Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Strong Arms of the Ma

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

It's time for us to cover another of the most controversial episodes in Simpsons history, and this time it's when Marge takes steroids. The story starts from an interesting and real place of Marge being the victim of a jarringly realistic mugging, then in the third act veers into a wacky area of comedy full of dated jokes. Listen now with either an intense lifting session or a game of Tetris! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

For a limited time, switch to Shopify Point of Sale, and you could save up to 20% and improve your bottom line. We're so serious about savings, we've made this ad 20% shorter. That means you get 6 seconds back. Just enough time to visit shopify.com slash POS20. Now that's an efficient ad. Eligibility requirements apply. See shopify.com slash POS20 for details. The What A Cartoon Movie Podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we're too crazy to go outside, but not crazy enough to have imaginary friends.

I'm one of your hosts, the super-duper recouper, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Henry Gilbert, and my muscular ears can hear you! And this week's episode is... The Strong Arms of the Maw. It's all my fault, My wife got mugged. There you have it, boys. Case closed. This episode originally aired on February 2nd, 2003.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. Oh boy, Bobby. Jennifer Lopez featuring LL Cool J. All I have is number one on the billboard charts. The recruit tops the box office. And very sadly, the space shuttle Columbia makes its final flight.

Wow. So the first two things, this is a time in my life where I'm completely checked out of pop culture. So I have no idea what's going on with Jennifer Lopez and who? LL Cool J. Oh, that guy. LL Cool James. And All I Want, All I Got. All I Have. All I i have i got every verb

incorrect in my guessing i had to look it up too like literally i had never heard of it before which is like you know the previous billboard number one i mentioned a couple times was the eight mile song by eminem you know lose yourself that i knew and soon 50 cents in the club is about to be number one and i know that song too but yeah this one completely missed it I assume if you played it for me I would think oh I've heard this in the grocery store a billion times or like at the dentist or whatever but my brain is not reacting to those combination of words but the recruit that's something I also don't know what is the recruit again I had to look it up I was like, how is this number one in the box office?

And I never heard of it. I mean, I know this is still, you know, it's February at the cinemas, so people are watching fewer things. But also, I was working at the movies when this came out, and even I don't remember it. I looked it up. It's an Al Pacino, Colin Farrell movie, where Colin Farrell is recruited to the CIA, and secret agent problems ensue.

Oh, that's back when he was a movie star. Got it. And Pacino, you know, Colin Farrell, you still see him in stuff at times. I mean, he's just about to star in the Penguin series. That's a Max original. Oh, boy. I mean, it's hard to say if that's good for him or not.

I mean, he was a lot of fun as the Penguin in the Batman. I thought he was having a good time. But again, I'm against skinny, beautiful people being put in fat suits to play a fat guy role. I'm against that. And the Space Shuttle Columbia, what was its final mission? Well, I mean, that was my nice way of saying it blew up. Oh, you don't remember that? You know what?

No. God, what was I doing in the first week of February? I remember watching this episode when it went live, but I was paying attention to no other news. The shuttle Columbia blew up. Yes, yeah. It had done many successful missions, but apparently while leaving orbit, a freak accident happened where just like a small hole hit the wing, and then they didn't notice it until re-entry which that small hole caused the wing to break apart and then the whole thing fell apart everybody

died on it and yeah it was the the end of the columbia on that day after the challenger i guess i stopped paying attention but i was also i think four when that happened now that seemed like a big deal to me as a kid my parents taped the news off TV of it because they're like, wow, this is a big deal. I think also my dad just recently got a VCR. And actually, yes, I know you'll remember the fourth thing I wrote down, Bob, because it's related to the chalkboard joke as well. But also this week, and I try not to do, I've stopped doing a timeline of our invasion of Iraq, but this week was a big deal. Yeah, because the chalkboard joke is uh the school does not need a regime change in quotes and uh at this very week is when colin powell successfully proved to the

world that the rock definitely had wmds by bringing a vial of white stuff to the united nations and it was definitely true and real and uh wait he's dead now right yep okay and he died a hero yeah i did i loved when when he died that the main thing people were talking about like no let's not paper over this like this guy was a key part of lying to americans to get them to be approved of a genocidal war crime the invasion of iraq yeah it's interesting how his reputation changed from in the late 90s or even the mid 90s people were thinking hmm future president and then he became the world's most important liar yeah and i mean i think w would have beat a mass murderer whether colin powell lied or not but i think that he made the case i I mean, you could not lie. And of course, I was reading like pieces written after his death about like, you know, what does history say about this?

And for Powell, he was like, oh, it was quite a mistake. You know, people and it's just it's the usual like, whoopsie. I'm saying this because I just listened to all citations needed podcast, a great podcast about this thing. But the usual thing of like, oh, it always has to be a mistake. It's like, oh, you know know i wish i'd have known better but whoops like america never intentionally lies to everybody to invade a country it's just like whoops yeah the next time you're in court just say uh i shouldn't be here it was a mistake i goofed well if you even get a speeding ticket just say like oh you know i didn't measure up to my best selves and my ideals today.

Your Honor, I stumbled into driving drunk. It was inevitable. Seeing that Simpsons joke about regime change, that's again, it goes like, fuck, what an awful time this was. So terrible. No apologies to the family of Colin Powell, but apologies to the family of any astronaut who died, even of living causes. I'm sorry I forgot about the Columbia exploding. Look, I kind of forgot about it, too. It didn't, you know, it was, it felt, you know, we were just in the march up to the war.

It felt like, oh, well, that's not part of this. Like, I wasn't going to see the recruit at the theaters. I wasn't listening to J-Lo and LL Cool J. I was mainly just focused on how angry I was that we were going to war in a totally preventable situation. But this episode, The Strong Arms of the Maw, a landmark episode because it is technically the 300th episode of The Simpsons to air, which means it's not the 300th episode of our podcast, but I guess this means we've covered 300 distinct episodes of the show. But thanks to Fox, episode 302, Barting Over, was promoted as the official 300th episode. But I think Fox didn't understand enough people were online and counting at this point to realize this is all a huge lie. And in Barting Over, there's a joke about that.

Like, oh, really? It feels like we've had 302 adventures or something like that. We'll get to it. That's that. Yeah, I guess we'll get into it more in that episode. But yeah, that Al Jean talking about how when this episode aired, he had to like basically lie because it's like, well, no, the entire marketing machine at Fox is built on celebrating it on the week of February when that episode aired. So that has to be the 300th.

