deal with the slurs and hate and there's even an episode about eddie gets racially profiled by cops and uh there's a stirring scene where uh carl winslow confronts other cops about being racist

i'm not saying it was like the most important show ever but i think it was kind of interesting and good that that's kind of what i'm gathering from this from this uh kind of look back i think i think family matters might be the most woke show of all time more important than the simpsons no i'm just saying that like to put a show about a black family in the middle of like the white bread tgif block was pretty daring because i remember at this time quote-unquote black uh sitcoms were sort of uh ghetto together like on nbc was like here's 227 and amen together the two shows starring black characters together you can skip them yeah yeah i feel like that was on purpose well i mean full house and step by step they weren't doing well actually full house did try to do very special episodes that were humorously terrible.

Like, I think Family Matters stuck the landing a little better. And then they just went Full, Robot, and Urkel. Yeah, they couldn't... For one thing, the show wouldn't have continued as that show as TGIF.

It just would have been canceled if they didn't have a toyetic goofball in Jaleel White's Urkel who could become a robot if needed. I guess for all the good it did, it did teach a lot of men. If you work at a woman hard enough, you can bust through that friend zone, buddies. You wear her down.

And then they'll marry you. His catchphrase was, I'm wearing you down. I forgot any cheese. You know what? Don't make fun of that. Cheese is delicious. But so now the X- x files comes into this episode bob you were saying before we recorded this just like how easily x-sized the x files could be from

this episode yeah x files crossover i'm i mean i've watched this probably i don't know 40 times in my life but because we overanalyze everything to entertain you folks out there i just realized now that mullion sclder are in this episode. Mully and Skulder, famously of the F-Files. You know what I'm talking about. The two characters from the X-Files are in this episode for a total of four minutes. They are in for four minutes. And you were saying, Henry, that like none of the writers for this episode were really

familiar with the show? Not really. And it's good because it's like, I know nothing about the X-Filesiles but i get the jokes yeah i think that's why it exactly works for me at the time but i kind of wish it started with them i don't know if there was some sort of like macerating pushback like not too much x-files it's still the simpsons well i have a couple guesses on that one in classic x-files structure this actually works a little bit because X-Files would usually start with a scene of the regular person who encounters something crazy. But it would just be the cold open, right? Yeah, it would be the cold open, more like a few minutes. But so Act One kind of

functioned as a X-Files cold open, and now it transitions to them in their office. And I also think the limitedness of it could be that Al Jean had to fly up to Canada to record with them. And in between them filming a show, which is like a, you know, 20 hour days, sometimes type show that maybe they only had so much time free to record. So it could be that. And also maybe they were thinking of like, ah, in syndication, maybe we could just cut this out and not have to pay them royalties or something. That's funny. I mean, in this episode, all of the guest stars leave at the end of the second act.

It's kind of weird, but it's also very funny. It's Scully and Mulder. They get irritated and bored. And Leonard Nimoy is just like, my job is done. I'm leaving. So it's a real second act problem here. They don't know what to do in the third act. I think Leonard Nimoy might per capita have more lines than them both in this episode he really does but i think

they both get uh good lines yeah for sure certainly and also also the kind of use use their characters as the vehicle to then further lampoon the fbi is really is really important and i at the same time i mean the thing about this episode is it has an amazing guest performance by Nimoy and matched by both Duchovny and Anderson. I think they give amazing performances, albeit limited, but everything they say is funny. They are both great actors and have so much range, which they got to show off in some episodes of X-Files, but the standard characters of Dana and Fox are so like, they're supposed to be flat and kind of limited. Like Fox is spooky Mulder. He's the guy who thinks of crazy things and he kind of rants sometimes. Well, meanwhile, Dana Scully is a super skeptic. And so she has to be like, well, Mulder, I don't think that's true. Well, Futurama taught

us David Duchovny is one of our great acting robots. Next to Calculon. But here's their introduction scene here. This is one of the best jokes about the nature of X-Files in the episode. Look at this, Scully. There's been another unsubstantiated UFO sighting in the heartland of America. We've got to get there right away. Well, gee, Mulder, there's also this report

of a shipment of drugs and illegal weapons coming into New Jersey tonight. I hardly think the FBI's concerned with matters like that. Hello? Can I help you? Agents Mulder and Scully, FBI. Is this about that pen that I took from the post office?

I swear, I didn't know I'd put it in my purse. Then I was going to bring it back, but the dog chewed it up, and that just made things worse. Actually, we're here to see your husband about his UFO encounter. Oh, come, come in. Some good hyperventilating. That joke reminds me of a web comic I see a lot that has a very similar joke where Scully is just, she's sitting at a desk and saying,

it's like, oh, we just got a report that this diplomat was stabbed to death on Fifth Avenue. Mulder throws a file on her desk and says, ever hear of the knife alien? Yes. I love that. That's not so different from the show, honestly. I just like the words knife alien.

Pair it together. The best episodes were when Mulder would think he found a werewolf or a vampire, and then Scully would be like, no, here's the obvious explanation, and he'd be proven wrong. Those are some of the best ones, though. Though it was usually something even crazier than that. You start with a werewolf, and then it's actually a space werewolf well it's a dream warrior that turns into whatever your greatest fear is and uh it's nice yeah it's kind of nice where it he is kind of a knife werewolf actually if i could tell people to watch one episode of x files believe it's season six

or seven episode x cops is the best one i it for one episode viewing because, I believe it's season six or seven episode, X-Cops is the best one for one episode viewing because it was them. It's an X-Files crossover again, but with the show Cops, where basically it starts like a regular episode of Cops, except a cop is killed by some crazy creature. And then as the Cops crew is filming, FBI agents Mulder and Scully show up and are helping with the investigation. And those are all on Netflix, right? I believe. Or Hulu. Subscribe to all of them.

The truth is out there, folks. Look for it. You'll find it somewhere. They take Homer down to the FBI office. They also have a J. Edgar Hoover in a dress joke thing. Yeah, it's pretty solid. I mean, the idea that the idea that they would, you know they send out press releases about how they busted terrorist plots that they created. to actually watch now with the this kind of godlike nobility of the fbi as it's viewed by like hashtag resistance votes for anti-trump for very good reason but they're hailing people like james comey and robert muller as like these amazing heroes to like take down the baddies

and it's like no no these guys ran like a like a criminal syndicate it was just called the fbi nothing but respect for my fbi director well those guys might entrap trump in the same way that they entrapped mentally challenged arab teens it could happen that's the hope now that that was a really good episode of citations needed again that one about the in all those clips you guys played that i'd seen on the news too and just of like oh yeah they stopped a terrorist plot on christmas what a cool thing the fbi did and then for the if you dig even slightly into it how it was not an isis plot none of these things no no no then you learn that like the fbi agent drove the guy like to the place where the attack was supposed to happen because the guy didn't have a car

and he also supplied him with all the bombs and he told him he should do it even when the guy was like i don't really think we should do this and then like at the end of it all they like arrest this kid on like christmas and they're like we saved christmas you don't have to worry about any muslim terrorists from now on like because we did except for the next time because we're also creating about a dozen other fake plots. The FBI is doing important work here with Homer. Mr. Simpson, look at this lineup and tell us if any of these are the aliens you saw.