And they didn't care if it's like, I mean, they could have just held back. Just don't air two episodes and save them for later in the schedule. But that's not how the programming gods wanted it to be. Yeah, they're one big cheat when it came to celebrating milestones on the show. Because every 100 episodes, they do something or they try to make an episode special. I think episode 666 was a Halloween show. And the 750th, they just made a big deal as well. Yeah, with a horrible opening that i'm not a big fan of though it's also funny to hear on the commentary the other

writers there's a lot of writer hijinks on this commentary but i like hearing the other writers kind of rub it in omine's face of just like oh so technically you wrote the 300th but you're not getting any bonuses or whatever for the 300th special episode you don't get any special recognition they're really rubbing it in well she would go on to work for the show for uh 20 plus years after that so i think she's fine she's doing okay still still to this day yeah very nice to us check out our interview with carolyn omine and the pitch started as a different idea that she had so her pitch was she was interested in agoraphobia and agoraphobics and her idea was what if homer was mugged and he became an agoraphobic what would happen then this is when aljean steps in and says let's make it about marge getting mugged and i think he also brings in the

idea of she starts getting buff in order to regain her confidence and strength so we kind of have a different take on the springfield connection where season six springfield connection marge gets mugged and then she becomes a cop in this one marge gets mugged and she becomes a bodybuilder so you can see how the two branches split off and i and even though uh springfield connection uh marge becoming a cop is now problematic which lisa points out in that episode i like that a lot more than than this one. Yeah, it's, well, I mean, this third act is a weak third act. And also it brings in the stuff of Homer becoming workout buddies with Rainier Wolfcastle even into the first act as well, which is like, it's like, oh, well, you know, the agoraphobia thing is interesting. And I think it's's i do think omine brings a lot to marge and this is like it almost feels like they're trying to get julie

kavner and emmy it's it's so close to a very special episode where like she gets to actually like act as marge in ways she is very rarely asked to do and i think she does a really good job in this episode until the end of the second act i'd say yeah it has a real third act issue like you said henry where it suddenly goes into wacky town it suddenly becomes an episode about uh steroids and then marge going incredible hulk inside of mose and it does feel like a rewrite because i don't know what happened here because it feels like the story reaches its natural conclusion at the end of act two and i was left thinking um even having seen this before like oh yeah what happens next and i think what insulted me the most is they bring back ruth powers and she is so wasted and you know we're also around the same time covering

new kid on the block where we meet ruth for the first time and after having watched that again i was like oh ruth is such a great character and i really wish they would have kept her on the show to be a friend for marge but they really only used her once more and then they bring her back just for this just to introduce a weird plot element to the show it's such a weird thing that it just felt like I would Gene doesn't say it on the commentary but partially I think that he did the commentary for New Kid on the Block and then they started working on this episode and they're like hey remember that character like pamela reed was really good and yeah then she won't return again until season 33 she has a one-off joke there as well about being forgotten as well yeah the episode is called uh the ways we was or something uh w-a-y-z i think it's about gps systems or something like that i have not seen

it i apologize no it's uh yeah it's it's an all right episode but but yeah i do think that but feel on the commentary that aljean was expressing he also feels disappointed by this third act like he never wants to throw the whole show under the bus or say or put blame on people who aren't himself so he kind of blames himself but he's like you know this third act marge gets really off model it's weird to look at and i think we went too far with it and i also think that like they there is a gross undercurrent in this in the third act too that i'm sure we'll talk a bit about but like yeah it's like it really makes watching the third act hard yeah i think he really steered what could have been a better episode in the wrong direction and

then we get into some of the icky uh on-brand humor for the early aughts that this show dredges up and it's also funny you know with omine we we talked about this some and i even got new comments from her on that episode but in the fish episode that we did with mike hamford as the guest she told me the story of how she didn't write the episode but she did get to go to pick up their award for high times magazine for that pod episode and then because she did get to go to pick up their award for High Times Magazine for that pod episode. And then because she did write this episode, she got to win the Prism Award for anti-drug messaging in this episode. So in the same year, she gets a Stoney and a Prism Award.

And I mean, that's quite an honor. What other writer out there can say that? If they touch each other, the world ends like in Time Cop, the two different awards. I do think that Omineine and it's funny like i i get the feeling she didn't want to be the marge writer or the writer who writes like oh give me all the women things but i do think that she brings a realer perspective to this then you know say matt selman would have brought to the idea of marge get being agoraphobic and mugged i think and and her her suffering like they actually want to go to real emotional places for a change and not run from it which i think was a smart instinct in this episode yeah until until they

run from it in act three yeah they could only look at it for so long i mean again i'm i am impressed they even did it for the two acts they do it or i should even say 1.75 acts because the end of act two is also just like an extended they they protect themselves in extended parody let's be at a distance from some of these emotions with a long parody scene but yeah i guess we'll get to that but we'll also speaking of mistakes i think in this episode they start with a big one which is showing us season three animation. Yeah. I mean, even in season 14, this looked like a different universe.

I mean, especially now compared to the current show. But yeah, it was a very odd choice. And this is I think that's why this is the last appearance of Ion Springfield, which is crazy to me that it's been gone for 20 years. Yeah. You know, it's so interesting that I mean, the thing it's making fun of doesn't exist anymore but then again guys like print kent brockman barely exist in the local news is still as scary as ever but ion springfield was invented to be you know especially why the old jokes in this are all about bikini babes it's because it's a fake news magazine that's really like we hired some models and we got to film someplace to

advertise it none of the additional jokes they add involve the bikini babes which is the whole point of that extended intro but i think that al jean maybe remembered like oh yeah later in the show like in season six i think it was on the critic crossover they bring back ion springfield with a couple new jokes in it uh and he's like oh we can do that again that was really funny but in this case it's like season 3 animation and then some season 14 stuff and the jokes aren't as funny either I don't feel like they are like I like him washing his car that's all right if you were to just present the Ion Springfield opening and then cut to the living room I would have been more okay with it but the fact that they're inserting new jokes it just it's very jarring it feels wrong to me I think he learned from that

and it didn't do it as much afterwards it's probably because it's our outro music that it really is noticeable to me but the music's different like they reorchestrated it and sped it up yeah yeah I mean I guess because they had to account for the the added clips or the different length but it's a new orchestration of the of the opening song and i i have it in our first clip here just the end of it but for some reason they speed it all up really fast except for the outro which they make even longer like it's actually like stretched out by an extra like three seconds but uh but also yes in this first scene we have i have to i think season 14 i'm not calling him the mvp but he does get the most at bats if we're talking sports uh metaphor but they are in

love with rainier wolf castle this season he's in so much of this damn show and it's funny because arnold schwarzenegger's star is fading uh temporarily he'll be the governor of california uh by the end of 2003 but i think all of these jokes about how he has to sell a lot of his possessions were a reference to the fact that no one wanted to see his movies anymore and i think they couldn't even predict his future in politics oh no way but but yes let's let's hear a little of that extended Eye on Springfield opening. I'm here with actor Rainier Wolfcastle, who surprisingly has filed for bankruptcy. Rainier, what went wrong? Three divorces in three months.