No, I'm sorry. This makes me very angry. So the one, we're going to run a few tests. This is a simple lie detector. I'll ask you a few yes or no questions, and you just answer truthfully. Do you understand? Yes.

This is a really long reflex test. Oh. Wait a minute, Scully. What's the point of this test? No point. I just thought he could stand to lose a little weight. His jiggling is almost hypnotic. Yes.

It's like a lava lamp. The one alien you might not recognize is Gort. Yeah. From the Day the Earth so it's still still 1951 who knows who recognizes alf isn't alf coming back oh he's getting a reboot with paul fusco back in the saddle it seems that uh mike reese has nothing but respect for alf creator and voice paul fusco but al jean probably doesn't like him very much at all it's weird it's hard to tell. Yeah, Mike Reese had

only nice things to say about his time on ALF when we interviewed him, but it's... ALF was a real nine to five, right? The best part of the job. It was his favorite thing. He's like, I got home the earliest of any TV job I had. That was his favorite thing. They also mentioned in the commentary that that's the most copyright damning one they did because take for example in marge be not proud with the video game characters they are all slightly different like sonic has kind of a purple muzzle he's not exactly drawn but in this one they're like no just draw alf draw chewbacca draw marvin the martian they are their exact characters another great story of their time

on alpha just remembered is that they would write for carson and carson would demand you write a certain number of jokes a day, and it was always too many. And he would use like one of them, and they were always thinking, just ask us to write fewer jokes. The jokes we're giving you are bad because we have to write so many. So when ALF would occasionally do an amazing Kreskin parody, they would give him the jokes that Carson rejected, and they still got them on the air. They really hated Johnny Carson, and a lot of people did. Yeah. I got to say, with Johnny Carsonon there have been some stories that sounded funny in the 70s that when you hear them now you're like you abused women like this they'd say like oh he really likes his secretaries it's like no whoa hey that's not a laugh line no oh yeah no like i think johnny

carson would definitely be me too at this point. Like, I think that's a given. Oh, yeah. Very. I would believe. I absolutely would. Well, he's in hell now. On the commentary, too, they mentioned that the only they had one animator who really knew the show. He's the one who drew in Cigarette Smoking Man in the background. Yeah. It was not in the script. They sort of pull out from him. So I'm like, oh, that is a guy from the X-Files. He's famous. He died five times on that show and they just kept bringing him back. Oh, the actor who played it, he's a really good actor. Many of the actors on the show were Canadian

because they filmed it in Canada and just flew up. Principal stars like Duchovny and Anderson. But so the actor who played Cigarette Smoking Man was just this Canadian stage actor who played cigarette smoking man was just this canadian uh stage actor who this was his big break and he had just quit smoking in real life when they cast him to smoke all the time on the show and yeah but he's still with us is there is there a vaping man on the new show he's he that should be the guy to kill him off yeah that vaping congressman just got arrested well he's not just vaping he's also using our tax dollars to buy steam games well this this entire uh kind of um fbi interrogation sequence is i i think fan fantastic from start to finish and there's so many references that i was that

i was noticing again sort of inter show inter simpsons references i mean yes there's that there's that there's that amazing fbi lineup you know what i've been thinking like what other aliens were they thinking should be in that maybe they had cut from that right like because it's a great five and i don't know if you guys have theories on whether that's i i bet they oh yeah i don't know but i really bet they wanted to do et but they thought that would be too far. That's a little too litigious. And they let Lovejoy say it later. Yeah.

Oh, that's true. If E.T. was in the lineup, it would lessen the E.T. joke they do later. That is true, yeah. Same with, like, I would bet Spock or a Star Trek alien would be in the lineup, worried Len and Nimoy not in this either. Like that lizard guy.

The Gorn. Yeah, whatever. There's a Gort. There's whatever. There's a Gort. There's already a Gort. Gort is, I think, the all-star of that lineup, though. That's the deepest cut of all. I only know Gort because they put his line in. I am a huge Evil Dead fan.

Oh, yeah. Army of Darkness. It's an Army of Darkness. Yeah. Klaatu, Barata, Nikto. Nikto. Yeah. That's right.

But then once they get to the lie detector moment, which is an amazingly hilarious part where Homer's comprehension of even what he's supposed to be doing is so low that him saying yes is far too much for the machine to at all handle, and it just explodes. But it kind of reminds me, it's kind of like a double reference that they then created this new thing where from the lie detector test that Mo does in the Who Shot Mr. Burns episode,

which is an amazing lie detector sequence, and that's from season seven, right? That's the season seven premiere. But then also it has elements of the cape fear witness protection uh scene right where it's like you like do you understand like you are homer thompson and like like they kind of put those together in this very brief but but ultimately so funny moment where homer's lie is just too much for the machine to bear i i love the economy of it too because i'm used to longer lie detector scenes of people reading the lie detector forever and

just on homer's non-answer it explodes immediately it's like i just cut to the chase five second scene it's great yeah and i i really love the drawing on on Homer's like lava lamp like running. Oh, yeah, it's great. The kind of reflection in the glass. He's never been fatter than in that drawing. Actually, talking of the jokes that it reminds me of, it reminds me of the jiggle test. Oh, yeah, from Homer Triple Bypass. Oh, yeah, from the Triple Bypass. First cancel my one o'clock. But it also, for the reflex test, has that kind of reference to like the slow Homer at the poker game from the Secrets to a Successful Marriage episode in season five.

It's like his physical and mental responses to things are slower than everyone else's. It's kind of strange they're using the X-Files characters to make doctor jokes. Yeah. I'm just thinking about that now. I mean, their reactions are funny. That's their idea of what the FBI does. It's what the FBI does. They clearly haven't really watched the show.

It's like, yeah, they give people like physicals, right? X-Files, right? Yeah. You know, a funny thing with X-Files as well was Al Gina had to go up to Canada for it. Within a few years, they'd take production down to LA because David Duchovny was kept threatening to leave the show when his contract was up. So of it was like fine we'll film it in la and that led to them doing a um obscenely celeb driven episode which was just like whatever famous person who lives in la that likes the x-files we can get them in this episode about making a movie

based on the x-files the the biggest guest was gary shandling just to go into the the long history of david dukovny on the larry sanders show of being so they it was a it was a cute little callback to that so they head back to mose though to run through all the things but homer did that night you are one fine looking woman lady if i wasn't married i'd go out with you like that. I am so sorry. Whatever you do, don't tell Marge. God, I love her. Hey, a penny.

So, uh, who are you guys, anyhow? Agent Smulder and Scully, FBI. FBI, huh? Uh, excuse me. All right, they're on to us. Get them back to SeaWorld. So it says blue M&M, red M&M. They all wind up the same color in the end.

Homer, why don't you show us where you went when you left the bar? So again, the blue M&M was new as of 1995. So topical reference. Super topical. I haven't really bought a bag of M&Ms in a while. I don't know if the Blue one's still around. Probably. Oh, no.

Blue is heavily featured. I mean, green. They are. They are still. I can confirm that. I ate M&Ms yesterday. Though it's not in any of the commercials, the Blue M&M. It's usually it's red green yellow

orange sometimes yeah i believe when they anthropomorphize the green one she was voiced by hallie berry initially yeah i think i think you are right let me tell you i was so into the voting on m&m colors uh thing that happened to lead to the blue m&M because I loved M&Ms. In fact, I was very saddened to see at that time too that they changed up the M&M bag design. It used to be so boring, and that's what I loved about it. Just like flat white letters of M&M, no gloss to it, no cartoon characters. It's just like, hey, it's M&Ms, just eat them. And they advertise- Why ask why? And they advertise so heavily of like buy these different

m&m bags vote for your flavor the color that you want it to be so the color choices that you could vote on in 1995 were purple blue or pink that would be replacing it and it was partially because food dye colors became less um toxic so they could finally have blue m&ms there was that urban legend about how the red m&m would shrink your penis i remember the green m&m would turn you on yeah yeah exactly that was like the horny one clearly and so the blue was obviously going to be the one the winning color i for the longest time in the pre-blue world the joke was like why aren't there blue m&ms there should be blue m&ms what's the deal browns bad idea yeah the tan and brown it was those were when uh when i would obsessively count my m&m colors and eat them slowly i'd be like well brown and tan they're

going first because because also it's just chocolate underneath so it's just a repetitive color to begin with so that we're all the same in the end yeah exactly that's that's a true you got to hear both sides of them and it all becomes poop is that what he means i guess so okay yeah it is a pc's joke so that speedo malder picture is one of my favorite jokes too we get it twice yeah you you get to just see a flash of it in the previous scene so so it doesn't really register. But when they just hold on it long enough, you're just like, oh, this is – you know that Fox Mulder is getting off on showing people him in his speedo. We talked about M&Ms for so long, I forgot if I said I like the killer whales even more than the pandas in Mo's bedroom. in that room well yeah no it's it definitely is like one more notch on mo's uh you know criminal criminal behavior in the in the back of uh in the back of the bar uh yeah i immediately thought of

like both the pandas and also like his like deer hunter russian roulette yeah uh club that he also runs at one point that was that's a quite extreme joke i think and it's one of those many jokes where it's like this would be more objectionable if it wasn't a movie reference like same with every rain man joke you're like well if you were just making fun of someone with the mental issues that wouldn't be funny but it's like no it's rain man it's rain man we talked about this especially with the crying game everyone got their their crying game jokes around this era. But the sound of that, of Shamu, or well, I guess just an orca, it adds to the comedy there too. Just the idea of like, how do you even get that in his back room?

That would be impossible. They're just watering him down. They don't have a tank or anything. That's how they're keeping him. A constant hose. That's how SeaWorld got him. They go into the woods and that's when we get the, I do love the callback to the grandpa joke

just because it does mean he has been there for four days and is near death. He should be dead if he didn't have like water to drink in the woods. And a turtle stole his teeth. He, the slow animation on the turtle chase is pretty great this this episode has tons we were a little negative at the beginning but this episode has so many funny jokes in it we then get malder doing one of a parody of his rants which uh is almost and actually before that you get jillian anderson

delivering her her best line of the of the episode about how annoying this case is. Yeah. This is the worst assignment we've ever had. Worse than the time we were attacked by the flesh-eating virus? Oh, he bit me with my own teeth! No, this is much more irritating. I've seen enough, Mulder. Let's go. Yeah, okay. But somewhere out there, something is watching us.

There are alien forces acting in ways we can't perceive. Are we alone in the universe? Impossible. When you consider the wonders that exist all around us. Voodoo priests of Haiti. The Tibetan numerologists of Appalachia. The unsolved mysteries of unsolved mysteries. The truth is out there.

No! Who would have thought a whale could be so heavy? She's at the fence! I really enjoy the unsolved mysteries of unsolved mysteries. I like the idea of Tibetan Appalachian numerologists. Numerologists, yeah, that's a really good one. Well, just the idea that Tibetan numerologists live in Appalachia? Did they move there from Tibet? How did they get there? I missed that X-Files episode.

I'm not sure that one happened. There was a flesh-eating virus episode. But actually, this episode aired next to a brand new X-Files called El Mundo Guerra, which is Spanish for As the World Turns. And it's kind of a parody of telenovelas, but also about undocumented immigrants as well. I haven't revisited that one. I'd like to see it again. Timely as always. Yeah. In the

mid-90s, there were certainly a lot of scare tactics, scary stories about illegal immigrants. In quotes. I don't like that term either, but in quotes, illegal immigrant stories. I mean, Clinton engaged in that as much as anybody. That is true. Absolutely. Yeah.

But that speech, though, too, is so funny to me because in the first episode of the return season, in a not joking way, David Duchovny almost exact gives a very similar speech to this one that sums up. He's having to do a speech about how he doesn't believe in the X-Files stuff anymore. And he gives a speech about all the crazy stuff they saw. And he even says like, I used to believe the truth is out there,

but it's not. And then he also says, trust no one, which are the two slogans of the show that he just says out loud. I'm like, I used to believe the truth is out there, but it's not. And then he also says, trust no one, which are the two slogans of the show that he just says out loud. I'm like, no, no. This is, you cannot have the character say both of the catchphrases in one monologue. That's wrong.

Apparently the script was written by the IBM Watson computer, and it just really, really thought it had just nailed all crux of the show. They fed it to a bot, and it just really really thought it had just nailed all crux of the show they they fed it to a bot and it produced that episode the third act opens with a real uh jean-arise staple of like let's let's get marge in bed in uh with homer and check in on them it's like a nice little conversation like how's the story going so far yeah well so once they leave it's just done like

it may as well if you took that out then it would just go from people not believing homer to then going back into bed and her saying i don't believe you either the story functions all the same whether malder and scully are there though it's a fun it was a fun four minutes of the episode though again it's as it was sold as an x-files crossover they really should be in all three acts i don't know why it took me until this viewing to realize that or like just even think about that but yeah only one acts. But so then we get Bart wanting to help Homer, which I always love their cute scenes together. When Bart decides to help Homer on a stupid plan, it's always fun. Hey, Dad, what's the word from Planet Crackpot? Oh, I suppose you're going to mock me too. Well, actually, Dad, I believe you. You do? Yes, I do. You seem so damn sure. Thank you, son.