What can I say, Kent? I'm a romantic. But this personal tragedy translates into a good old-fashioned bankruptcy sale. Yeah, everything must go. Even the painting of my nana. This was done on her wedding day. Or should I say, deading day. Oh, the mighty have fallen. Into my price range.

I want to go there. Dad, we are there. Woo-hoo! That's a good joke. That you think you're going to see them watching the TV, but they actually just are there and it means that homer's insane like he thinks he's watching television not at a garage sale i enjoy any any pull out that is a mislead like when homer uh you think he's getting therapy but he's actually at a furniture store oh yeah that's a great one no i so yeah you're right they are so they're really mean to arnold

here which in fact they have to just make up that he's multiple times divorced and he wouldn't get divorced and for the until the first time for maria shriver in 2021 like i think they were separated even longer i'm pretty sure at this point he did have illegitimate children i forget how old his illegitimate children are his bastards if you will they're definitely over 20 uh because i've seen like one of them is starting to become a real influencer of just like his his bastard bastard bastard bastard and this comes at a time we're doing this at a time in which uh arnold mania is upon us because netflix uh has the series fubar you can you can see him in fubar and also there is that uh documentary that he is a big part of that I'm kind of interested in watching.

It's very much from his point of view, of course. Very biased. Very pro-Arnold. But there is a very big documentary about him. I think it's on Netflix. Yeah, I think Netflix really bought into him. Well, I'm also like he's, this is old news when you're hearing this, but I was just seeing today that he recorded a WTF with Marc Maron today. Yes.

Yeah, he's hitting the road man what what a what a uh weird like mark maron went from recording with chevy chase to arnold schwarzenegger it's just like night and day and they're both they're both like the same age isn't it nuts that we went from like you know wtf was like oh it's the best podcast of interviewing comedians who get real and they get real and then i guess it was after obama that it just became like no this is just like one of the biggest interview podcasts period and he's he's just a a top level interviewer mark maron is yeah i i kind of checked out after the obama thing after it became like celebrity mania i only listened when i wanted to hear mark maron try to heal like

mend fences and that was back in the era in which every podcast would end with him saying we good we good yeah well then every other comedian or many other comedians were like oh i'll also have my podcast where we uh hash out real things with each other i'm just like god i don't need every other comedian find an angle but not an angle of re-watching simpsons but some other angle than just i'm talking to a famous person who i've known for a while like that's that's just what everybody has you can tell that al jean is back in charge because a lot of alimony jokes from the men's perspective boy alimony so expensive for men how sad that is though he also said this was like based on him like going to shirley jones's house sale when she was selling off stuff yeah and how she wasn't

in trouble or or dying or anything she just decided I have too much stuff but the stuff was very Shirley Jones centric and Al Jean was like I don't want a picture of Shirley Jones and Marty Ingalls in my living room what would I do with this it's a hey I'd say that's a conversation starter if I'm as rich as Al Jean even with all of his alimony payments I would have probably bought it as a dumb purchase I'm I'm sure he's bought dumber stuff than that Dana Gould he'd buy that in a heartbeat absolutely he was yeah for the kitsch value for the I bet he was there oh yes yeah there's there's no way he didn't go but yeah I mean I've also heard a similar story from a bunch of comedians I heard a story where they went to like right after Michael Jackson died they had

like a sale of his of his stuff at the neverland ranch and uh one of them said they only went there trying to find like oh maybe in this building i'll find the secret compartment where he hid all his poor is his child porn finally prove him evil but i'd be more in the market for the elephant man's bones now that he should i wonder who ended up with those you know i remember a few years ago when there was a bubbles joke on the show we saw that bubbles is still alive and at like an ape preserve and he's uh you know pretty much ruined by being a pet i think the description was he looks hideous yes yeah which yeah give bubbles a break man geez but yeah they have also in the

background jokes about how golden globes are useless and worth no money and this is before it got exposed again as just like payola like golden globes are bullshit but uh also can you believe they resisted like they have a they have like a world war one helmet in there but i was looking i didn't see one specifically world war ii nazi joke in there the one nazi joke i flagged is that lisa is buying original artwork that's priceless so my my own thinking was he must have some ties to uh nazi paintings you know nazi painting hordes or whatever he's he's as rich as a nazi as mr burns would say right okay yeah i you're right i think that's as close as they get and again i think there's a few times in this episode where there's some ADR changes that I

do feel like Matt Groening or someone else showed up to say like in in in favor of good taste and block some lines and there's only one deleted scene on this DVD even though there's several times I was like wait there's definitely a DVD there or there should be another scene here but there's also a joke about buying play dude centerfolds i'm glad they keep to the continuity of ned saying play dude because in this universe there is no play well actually there is a playboy because hefner's on the show but but they use play dude which is their usual stand-in for playboy magazine and rainier wolf castle is a human trafficker apparently but the women are on board they're on board there they don't mind getting to Mo's trunk. Yeah, that's a boy.

I kind of wish I had seen a scene where they escape from Mo. I'd rather Mo not own these women. Or Mo, maybe Mo is doing something very innocent with them, you know? Sure, sure. That's the kind of joke they do with Mo, an innocent thing about owning women.

But again, all these Playboy Mansion jokes, and it's going to be uncomfortable when we get to the James Caan episode too but like the that secrets of playboy documentary it's full of like very dark things that were happening to that playboy mansion playboy mansion jokes not so funny these days but you know what is funny um scratching your ass with a robot hand well i was gonna say sword canes those are cool they're not even funny i just like sword canes they're neat did you know that you can't buy them in california they count as a concealed weapon uh you know frankly they should yeah i mean they are meant to they are literally concealing a weapon they're a fake sword but if i

can't fly with a swiss army knife uh no one can have a sword cane period i was looking it up on online there's many um insane people on on weapons reddits who were saying like well can i have a sword cane or not and some were saying like well it's technically a concealed weapon but of course go to any state where you that have concealed carry laws and you can probably still walk around with it but you know what some cop might just arrest you anyway if they are one said this was a crazy insight into this world of like you know what if you're going to try to claim self-defense if you use your sword cane you're going to try to claim self-defense if you use your sword cane they're going to hold it against you because they're like nobody buys a

sword cane for self-defense there so we don't believe your self-defense claim yeah i guess it's uh it's not it's not readily accessible for self-defense you have to really do a lot of planning to unsheath that thing but there's so many cool guys with sword canes like tuxedo mask and zatoichi and uh hans mole man he's got a great sword cane i think in real life they're not as practical as they look in the movies in tv shows in anime i bet it's pretty hard to unsheath yeah and uh but yeah i mean also homer seemingly died and was resurrected between the two scenes like this is i'm shocked they didn't have it actually sticking out of him in blood going everywhere. It is a good reaction.

What do I do now? Because he ate the sword pie. There is clearly a sword protruding through his midsection. And then perfectly fine between breathing comfortably, as Marge would say. There's also the sword sharpener, the sword sword sharpener. I got to chuckle out of that. But yeah, you're right. That cyborg hand, that's just that Rainier was the Interminator in this world then right because that's the that's the arm from terminator in terminator 2 and one of the things that they buy is basically a terminator head a rainier wolf castle terminator

head at this estate sale i'm so glad they don't just make it arnold like they did in the goddamn movie i mean i complain about this every time i think about it but i really hate that it's arnold as the president in that movie dumb move them playing to the lowest common denominator a mistake and it just immediately became dated i mean it was already was yes yeah i did i do like carl saying that he's gone hollywood when lenny scratches his ass with it uh so arnold never did do porno early in his life but he did do like a playboy travelogue which we did see at the found footage festival where some might say that you could allege that arnold is committing assault on women and groping them in that video from uh that you remember that from the x-rated found footage fest

we saw oh uh you know there were so many horrifying videos that that's something i don't remember it was him going to brazil and he goes on stage with a couple topless dancers and um he crosses some lines i'll say i don't you know it's uh it was pretty gross to see but that's the closest to porno that arnold did they could be referencing uh stallone though right because he did it like a like a softcore porn i think it was called like a night at kitties or something and it was uh and then after became famous it was they didn't want to say his name or i guess that he didn't want uh they didn't want him to sue them so it's like starring the italian stallion or whatever i don't know there's more to the story i wasn't looking up stallone softcore porn for this episode by the way that was henry's job hey yeah sorry i didn't i'm sure at some point i have said to myself all right what did stallone's dick look like back then

anyway because i because i was listening to one podcast recently where they were talking about how like Bruce Willis shows his penis in a movie Color of Night I believe it's called and I did go like all right well what did his dick look like like I kind of you know if you hear that information you want it you want to know okay sometimes security gets curious to get you for all of our pervert listeners don't correct me in the comments the the movie was called the party at kitty and studs so there you have it and it was it was re-released as italian stallion after he became famous that's what i thought it was called something like the stallion something but okay though the implication here is that arnold only or sorry rainier only did gay porn before he was famous i just like any of these hetero what's there is there

that's that's an all right line uh and then yeah i they then show his original weight set which is like in the center of his bedroom but covered in dust like that doesn't make sense why why would it be covered in dust but in the middle of his bedroom it's it's uh i guess it's just an odd keepsake he has better workout equipment now and that just what that's just what he used to get buff originally i don't know isn't that shaking muscles thing pretty weird too like that it's just an odd keepsake he has better workout equipment now and that just what that's just what he used to get buff originally i don't know isn't that shaking muscles thing pretty weird too like that it's a weird i mean i guess you you know your muscles kind of shake if they're that big sure but i don't know it's just a strange yeah the simpsons will be right back. Tanya Hurding and Christy. Promise Scott Hamilton. The Simpsons, all new, part of a full hour at 8, Fox Sunday. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.

So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. We care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Welcome to the break, everybody. It's Henry Gilbert, a.k.a. the man who shot Liberty Valance. And a big thank you to you for listening this week as me and Bob do this as our full time job for listeners like you who support us at Patreon dot com slash Talking Simpsons. Did you know this is our full time real job?

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both for Japanese fans and for international fans as well. The month before that, we got into the spooky season with Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, and this month we're about to start off the holidays right with The Muppet Christmas Carol. Yes, we're slightly breaking format, but we love doing that for our favorite felt pals, the Muppets.

So if you want to hear us talk about all of those movies and a five year back catalog of what a cartoon movies including our longest one ever six and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit we cover everything from akira to a goofy movie spider-man into the spider-verse to bees and butthead do the universe it's all right there at your fingertips. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Check it out today. I think it's just a natural extension of making your pecs bounce kind of thing, except you can do that with all of his muscles.

But I do like the jello-sounding foley on the jiggling muscles. That is funny. I did like that. Yeah, this is when Homer buys some weights, and then we have gamer comedy on The Simpsons. This kind of shocked me to come from The Simpsons, although at this point, Tetris for the Game Boy, which is what they're referencing, was 14 old but they get the music correct they even get like the little

game over jingle correct too so hey aljean is talking about on the commentary it's the one video game he really got into and i think another writer on the commentary said the same thing so they don't really interact with gaming as much as the futurama writers did i mean they also in season three production season three that's when they put in the Game Boy into the show when Homer's playing the bowling game. So definitely Game Boys were in the offices then. But here, Homer uses his Tetris skills. Hey, your early porno movies.

Are any of these hetero? What's there is there. You got any junk that'll go up in value after you die? Right this way. My first weight set. The weights that changed you from a Bavarian cream puff to a mass of twitchy muscles? They know you are talking about them. I'll take it.

Who's up for coconut oil? There's no way all this junk is going to fit in that car. No, don't worry. This is what all those hours of playing Tetris were for. I would guess they didn't pay to use that, right? Because it's a classical piece, and they just made their own version of it. Yeah, unless they, I mean, there's some legal issues when you want to use the gaming version of it, which is just considered an original version for some legal purposes. But yeah, I'm not sure what the issues were.

It's not, I mean, they don't say, you know, licensed music things in the credits, but yeah, who knows if they had to pay for that. And now the story of tetris was a a film even the story of how it came to america which i'm sure was full of uh of many inaccuracies well i've heard i've heard the michael and us podcast on it and like the russians are basically in the movie they're kind of just out of bullwinkle like in in russia we have no blocks to rotate they just they just portray russia as just a uh like a godless, emotionless gray land. And it's a very really old school portrayal of the country they were shocked by.