And do you think you could stop the casual swearing? Hell yes. That's my boy. Well, if you believe in me, then I'm not going to give up. I'll prove I'm right. This Friday, we're going back to the woods and we're going to find that alien. What if we don't? We'll fake it and sell it to the Fox Network. They'll buy anything. Now, son, they do a lot of quality programming, too. Mm-hmm. I kill me. I kill me. So I believe we talked about this on the episode for Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming,

but in 1995, Fox aired the special Alien Autopsy Factor Fiction, which was just a fake alien autopsy they put on the air, hosted by Jonathan Frakes. And you can hear the disclaimer in that episode, but it's one of my favorites where they're covering every legal base by saying like, we don't know if this is true, but if it's true, look out. And we invite you to make up your mind if this is true or not. Is it true? I don't know. Which we don't know. Maybe you should watch. And then you can make your own mind up.

Listen, buddy, I just work here. Jonathan Frakes is just asking questions as anyone would. Who's to say? It is so sweaty. I love it so much. Because it obviously was fake. It was a short film made by someone in England. It was all fake.

That's the joke that a lot of networks turned it down. Fox did not inherit it, but just had Jonathan Frakes covering their ass. Actually, very similar to this, too. They hire a Star Trek actor to introduce something. He was being a modern day in search of. And he was giving a disclaimer. Yes. These are all lies.

True. And then actually, I think X-Files wound up referencing Alien Autopsy like at least twice shortly thereafter, right? Boy, now that you mentioned it, Henry, I really wonder if that Nimoy intro was them parodying the intro to Alien Autopsy. You know, I think that's a little bit of it too. I bet you. Yeah. No, I remember at least one episode of X-Files. It was a season finale where Mulder literally gets a corpse of an alien and films it with a camcorder, his autopsy of an alien.

I hope it was a knife alien. He's dangerous. He stabbed it with a knife to see its insides. Oh, boy. Turning the tables on the knife alien. There's actually something really endearing, I think that little scene between homer and bart uh and especially and i and i say that as a as as a father myself but there's something it's like the least cynical scene that maybe i can remember in the entire simpsons catalog like it doesn't come back around where

bart's like making fun of him or like he does something to fuck that up. Like, it's really endearing. And like the Bart is just like, No, I actually believe you. And Homer's like, Really? And he's like, Yeah, you're just you're just so sure. And it's just like, it's so sweet. And it's so almost out of step with how everyone operates on that show that I found that really wonderful. And actually, it carries through to the next scene to the camping scene well we saw in i believe it was grandpa versus sexual inadequacy bart was a real really credulous ufo freak in that episode true this falls into his good point too his love of the of ufos and aliens and conspiracies as well so i think any kid around this age as we all were we're just sort of obsessed with this stuff in the 90s yeah right so so maybe like dr quinn was not our bag but alien conspiracies definitely was very very much so again talk about 1995 we get a bud weiser

frogs reference here which they premiered at the 1995 super bowl they were in a commercial directed by gore verbinski as well which i didn't know until wow doing research research reference he directed those puppets to a t yeah yeah well it was also i forgot just how one note they were like well i guess three notes really but but i got it but anyway that it's there's a reason why they were replaced with talking lizards like four commercials in, because I think Budweiser realized they didn't have a lot of more room to go with frogs that say Budweiser.

So then they would later introduce these two lizards who were jealous of the frogs, but really took over the frogs commercials, who would then even get their own novelty album. What a rich universe it's it's a real extended universe of the budweiser frogs apparently they also got issue some parents were mad that it was like a joe camel effect with the frogs and they were just too cute selling kids beer just just like the bud bowl that we were all addicted to as kids as well but i don't drink but yeah no i think that's i think that's definitely what it was i i you know can affirm with no no shred of non-honesty that it was because of those

frogs that i uh decided to sometimes drink beer in high school wow only i've just remembered just remembering though just like with uh spuds mcken, there was a lot of Budweiser frog merch. Yeah, there was. T-shirts and little frogs that would say Budweiser. The talking frogs. Yeah. Though also, Reed Harrison, our interviewer, talked about how in his original script, he made them the Duff frogs, and they said Duff. And he was instructed to just do the commercial. Just do it.

Why are we dressing this up? I believe the joke was the first frog would say Duh, and then the second two frogs would go, pfft. Yeah. I like that cleverness to it. Yeah. I guess it doesn't read as well. Yeah. You have to know what duff is, too.

And as far as I can tell, there's not a Coors crocodile, though you can get a neon sign of Coors crocodile on eBay right now if you want to get one. See, it's a snapping. It has its snapping jaws next to Coors. If I drink any, now if you want to get one. Really? See, it's a snapping, it has its snapping jaws next to Coors. If I drink any, I'm not a, like, teetotaler, but if I drink now, I'm more of a hard cider person.

And if I were to have a beer, it would not be Bud, Coors, or Miller. I would go just slightly better than that. At least get to a Sam Adams or a Blue Moon. Stella, that's usually what I'll go. If somebody's got a Stella at a party, I'd be like,

fine, I'll have a couple, but I'm not a big drinker. I actually remember that at this time when I was in high school, I think the, the fanciest beer that I could imagine drinking was, was harp was the kind of lighter Irish non Guinness beer that you could, you know,

that you could find in whatever little stores that would actually sell to 16 year olds. And like, whenever we decided to pool our money, and either go buy something or ask a stranger who is walking by or about to go into the store, they would buy us beer, because that's also something we did, which I guess is like a very common thing, but also happened in New York City. If we could get harp, it meant we were having like, a very common thing but also happened in new york city if we could get harp it meant we were having like a very very fancy yeah my parents would were our hardcore miller light fans they've been drinking it since as long as i've been aware and uh they would buy like i don't know 40 000 packs at sam's club just to have like enough beer and not have to go out again and i would sneak one

from time to time i'm like i i hate beer i don't like beer it wasn't until i'd had other kinds of beer that i realized like oh no beer can be good but when my parents would bring home like a six-pack corona i'm like whoa someone just hit the lottery or like yeah fancy yeah no no i actually still think that beer is not good like i don't understand why people oh i like because i think so much bob's a beer nerd i i'm not pro beer. My parents were, we were a Michelob family. That was the main one for them. Your beer tastes like swill? It's like swill to us. It only is fine between.

One of my favorite, I love that one so much, was the Campfire Stories. Bart doesn't know the half of it on college prices in the 2000s when he talks about Maggie. I guess Maggie would be a millennial. Yeah, yeah. If you were to say that if Maggie would be, well, if she was born in 19, well, if she was born in 87, then she would be 30 now. As of season eight,

if she was born in 95, she would be 23 and out of college. Yeah, and she would have crippling debt as well. It's only gotten worse. Oh, so much so. Homer and Bart, they have some cute scenes together and even meet an alien. I bring you peace.

As a representative of planet Earth, let me be the first to say... No! He's gone! We still don't have any proof. Oh, yes, we do. I got it all on tape. Good work, son! We did it! We did it! And so, from this simple man came the proof that we are not alone in the universe.

I'm Leonard Nimoy. Good night. Ah, Mr. Nimoy, we have 10 minutes left. Oh, fine. Let me just get something out of my car. I don't think he's coming back. So, functionally, the story is over, and they're letting the audience know that. But that, I mean, that's also kind of a fun cliffhanger

to leave you with the act two of like, well, we just ended our story. Where are we going next? Stay tuned. But also the squeaky voice teen, his reaction, like, I don't think he's coming back. I always like when the squeaky voice teen is in over his head on something. It's happening again.

Yeah, and I love the foleys on the Nimoy escape. It's perfect. It's like the timing of it and just the sound of the running away footsteps. I really don't. Car door slam. I really. Screeching acceleration is just amazing i really don't mind them reusing this joke but it happened a lot on the gina reese stuff of the

running away and driving away in the car including homer's brain did that once i think yeah yeah i mean it's a funny joke and it always makes me laugh because it's so like a character is trying to cover up leaving but you hear them peeling out. I love that. I think it comes to from them being guys who want to get out of work poorly. And they're like, I just got to go over here. I think that had a lot of act outs in the room as well when they were writing the show. And so that's why we'd come up so much. We'll actually see that this season in Great School Confidential when Edna Kerboppel and Skinner are at the movies and Skinner pretends to get popcorn.

That's right. Car keys, car keys, car keys. Right. Also, speaking of jokes repeated, actually in the second season at the fat camp in The Critic. I was just going to say this. Yeah. Go ahead. When Jay and his son are at a campfire, the father accidentally puts one foot in a campfire and then starts screaming in pain.

In that case, he set the entire forest on fire, though. Yes, yeah. It was more dangerous in that case. But it was cute. The acting on Homer, just his screaming. It's always funny to hear Homer scream. And their celebration, too. It's a cool little joke, too too when you see the camcorder

and just the property of Ned Flanders on it. Just because the Simpsons, no one could have, the Simpsons couldn't afford a camcorder back then. I mean, it sells the joke, but unrealistically,

everything has a giant tag that says property of Ned Flanders on it. It's a bit much. Yeah. I get it. It's funny. Yes.

Yeah. If I may tell tales of the Simpsons family VHS, I messed up the pause on this one. We really need like a dramatic intro with like ominous music or something. It should be the X-Files theme. Yeah.

I'm going to insert that here. But on this one, when he says, I don't think they're coming back, I paused it wrong. And so it was always like, in my main memory of this episode It's I don't think he's And then it's just the next scene

And that's another installment Of Henry Gilbert's Tales of the Tape God Henry Your hubris as a young man Frustrates me to no end I know Well and especially now I'd only want to see those old commercials

I'd probably get an ad for like Donkey Kong Country or something No wait Donkey Kong Country 2 February 97 yeah Oh no no whoa whoa three would have been old we're out of donkey kong country at this point now i think it would be uh tech in two maybe how about an ad for let's say starfox 64 sure yes uh but so when we come back from the break we we get to see that Homer's videotape is not being trusted by everybody yet. It's still encounter of the blurred kind, as Kent puts it. I also like that he fires a guy on air there, too.

He's the unprofessional one. Yeah. I enjoy Brockman being too clever by half. It's like E.T. phone home. Homer Simpson, that is. And speaking of things that instantly aged, the joke about Sonny and Cher, Sonny would be passed away within a year of this episode. He would have his skiing accident.

I got to say, rich people, don't ski or think you can fly planes. It's always a mistake. You are not immortal. Yeah, maybe it's like this very e eerie x files ish prescient version of things to come they do a sunny bono reference and then it ends with keep watching the skis so like i don't know things are messed up here things are messed up in this episode i never thought of that but you're right those those people who make the videos about simpsons predicting 9-11, they should be doing that conspiracy. And people say that our show kills celebrities.

I hope David Duchovny and Julia Anderson live long, happy lives after we record this. Actually, yeah. That's it. You've killed them. No. And Cher, too. She was just in a movie. Everybody loves her. Tonight on Eyewitness News, a man who's

been in a coma for 23 years wakes up. Does Sonny and Cher still have that stupid show? No, she won an Oscar and he's a congressman. Good night. These types of jokes have only increased. I mean, I think I see this tweet every day and it's funny, but it's also like, yeah, I know if I told me 20 years ago

who our president would be and that Dennis Rodman was making inroads into North Korea, I would be like, you're a crazy person. Go away. Yeah. I was actually trying to think of like what the 23 year, you know, from then difference would be. Right. So it's like, you know, they are at Sonny and Cher. And, you know, I guess 23 years after this episode would be 2020, which, you know, right. You'd have to be like Leonardo DiCaprio has won two Oscars and Trump is running for re-election.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, back to Back to the Future, the whole joke of Marty telling Doc that Ronald Reagan is president is like the TV actor. But it's like you can make a reboot of that movie now and have the new Marty telling the new Doc that Trump is president. Yeah. And then Doc would just take his own life because honestly, wouldn't you? I think so. I definitely would.

He'd just drive the flooring into an ocean. Yeah. What is the point? Why did we do any of this? Burn the Constitution. Forget it. I also love Homer getting asked questions about the alien here. Will it appear again this Friday?

The entire Channel 6 news team will be there, except for Phil, the boom mic operator who's getting fired tomorrow. Very unprofessional, Phil. Well, Lise, what do you think about the alien now? I think there must be a more logical explanation, and I think the people of this town aren't going to be won over by three seconds of videotape. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about the alien. Any questions at all?

Dr. Hibbert? Yes, is the alien carbon-based or silicon-based? The second one. Xilophone. Next question. Is the alien Santa Claus? Uh, yes. Uh, were you on my roof last night stealing my weather vane? This interview is over.