It's like, did a boomer write this? Well, I mean, because, well, Russia's been an official enemy of us for a while again. And part of that is, we've seen when people try to, and Putin is a bad person. I will say that again. If people think I'm trying to defend him, he's a bad person. Well, hey, you know, I'm in Canada now and the Russia hatred is so strong. They're like, hey, let's get a Nazi on stage to talk. Let's commend this guy. He hates Russia, too. I know, you know, Biden didn't get on stage with any SS officers. But but yeah, but but anyway, on russian thing like the the way most american

liberals who like write movies know how to hate russia is just wormed over communism red scare stuff when it's like but that's not what russia is now you can't they're not commies anymore you know it did sound like that movie was just like the plot of it was let's save tetris from these horrible godless people and get it to a place where it can make billions of dollars for for people and we can sell it to many many many people but i was a tetris game boy addict as were my parents and uh i had the original game boy with the tetris so that that was kind of like my first puzzle game and i think most people's first puzzle game honestly i've had bouts of tetris mania in my life since then and like that especially the the tetris ds game i played so much of that and i did you

know i guess i still could play it i haven't picked it up in a while but for uh for like a couple years i would regularly check in on uh tetris 99 oh i did all right in it i'm not the best at it but i did okay i mean this sounds ridiculous and i thought it was until i got it as a gift and tried it but the tetris effect the vr tetris game you don't have to play it in vr it's on other platforms now but it's amazing it's incredible and you don't have to be high to play it and enjoy it you know i should have played that more i did play it at least for like 10 hours to get uh to see every song in it but yeah tetris effect is awesome like so you've got tetris 99 which is like the most heightened form of competitive tetris and then you've got tetris effect which is just like the vibiest version of tetris to just chill out and maybe

or maybe not be high while playing it but it's also funny in this bit it uh the way they draw lisa especially all bent as a tetromino is uh it's really weird yeah the entire family i guess i guess only marge's hair is bent in this scene well also it does cause some problems though for the overseas animators because there's a few scenes where after the tetra scene is done the blocks in the car should go back to normal but there's a couple scenes including the last shot of the act where they still draw it as the colorful blocks. They goofed it up there. Oh, yeah. And I guess when you're cramming things together in Tetris, they disappear.

So I wish there was a joke about that happening in this reality. But Homer gets left behind because he doesn't fit in the car. So he can't be there to protect her as a man must in the next scene. But also, you know, with the idea ofer being disgusted by marge's body later in the episode maybe don't have a joke about how much he loves being held by a giant muscular man you know yeah i enjoy the homer eroticism of this scene where he goes your heartbeat is so soothing so i guess uh rainier walks homer in this giant snuggly all the way home and yes they make sure to get in a bit of calling rob schneider

ugly just to let you know which uh you know i the last time i saw rob schneider's obviously become uh well i think he always was a conservative comedian but you know he hasn't gone like full jim brewer but he definitely is uh more of a friendly to mega comedian because he doesn't get to be in movies anymore yeah i believe i believe he canceled his canadian dates because of that uh nazi incident i spoke of earlier oh really damn i didn't know that and i the last time i heard about him was when i watched the mark twain award for adam sandler which was a lot of his old buddies including conan all doing jokes about him and there's some fun fun adam sandler stuff but it was like how they did it on the comedy central roast where they

invite somebody there just to have every person make fun of that guy during their bit and rob schneider was that guy it is like all right oh and hey time to make fun of rob schneider it is just telephys bullying but i'm for it when it's rob schneider especially but also it's like yeah he's he it reminds people that he still exists you You know, you say he's not gone full Jim Brewer. I'm looking at his tweets now, and I'm seeing, you know, a quote retweeting Elon Musk, a quote retweeting Moms for Liberty. I mean. Okay, then he has gone full Jim Brewer.

I was being too nice. Yeah, you really were. I think Jim Brewer really capitalized on the stand-up conservative market first before he could. Rob Schneider should have more money stocked away, though it clearly because he was at that that event like he's still friends with adam sandler he's getting the adam sandler money you know he's getting the uh the happy madison paydays but yeah then aljean even says like boy they really crossed a line here where they decided to have the first time they do a joke about maggie having a stinky diaper yeah

it's the first time characters on screen acknowledge maggie shit and how bad it smells oh fudged her huggies that that is revolting but you know hats off to whoever thought of that line perhaps carolyn omine but that that did make me just uh wince a little bit though the word fudge is is disgusting even in reference to the actual uh sweet which i don't like i don't i'm fudge man. You know, I can eat a couple bites. One square of fudge will do me for a while because it's the density of that fudge. Now, if I ever get offered fudge, I mean, also, too, you just have to throw it out of your mind that this has nothing in common with bodily waste. This is just delicious fudge I'm eating. But nowadays, I need some mint in there.

I can't just have straight up fudge. To me, you ruin chocolate. You made too sweet and uh get it away from me and it's like it's extra messy too it's it's everything oh yeah they just made everything about chocolate worse and that and then it sounds like shit yes yeah fudge fudge also i like that lisa is literal with her saying like don't try to pin this on me sister like but so marge has to run into the quickie mart uh apu is being is this feels like old apu who's just like no i'm a i'm a businessman first and there's no no bathroom for employees now i i had uh i don't know if you ever had this at uh like say at your game stop job bob of people coming in and wanting to use a restroom when you

don't have restrooms there oh yeah absolutely it's no it's like I can't let you into the back room where all of our inventory is to use the bathroom I'm sorry go to the Burger King across the way or just you know you don't have to go very far in the mall to find a bathroom yeah it's exactly like in my video store I worked at that was the only time I had to just say well you know no the bathrooms for employees only because it was in the back room and you had to escort people to it. Like they could steal. But also the funniest thing was the couple times I did it where a person like Marge is

begging for like, you know, you know, they're not actually planning to steal or they probably aren't because it's a parent with a kid doing the pee pee dance and they just got to go. But the punishment awaited them because the bathroom door in our video store, in the mom and pop video store in Berkeley, I worked at to walk to the back, you have to walk by the porno section. And so your children will see some very lewd covers to porno tapes when you walk back out of there. And that's just, you know what? That's and that's just you know what that's again we you you begged me to let you in this bathroom so you're gonna have an uncomfortable conversation now it's better they learn that filth from you in the video store that's uh i tried to save him it

you know and then but then there was also there were a couple guys who we took pity on him once and let us let them use the bathroom and then they just kept thinking like no no i can use the bathroom whenever i come here come on you let me do it before. And eventually, especially if they were a regular enough guy, I'd just be like, whatever, just use it. You know, not as much of an issue in the magical world of Canada where I live today. I really noticed that the bathroom police are not as active in this country where very seldom do I encounter a code or a key. And I see public restrooms everywhere and I don't smell piss as much as I did in my old city. So there you have it, folks.

People need bathrooms. They should buy a house. Yes. Or go to the workhouses. Yes. Are there no piss houses? Well, and Marge gets sent to a crack house uh which then we see that she gets turned she i guess she comes back from that because the joke is that even in the crack house you have to be a customer to

use the bathroom but only only crack smokers can can use the bathroom i i mean also i was just witness to this the other day when i went to the ups store to ship something uh i saw a helpless parent come in of like can i use the bathroom and just the person who was running the cash register just i think without even making eye contact i was like panera bread across panera bread they got it go there but yeah then marge is let in there we i i do love the joke that uh oh to tell everybody that high voltage warnings are all fake like try opening every door that says it. One thing we missed is someone has a real axe to grind with India in this season

because I forget, we're recording so much in advance because we're going to be traveling. There's a joke where Homer eats a bunch of food samples and then he ends up eating men's slacks and he says, oh, better than Indian food. And now we have Apu saying, you know, that's the worst thing I've ever smelled when I'm from India. So who is so mad about India? What the hell is going on with their anger at Indian food? I mean, it feels even worse. Like, okay, in that one we talked about how, like, well, the show wants you to go like, man, Homer's right, Indian food, that's crappy.