Dr. Hibbert has quite a few alien-related questions in this episode. He's right at the forefront asking those questions. Yeah, he means really well. You know, he is a doctor. It's true. And suddenly, from out of nowhere, Lisa just like enters this episode to uh save it at the end she's kind of scully in this episode but only for about 40 seconds they they don't answer only when it really matters yeah i hope i love how uh uneven barney is when he's asking if the alien is santa claus he's extra drunk and uh you know comparisons

to the sherry bobbins episode in the future he mistakes an alien for santa claus he's extra drunk and uh you know comparisons to the sherry bobbins episode in the future he mistakes an alien for santa claus here in the sherry bobbins episode he mistakes her for superman classic barney jokes i was just thinking though one of the things that x-files did was i believe it was called the scully effect have you heard of this no and that it encouraged women and girls of that era there was more options out there in terms of like what you could do you could be a scientist or an x-Files lady or whatever else. It broadened the spectrum for possibilities of young girls. I'm not kidding.

This is real. You could be a medicine woman, for Christ's sake. No, I mean, Scully was shown as the equal on that show. Only about half the time was David Duchovny right about things, or Mulder was right about stuff. I did not hear that Scully effect. Yeah, it's real. No,

believe me, folks, that's real. The truth is out there. That's a real fucking thing. No, I mean, Jillian Anderson,

she's been really cool lately as well. Like she, uh, publicly came out and just like, yeah, I would not do the new X-Files unless they paid me equal of David Duchovny. They had offered her originally half his pay oh come on which i look equal pay for movies that's the real scully effect i mean equal pay for movie stars is one of like i i'd rather i'd rather fight

for 15 than than movie star pay but hey at least you know that's better it's good it's good so we head back to the woods. Everybody's there. And this is when Leonard Nimoy makes his third appearance. Again, he's in this way more consistently than the X-Files character. And it's so great because it's so meta, right? He's regaling this story as part of the kind of bookended setup. But then he takes off in his car. And then next time we see

him he's actually in the woods and it's just like in marge versus the monorail in which he's trying to be whimsical but he actually ends up annoying people that's true yeah he should nobody mentions the monorail thing with him it's just i think he's even dressed to the same they didn't change his character design i think it's the same outfit he wore in the monorail. Like a turtleneck kind of thing? Yeah, which is what he wears in Sir Show as well. That's casual Nimoy, as opposed to Dr. Spock.

But this, god damn, I love, actually I'm gonna say this next bit is line of the show. That's the joke. Leonard Nimoy, what are you doing here? Wherever there is mystery and the unexplained, cosmic forces shall draw me near. Uh-huh. Hey, Spock, what do you want on your hot dog? Surprise me.

Take a look at this, Lisa. You don't see any Homer is a dope t-shirts, do you? We sold those out in five minutes. Don't! Arge, how could could you these shirts are 100 cotton and look at the fine stitching on dope i'll take two she's so practical that she will buy shirts that insult her husband just because they're high quality yeah well and and you know there's a there's an inherent problem here obviously that homer wants two but they're

already sold out so unfortunately yeah he's not gonna get any so that joke always bugged me they actually address it in the commentary i thought it was a joke that homer is stupid like homer is mad right that he's mad about the shirts then marge tells him she bought the shirts she sells them on the shirts and he goes back and says i want the shirts even though he was just informed that they're sold out well yeah they're sold out but so apparently they had originally in the cut they had the guy saying i just told you they're sold out and then he goes dough again i wish they had that tag on that joke yeah i don't yeah i we talk a lot about scenes where you can tell they did adr change the line afterwards and yeah i think, you know, their ability to over-edit it far more

than a live-action sitcom is both a blessing and a curse on The Simpsons. Sometimes they make choices like that that in hindsight are like, eh, that would have been funnier. Maybe it would have been funnier if that line was there. And in this one, they used the extra long opening, so they could have used a shorter one

and had another minute of content. Yeah, what the heck? Yeah. Leonard Nimoy's surprised me. That delivery is so great. And the Bart is not impressed that Leonard Nimoy is just like. Bart's response is, is one of my favorite parts.

Uh-huh. Yeah. It's like, all right. It's Nimoy. It's, it's fucking Nimoy again. He's back again.

I remember him from the, well, us on that monorail again with this guy. You know, when they did a new monorail joke in the last season of The Simpsons and brought back the monorail stuff, they have a statue of Leonard Nimoy in town

to celebrate it because he passed away by the time that new episode aired. I did watch that. They turn it into what, like a shopping thing? A shopping district, but then somebody accidentally turns back on the monorail and almost runs over everybody. That somehow leads Marge into being the mayor. I like that episode.

It was a good... Of a current Simpsons episode, that was a good one. Oh, and the Close Encounters joke. They also say on the commentary that it is a funny gag that they change one note of it, but that also skirts copyright so they didn't have to license the song so it works both ways you can't even use five notes no apparently not that hey according to commentary anyway that's that's you would think they could do that but and so when the alien appears i also love the just the one half a second of leonard nimoy shocked and dropping his hot dog

it's so funny looking. Any picture of Leonard Nimoy is hilarious in this. But then the alien is revealed. I bring you love. Is that the love between a man and a woman or the love of a man for a fine Cuban cigar? I bring you

love. It's bringing love. Don't let it get away Break his legs Wait You want an alien? This is your alien Hello children I bring you love

It's a monster Kill it Kill it It's not a monster. It's Mr. Burns. Oh, it's Mr. Burns. Kill it! Kill it! Now, let me explain. Every Friday evening after work, Mr. Burns

undergoes a series of medical treatments designed to cheat death for another week. It's very helpful of Smithers to show up and explain all the posse things right there. He's probably looking for Mr. Burns. Well, i think he probably knows that he wanders into the world and that's where he that's where he winds up right he does it every night it's every friday night he should be there at the very end of the process to steer him into a car or something i think by the fourth time it happened he's like i'm gonna be here at the end just to get you mr burns but

instead he runs i well that cigar line too that takes a very 95 feeling to like cigars are back they're cool it's i i associate them with the clinton era and not for the clinton and those reasons my parents oddly got into cigars for like three years in the 90s i'm like what is it what's this humidor doing here my My dad always, he, so my dad smoked until around when I was born, though he actually stopped talking to an aunt of mine because that aunt told him he shouldn't smoke in front of a baby and no woman's telling him what to do with the cigarettes. But then he transitioned into chewing tobacco. And then in the nineties, when cigars became cool, he dropped chewing tobacco and moved

on to cigars. It's like smoking five cigarettes at once. Well, basically, yeah. Hibber's pronunciation of the word cigar is, I think, what really sells that moment.

And he's so tickled by his own questions. Like, yeah. And, you know, he's admitting to a crime, too, because it's a Cuban cigar. It's not just anyone. Speaking of King of the Hill

earlier, there's a great joke in which I forget who gives it to Hank Hill, but someone gives him a Cuban cigar to smoke as a treat. Like, here he goes, oh, it's from Cuba. Let me just destroy that for you right here. I love that one. Yeah.

But also, Seinfeld had a whole kind of Cuban cigar plot line as well. Oh, yeah. And then they found out they were actually Dominican, and they weren't just cool to them anymore. They were fake Cuban cigars. If I hear one plot point of a Seinfeld, even though I haven't watched it in like a decade, one plot point, I'm like, oh yeah, the entire episode unfolds to me. I also love like this smartness of the Springfield as a mob. They're like, break its legs. They all, I mean, like, yep, got to break its legs.

It's going to run away. Already have pitchforks so i wish there had been a little more setup for lisa being the one to reveal they do have a reigning junior skeptics and her being skeptical in two other scenes but maybe a little setup of her saying like i'm here to prove this isn't an alien yeah that would have been nice then we get the scene of all the ways they are having him cheat death and it's a fun Warner Brothers cartoon. Yeah, I love it. Especially how they're shoving him around and stretching him out and flattening him. I have to imagine this is the stuff that Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger go through every week to not die, to be 900-year-old monsters.

They have to sleep in just giant goo vats, right? I would think so. Just floating in goo for 12 hours a day. That's why I feel like that's not going to happen to our current president because he likes garbage food too much. He's the one, he won't, I can pray he doesn't live to 100 like the other guys. I can only hope. His doctors are very like Riviera-esque. Yes, they are, Dr. Nick. They really are. I was going to, you know what? I'm glad you brought that up because i was at first gonna say that mr burns can afford better than dr nick but trump has his insane doctors who do nothing for him trump knows all about the chocotastic food group and also if you need that kind of like conveyor belt death cheating work it's clearly like a

private clinic i mean when he leaves it says cash only on the door like he's not going to his regular doctors for this i love his happy like stoned walk of like it's so cute looking it's hilarious the giant pupils yeah yeah we get the little wrap up here with not just a happy ending but a song as well and now that i'm back to normal i don't bring you peace and love i bring you fear famine pestilence and i'm for a booster good morning stars shine the earth says hello you twinkle above, we twinkle below. Good morning, starshine. You've been with us so long.

Well, you said you'd bring them peace and love, and it looks like you did it. I'm proud of you, homie. Thanks, bud. To you, we follow. We'll be your cover. Early morning singing song. Thanks, bud. And so concludes our tale. I'm Leonard Nimoy. Good night, and keep watching the skis. Uh, Skies. Now, I didn't know that song was from the musical hair until i looked it up for this episode

and also as we pointed out earlier the sherry bobs episodes had has a titular song hair from hair that's right and i've only heard hair referenced a few times in media i just know it's the play with some nudity in it and i was reading about it on wikipedia and it's like unlike most musicals that have 10 songs hair has 30 i'm like oh yeah no i mean i i actually kind of grew up on the original cast album of hair was it like a five disc set it is it is i think a remarkable piece of art of theater the politics of it then obviously it's you know hippie 60s but it's it's way deeper in its um kind of anti-war and civil rights messaging, as one would expect, but actually reviewing it even now, it's something I've actually kept up with for my entire life. I really, really care.

But if you even listen to it or watch it now, the politics of it are so resonant to be almost really kind of fatalistic and demoralizingly depressing, because about about race, and about war and about corruption and about attacks on on people's identity and their and their worth. And the kind of militarism of government is, is so still exactly now. And so for them to end with with this actually not only is it a you know great hair reference which for me even at the time i thought was great but i actually think it's really amazing that they really wound up doing the let's end with a song like a full

maybe year and a half before something about mary uh ended with uh building a Buttercup. And years and years and years before 40-year-old Virgin ended with another hair song. I just think to actually look at that timeline, it's like the Something About Mary ending, it was so iconic that just at the end of this absurd story, everyone

just kind of breaks into song. And yet The Simpsons had done it a full year and a half earlier. I think now every bad movie does that where it's like, let's sing a song over the credits. But yeah, actually I didn't know that much about hair. All I know is that I get furious when a movie is longer than 90 minutes.

So seeing that hair has 30 songs, I'm like, how long am I sitting through this? No, but the songs that a lot of the songs are about a minute and a half. I heard everyone listening. That's, you know,

after you, after you go on eBaybay and buy your course crocodile neon sign um immediately immediately listen to all of the original cast album of hair i i honestly cannot stress that enough and that is that is not a joke i want to hear people's stance on hair in the comments both actual hair and the musical actually what i want to say about hair i i've been highly lied to about hair but i barely remembered i think i did watch the 70s film production of it eventually i've never seen a you know stage production of it but all that the jokes about it on sitcoms would be about none of those themes it was just about everybody gets naked yeah which is like a complete right

wing gloss over of what that show is actually about. Yeah, as someone who has loved it for my entire life, my mother actually used to sing her two sons to sleep with the song and so like, you know, this is in my blood. I love it. Actually, when I was in college, I was in the band for a live version of it, actual stage-mounted production of Hair. I'm a drummer, so I played drums in it. And I didn't even have to look at the music because I knew it so well that I could just play along. And it was a thrill. And I've actually seen it live. There was an amazing production that was done in Central Park 10 years ago, actually, almost exactly 10 years ago on 9-11 of 2008. I saw it in Central Park under the stars.

And it was an amazing experience, actually, especially coming at the end of the Bush administration with all the war and all the discrimination and all the kind of horrible stuff that had happened and kind of going into an election where it was pretty much guaranteed that Obama was going to win. And I was not an Obama fan. I didn't kind of believe the hype even then, but still kind of seeing an end to the Bush era as a whole and watching hair, which, you know, is about war and kind of so much else, seeing that era come to a close and sort of experience that live at that time was actually really great.

So it's just another reason why everyone needs to fucking listen to Hair all the time. I had no idea Nemo was this big Hair fan. Unfortunately, your enemies will use this information to destroy you. Leftist commentator likes famous nude play. Yeah. Yes.

See, I did know some of these songs just because I listened to oldies stations a lot as a kid. And so the covers of these that were popular as well, like I'd heard. So I knew Good Morning Starshine, which is a great song. And you really hear Nancy in the singing of this here, too. She really belts it out.

And Mike Reese on our opposing podcast, our rival podcast, he was pointing out that Leonard Nimoy was just like, I know what you want me to do. I'm the Bilbo Baggins guy. I know. Well, that's, you know, everybody does the Shatner singing thing. But I dare say that the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins and Highly Illogical are funnier bad songs than Shatner singing thing, but I dare say that the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins and Highly Illogical are funnier bad songs

than Shatner songs. They're way funnier, yeah. I don't know. Maybe it's because Shatner's Twitter account has been taken over by an alt-right nutcase, or that's just, it's not William Shatner. It's an alt-right dude who controls this thing. But that's, anyway, that sucks.