But this feels even meaner than it, like, an actual Indian says, I hate Indian food. Or at the very least, this smells smells like shit I'm telling you it smells like shit and this smells worse than that or just India in general is stinky which you know uh there's a lot of poverty in India I understand but uh I would say it's not their fault if you look at the history of India yeah it's uh and and I've learned a lot about the history of India that I've watched RRR the film and that's the same as reading a book yes run runny run okay but now we come to the big moment of the episode which they they play very real which is uh which is pretty uh gutsy on their part i think honestly like and i'm glad they did though like

this could have been this could have been like the joke when marge becomes a cop where this could be snake and they could make it a joke but they make up a guy instead a brand new character and and he's not funny it's just like scary it's just a scary moment I guess the one funny element is that he's wearing a Disneyland goofy hat which uh was going to pay off in some way that they're not very clear about on the commentary but that's just the one little weird uh surreal touch to him i mean i do kind of like that of just you know if uh when a traumatic event happens to someone you will remember every detail of it and sometimes it's not all scary things sometimes it's just something weird or it could like ruin goofy hats for the rest of your life like which maybe maybe they cut a joke where Marge beats up somebody with a goofy hat.

Again, not in the deleted scenes. But, uh, but yes, I guess here, let me play the clip real quick here. There's a happy baby, aren't you? Aren't you? Give me your purse. I'm gone. I'm gone. I'm gone.

Shut up. That's not a purse. It's a diaper bag. What? It looks like a purse. That's why I bought it, but it's really... Shut up! Fine. I'll just take this. No! Come on, Mom. Let's go mom are you okay

oh very real act break you would not uh you would not see where the show goes after this based on this act break but i will say yeah so i was mugged five years ago on a night much like this and the one thing they get really right is uh when you are mugged five years ago on a night much like this. And the one thing they get really right is when you are mugged, I don't recommend it. Try to avoid it if possible. Leave America if you live there. It's very likely to happen there. But the one interesting thing is that all of the rules you've been taught about interacting with people are just out the window.

You're trying to make this exchange without getting hurt and you're not really sure what to say and uh you're trying to reason with them in some way or but they just were like shut the fuck up hurry up give me all the things and it's like oh don't take my luggage they're just closing that you don't want that and then just take it anyways so i feel like like all the rules you know about social interactions are just gone and that is kind of shocking in the moment even more than getting your things stolen. And then you realize like all of the laws of property I have absorbed over time, they're out the window. If someone has a gun in your face,

we'll like, well, you know, I guess that laptop is yours. And I guess the switch is yours. Uh, I'm happy. I uploaded my save games,

but you know, you have fun with that. Oh man. That was, I, uh, yeah, that,

that was a very rough time for you, Bob. I felt, uh, that, yeah, I, I remember that. Uh, I was, I saw you the very night Bob. I felt that, yeah, I remember that.

I saw you the very night it happened, and you were shaken as not unlike Marge in this episode. Yeah, and I will say it did. I did not become agoraphobic, but I did not go outside alone at night for a long time because of just the trauma of having experienced that. And just like it did make me for at least a few years, maybe like two or three years, have to like analyze everybody coming towards me down the sidewalk, unfortunately. But it just, it was like, oh, I didn't know this threat existed.

And I'm constantly aware of, you know, incoming threats and people that could possibly want to hurt or rob me. So I did start living a little safer. You know, when I go out out i only carry like one card with me just just in case i get robbed or whatever but now i'm in vancouver and i can only be stabbed here so you just try to pull a knife on me i'm gonna run you can throw that knife but i'm gonna be weaving back and forth and screaming so uh good luck to you out there and i know there are zero guns in canada so don't try it unless american brought a gun there no I mean yeah well also like well

speaking guns to your reaction afterwards was not to like get a concealed carry permit and walk around with like a Glock all the time ready to shoot the next person who might rob you yes I was like oh no I hate guns more than ever I never want to see another gun there's nothing fun about them and when when Marge talks to the cops they're actually friendlier than the cop was to me the cop that I dealt with really was just like the affect i got was this is a huge waste of time i am just here as an arm of the insurance industry to give you the i've got stolen i i was robbed tickets and you just hand that to them and they can help you out but i mean obviously my personal items were not insured for theft i don't even know how that it's possible to do that but i had

to go fund me and i was able to replace everything rather quickly. It was very difficult to replace things like passports and IDs and stuff, but that all got replaced. But I had a happy ending, but most people are not mildly successful podcasters that have an audience that will fund them if this happens. So I feel very fortunate in that respect.

It was great to see the support that came for you. And yeah, I mean, I was living in the same same area it did make me a little more worried as well now i i don't have an i was mugged story as well though but it did i got a little scared too like oh that happened to bob maybe i shouldn't walk at night as much either or definitely my husband was like okay that happened to bob so you know be a little more careful yourself and don't i definitely stopped i stopped taking the train home from the airport as much after after that one yeah i pretty much never do that uh yeah by the way all of my story was i was taking the train home from the airport and i was walking home with my luggage like basically a five minute walk from the train station that's where it

happened yeah it's right i mean in the same here for march that it happens you know at the quickie mart where she goes all the time and it's such a and it also same here for marge that it happens you know at the quickie mart where she goes all the time and it's such a and it also does make sense that that's where a robber would be because it's robbed all of the time so that kind of makes sense but yeah all of the jokes about a poo being robbed are are funny but then when it happens to someone like marge you're like oh this is now it's getting real but now a poo expects to be robbed yeah and he even like i mean they always cut through the tension of like apu saying like uh you know every bullet wound is a mark of is a

badge of honor or also that he's like oh they use nylon rope this time almost sensuous like he's not traumatized at all about it yeah and like uh these ceiling mirrors and surveillance cameras show me more than who's about to shoot me yeah i mean if you instead saw a scene where after apu got like shot say for defending james woods he if he just like sobbed of like i don't want to die i don't want to die like that wouldn't that's not funny that would just be traumatic and and same here like they choose to not make a joke like bart could say a funny line here but instead it just feels so real the way he goes like mom mom like when you know I've again nothing like this happened to my mom but just this moment of like hey come on mom what's wrong and then your mom starts crying or you just see