That's about right. I love hearing the Bal to Bilbo Baggins is a fun song. We've played it before. I didn't hear the last Nimoy appearance. But look up Highly Illogical because it's a novelty song sung by Spock. When Star Trek fans had no more Star Trek than the three seasons of it, they would buy anything that would be tangentially related to it yeah and it's it's pretty great that everyone really joins in here there's a there's a great cast that's been

assembled in this in this uh field in outside springfield or in springfield wherever it may be so many great people are there obviously we hear from from willie and hibbert i think otto is around largo's around but then also chewbacca there and Mulder and Scully who don't say anything, but they are definitely joining in to the sing-along. And I'm sure the actors were not singing for this part. No, but it's a clever way

to wrap it all up too, just to bring everybody back together to sing a song and also to have that tiny bit of heart that they like to have in endings where Marge just says like, I'm proud of you, Homer. Yay, like he did it.

He, he got approval. So you get, you get an emotional type of climax to this episode. There are some weak points to it and you can definitely feel like that it was written in 1995 and aired in 1997. That said, I,

there are so many hilarious parts of this. The bus that wouldn't slow down is just, that's an all time gag is too. I really enjoy it. I, I still enjoy it like you said there are some weak points that we pointed out i also feel like it is this weird kind of speed bump in the middle of like a much tonally different road that we're driving on lately but

it's fun and i like the x-files uh cameos and lots lots of great memes came out of this uh everlasting jokes any final thoughts on this episode nema i don't know i feel like i could probably talk about this one episode for another three hours. But because I really remember watching it at the time that it that it aired and loving it then and and still loving it now. You know, we didn't even touch on the amazing Apollo Creed joke. Yeah, he built the rocket into the moon. Handedly built the rocket and went to the moon. What was his name? Apollo Creed. You know, you don't want beer beers for dads or kids with fake IDs. That was a line that I actually put on my senior yearbook page.

Wow, daring. The following year. So apparently that was very resonant for me. This episode really is very close to my heart. I have always thought it was a top episode. I love pointing out all the kind of missteps. It is definitely from 1995, not early 97. And though it kind of all of its references, but really brings me back. It's one of the most

nostalgic episodes for me. And you know, with with all the references, you know, we didn't even mention the shining reference, the all work and no play kind of scrolls on the on the screen. There's just so much there's just so much in there. It's rapid fire references that I love and really just kind of remind me of a time when I was living at home, going to school, doing what I was doing, drinking Zima, and taping Simpsons

episodes off TV as they aired on my VCR. Thank you guys so much for asking me to do this particular one because I love it. We loved having you on the show, Nima. We'll let you get back to listening to hair, which I assume you do most of the time when you're not podcasting. But before you go.

Every time you guys have been talking, I've been tuning out and listening to hair. Oh, wow. You're very skilled. But before you go, Nima, can you talk about Citations Needed, how to listen to the show, where to find it on Patreon, how people can support you? Again, we're big fans of the show. Big, big fans of the show. Big, big fans. Absolutely.

So everyone can check out Citations Needed through whatever podcast platform you happen to enjoy, whether that's Stitcher or Libsyn, it's on SoundCloud, iTunes. You can follow the show at CitationsPod on Twitter, Citations Needed on Facebook. And we are completely independent, not billionaire funded in any way. And so all of our funding to keep the show going comes from our listeners through

the Patreon platform. So please, if you are so inclined and you dig the show and you want to get some extra content as well, please do support the show on patreon.com uh citations needed podcast and that's with nima shirazi and adam johnson also i i would be remiss if i didn't mention there is there is a rival podcast called citation needed um which i in full disclosure they had before we did and we just didn't uh do enough research yeah which actually goes against the entire Citations Needed brand. But that said, make sure you are, if you want to support the show, you're supporting Citations Needed with an S, Citations, Multiple Citations Needed podcast, and that citation needed. Please do listen, tell us what you think. And thank you guys so much for having me on the show today.

It's been amazing. Yeah, thanks a lot, man. Thanks again for listening to Talking Simpsons. In case you don't know, we are a Patreon-supported podcast. It pays for our modest lifestyles and it allows us to make so many great podcasts. And if you want to help support the show and get bonus stuff, go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. There you can find out all the bonus stuff we're doing at the $5 level. It's our most popular level. You can get exclusive series. You can hear tons of interviews.

We're about to record our 13th or 14th interview as of this recording. Yeah, wow. We're doing a lot over there. We also have monthly community podcasts. And let me think, what else? Season wrap-ups,

deleted scene specials. Sometimes we'll just make a special for fun for our patrons because we like them so much. If you want us to like you, go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsonsHenry. Can you please tell our fantastic listeners what are two pieces of bonus content

that only patrons can hear that are new and cool and good? Well, you definitely listened to our most recent interview, which was with Mark Kirkland, the director of over 80 episodes of The Simpsonsons no more prolific a director on the show than he we talked to him about a lot of cool stuff and a little bit of a throwback but we talked to the writer of this episode reed harrison a ton about the making of

this episode back last year and that's also only available in full on patreon.com talking simpsons just like nema we are not supported by billionaires we are fan supported and every dollar even if you can just give a dollar it really helps us out but five bucks gets you access to so many things you get and if you sign up if you haven't signed up yet you get an rss feed you can just plug into anything and it will give you all the episodes right there and whatever your podcast listening device is. So yes, again, that's patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. If you can't afford five bucks a month, even a dollar a month would be helpful. If all of our listeners gave one dollar, we'd be living in solid good houses and driving

our rocket cars around the streets of Berkeley. But thank you, Anyhow. As for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I have another podcast, by the way. It's a classic gaming podcast called Retronauts. You can find that at retronauts.com or look for Retronauts in your

podcast machine. We've been going on since 2006, so I'm sure we talked about something you like. If you like video games, you better like video games. They're great. So check it out and yeah, listen and enjoy. Henry. I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. You can follow me there for updates on this podcast and any new

things we're doing, not to mention my sometimes political thoughts, and I definitely retweet NEMA a number of times and their podcast as well. But thanks again for joining us, folks. We'll see you next week for the Twisted World of Marge Simpson. See you then. Good morning. Good morning, starshine.

The earth says hello. You twinkle above us. We twinkle below. Good morning, starshine. You lead us along. My love and me as we sing our early morning singing song. Sapa sibi saba, lumi awa naba, lili o. Lumi ubi wala, lumi awa naba, Hei mo nani singi nsong.

Singing a song, loving a song, sing a song. Loving a song, laughing a song, sing a song Sing a song, song a song, song song song Sing, sing, sing, sing song Song, song, song, sing, sing, sing, sing song But what's with the glowing? Um, I'll field that question. A lifetime of working in a nuclear power plant has given me a healthy green glow.

Left me as impotent as a Nevada boxing commissioner.