the side of your parents you never see and it can be disturbing in those moments and and yeah that just that a scene ends with just March sobbing in the car and then also it goes from like her she's just so happy she's like so nice with maggie of like who's a happy baby and then boom a gun in her face like it it's a very traumatic scene yeah my uh the end of my story is i uh was coming back from vancouver and my current wife nina and i had just started our relationship and i was very happy so I was also hit with a change of emotion a sudden change of emotions uh on that walk home it was it was a rough time but uh yeah I mean but you also Bob yeah you didn't get the workout bug did you from the uh not real no no not like getting stronger I mean I I was regularly going to the gym at that point but uh I could not

run a bullet so especially with all my luggage oh and also to marge getting her pearls ripped off which they do not make like a batman reference which i'm glad again they just take any reference or distance out of that but also yes it feels like a you know nothing obviously this whole thing is horrible that happens to marge but it's not like you know the pearls being ripped off her is symbolic of a worse thing like it is a stripping of her identity too like that she that she loses the pearls that she always has it does make her look like a different character like just weaker and changed by yeah there's sort of like nakedness to Marge when you're used to her having the thing constantly always on her neck yeah which

I feel like that's another reason it's so weird when she becomes gigantic at the end of the episode that she also doesn't have the pearls on her neck either so it's it looks even weirder for that reason yeah but but seriously julie cavner she never gets asked to do this kind of stuff so much of the time it's just her doing jokes about baking or whatever or being worried about homer or being being very chipper about her husband being cruel to her yeah but uh but yeah so in the next scene again it's the useless cops yeah and then but like you said bob they couldn't even pretend to care when it was yeah and they found nothing either i mean if i could read the cop's brain who was talking to me i'm sure he was thinking hey call me back when you're a bank with a broken window i don't have time for this shit exactly yeah no it's uh yeah i again i had a thing i the closest interaction i had to this

with the police was somebody at my old apartment complex kept stealing mail like the mail would be dropped off like big packages would just be left on the outside and they get taken and i lost like i bought my mom some really nice like um vintage glassware and that cost me like 80 bucks and it was just gone like you know replacing it couldn't get the money back and i would have just let it go but the the they wanted to report it to the cops the landlord so later a cop like two years later a cop called me jesus and said like hey so we finally sentenced this guy to like years in prison we found he was a guy who stole your stuff and i was like yeah i know this guy needs help he did not the guy told me

like if you even wanted to try to get 70 bucks back from him i don't think you're gonna get it and i was like well no i don't i mean he's got enough problems like so that was just like an extra sad thing to so i feel even bad for the guy who stole the stuff i was gonna get my mom because i was like well his life is probably pretty shit. It just got 10 times shittier. Yeah. And it's very true. It's like we can punish somebody and not help you.

Is that OK? Yes. That's in our budget. Our budget does allow for punishing people. And the amount of money they're going to spend to put him in jail is way more than the 70 bucks of items he took from you. And hey, we might accidentally kill him. Wink, wink wink while we do it and we got a license to kill yeah this uh i mean it uh but yeah there's there's some good stuff here with wiggum that he doesn't want to tell eddie or lou who his best guy is i like that but uh there is a bit of this from this is very husband perspective of like oh if only i was there to protect my wife as a man

must in in homer's uh kind of guilt here oh for sure yeah but uh yes then marge heads out she's given a mace uh and a guide on how to kick uh ned in the crotch uh but this is when marge lashes out wait marge i don't want you to leave the house without this. Emergency whistle, pepper spray, and this map of the most vulnerable parts of a man's body. Why is it Ned Flanders? Oh, look, I'm going to kick Chief Wiggum in the groin. Okay, Marge, you can do this. You've done it a thousand times before. Hi, Mrs. Simpson! Oh, no.

I pepper sprayed Ralph. Even my boogers are spicy. Sorry. Let's go home. There's nothing dangerous there except for the electrical wiring. You know, Ralph, we need you to taste those boogers before we know. I mean, inaccurate. God.

You know, they wanted to at least have a joke in this one because they could have played this is real as they did the end of the act because, yeah, it's like Marge at it like this is a sad thing too that, you know, hurt people hurt people. And this is Marge. I guess because it's Ralph. Ralph, it's like water off his back. He forgets everything.

But if this were a real person, this would be horribly traumatizing to a child to be maced by an adult woman. If you mace Martin or Milhouse or Ralph, it'll be okay. I was shocked later in this episode that Marge doesn't beat Milhouse up in that scene. Oh, yeah. I feel like there's a draft where that happens. Now it feels lacking to me. Milhouse should be concussed by the end of that scene.

But yeah, I mean that marge drives off i i also think in this episode they don't have their best editor working on it because there is some adr in here where the mouths are just all wrong entirely wrong including this like i wonder what the original joke was when she says nothing old scary there but electrical wire like but i think, there's all, this isn't the deleted scene that's on the DVD either. Marge has on a trench coat. It must be for a joke because she arrives home without the trench coat. I am thinking, sorry. I am thinking that after the quickie mart, Marge goes to a different place and there's

some joke of her freaking out there and she loses her trench coat but and that would explain why the trench coat is gone in the next shot but it's just it's weird yeah i mean it's just weird usually if the character is wearing some sort of odd clothing item or uh atypical clothing item it would link to like something they would cut or they had cut rather that's my guess there but so marge russ is home she runs over the nicest mailman in the world um and then i mean to this anxiety fantasy i do think pete michaels and his team did a really good job animating it it does look i mean it's i do wish they didn't give a joke line to the robber i think he should only be scary

not funny but i do like that the imagined girlfriend is laughing that she just throws the necklace in a drawer at night the cheap girlfriend yes yeah marge is a little tangled marge is more worried about like the state of the stolen item which it feels like uh she the thief got like half of that necklace right yeah yeah also as previously established in the cat burglar episode she has a whole ball of them and they're all priceless too yes now i will say this next joke could have been good but they didn't have the confidence they really want you to know what they're doing here and that's when a good joke turns bad Yes. Now, I will say this next joke could have been good, but they didn't have the confidence. They really want you to know what they're doing here. And that's when a good joke turns bad.

So, yeah, it doesn't need to be Twilight Zone magazine, right? No, my my any book. My thing is that could it could have ended there picking up Twilight Zone magazine. The glasses fall off the scenes over, but then it has to give us the Twilight Zone theme and the Twilight Zone camera angles. Those two items at the end just make, they're treating me like I'm stupid, which I don't like. It's just like, no, I got it. It's like one of the ten things you can reference in the Twilight Zone. Thank you. I was good with the glasses and the magazine. But also, Twilight Zone magazine, that is a real obscure reference because I was looking at like, when did this thing,

when was it published? And it was only 1981 and 1989. And it's one of those anthology fiction magazines that a few of those still exist, like the Alfred Hitchcock magazine and the Ellery Queen mystery magazine. Those are both published like at least six times a year or quarterly. And they're always in the like the puzzles section, but they're just anthologies of stories. That's cool. I didn't know that i i would guess at least a few simpsons writers had uh subscribed to that twilight zone magazine in their 20s which would be in the 80s uh i i mean yeah i i think you're right they hit

it to you on the nose especially when in the past simpsons would make a twilight zone reference and they'd at least trust like everybody knows this episode it's probably i mean is there other than is there an episode that people know more than time enough at last of of twilight zone like i feel like it is the most famous one i mean it's unfair to make this comparison maybe but futurama did the best one before this so you really can't top the guy saying oh i have a backup pair those break too well i've got my contacts his eyes fall out just that's the best version of that joke you can't really do better than that yeah it's also funny hearing gene talk about that it was the one his mom always mentioned like that she always brought it up and and algae's mom just passed away recently she was in her 90s yeah his dad passed away recently and his mom just

passed away what will happen to the hardware store they were were long living Detroiters. They're Michigan. They were strong Michigan people. Al Jean had a cute post about his mom's passing saying that like, you know, she was almost a nun and he's happy she wasn't because he never been born. But yeah, she's she seemed like a fun lady. But but yeah, to know. I mean, I think Time Enough at Last is definitely the one my mom. She my mom is a big Twilight Zone fan.

That's probably why I watched a lot of Twilight Zone in my youth as well. And maybe, maybe the man on the wing is a more famous Twilight Zone than Time Enough at Last. Maybe. Time Enough at Last is one of those ones where you don't really learn a lesson and there's no moral quality. It's like, wasn't that weird? Pretty fucked up, right? This guy shouldn have liked glasses

so much shouldn't he yeah it's uh yeah i well and also like burgess meredith is such a memorable part of that too like he's he's such a great actor so then marge locks herself in the house she she can't stand to go outside it's funny nobody i guess if somebody suggested that she gets um psychiatric help, then it just turns into the fear of flying episode. But she really should be seeing somebody for this. This is a mental illness. She needs to see a professional, not be diagnosed by Dr. Hipper.

Yeah, not being given a movie to scare her outside. Isn't that also just the joke from fear of flying? Except in that one, it's like real movies of alive and and all that but yeah i guess we don't actually hear the movies uh a clip from the movies but and they're all real movies instead of the woman who died in her home now that sounds like a movie that we hate movies is covered in their lifetime movie series right yes uh they're working their way through all the stalked by my doctor uh movies but they branch out occasionally uh but yes the hibbert very cruelly diagnoses marge saying like no one wants to eat dinner at a

crazy lady's house get real and this this is where the one joke that's deleted is on the dvd which is after marge looks at the vhs then hibbert is describing that it's going to take a lot of time and effort and every time he says it's going to like take a lot of time homer goes oh and effort then uh hibbert says you know i got a pill that could help with that moaning and homer says does it have a bubblegum center no not bad not bad the one joke no other not even a secret deleted scene but i'm sure there's a lot of deleted scenes uh from this episode but yeah so the shot of marge in that wheelchair is one of like the saddest shots of marge i've ever seen like she is so pitiful yeah with her mix of sporting and household equipment just to protect

her it's it's like a football helmet in soccer shin guards and an oven mitts and she's in a computer chair being wheeled outside yeah yeah that then and that Bart and Lisa are like protecting her with like you know racket a like a racket and a baseball bat like it's it's really sweet that it's the whole family working yet together to help Marge of course Homer messes it up but like Marge is just so pitiful in this like it you you feel so bad seeing her like so broken I know and it works again for act two that you get Marge so low that it makes you feel great for her getting over it but man this uh this scene this I think is a good scene that actually is focusing on the family this is the family

dynamic at play it and it also it doesn't feel like they actually recorded it together but it also does feel a little more lively than other scenes with the whole family feel as well. But yes, here's Marge trying to go outside. Don't worry, Mom. This first time, we'll only take a few steps outside. All right. Just to the mailbox and back. Now, Dr. Hibbert said to use a number from 1 to 10 to describe how anxious you are.

2, 3, 2... Don't worry, everything is fine. What the hell is that? 8! Dad, it's just a bug. 2... It's not just a bug, it's the queen of something! 10, 10, 10, 10...

Don't worry, I'll set fire to the hive 12 15 703 run that does feel like very classic simpsons bees are defending themselves somehow and it's great that homer runs in ahead of marge like leaves are like he he's just out to save himself and and also that homer who does not smoke just has a lighter right on hand he's just out to save himself. And also that Homer, who does not smoke, just has a lighter right on hand. He's like, I'm going to burn these bees, this hot wasp nest right now. That's his hive lighter. Just for beehives. It's great. And also like Julie's very good at just her saying like just random numbers as she gets

more and more stressed out. Like it's, it's, yeah, it's really great. I love the, it just feels like the family doing stuff together. Now the next scene scene I think it's okay and boy am I glad Bart only says one thing in this scene I I thought it was a really funny joke where uh so we have this little play that's being put on where Bart is playing a poo uh Lisa is playing a magazine rack and I love Homer's response to her look I'm the first to admit it I don't write good parts for women isn't that great like doesn't it feel like Omine is roasting lightly roasting some other writers who work on the Simpsons yes within

her March episode yeah and that was a good that was an excuse back then by the way if you didn't write good women in an episode you or in your tv shows you just say look I'm the first to admit it I'm not good at writing for women so so suck it up ladies but i refuse to improve and this this will not change you're just gonna be a magazine rack i mean yeah there's there's probably been a number of times where uh maybe carolyn omine has noticed boy lisa may as well just be uh a lamp in this scene she doesn't do anything hey but hey reference time she is holding the uh in rod we trust time magazine from deep space homer that was great that was so great seeing that there i i wonder if it was just

an animator just remembering like hey why why redesign a new magazine we've already got an approved magazine right here and also matt grating's on the cover of us magazine or us weekly though i was trying to look up matt grening in the first years of Bartmania he would make a lot of appearances on covers like as a photograph but around this time it was kind of more rare there was that one wired cover we talked about in the first year of Futurama where he's like drawn onto the cover as a head in the jar and it's just um surprising because it is not the standard way Matt Groening is drawn in his own style it is just his head is that all the cover is no it's uh it's his head being carried around by the three leads

of futurama bender and fry yeah and though for the 500th episode which was over 10 years ago now mac reigning james l brooks and al jean did get the cover of hollywood reporter they were on the cover of that which isn't that nuts to when this is the, I mean, we'll talk more about the scary math later, but to know that there's basically 500 episodes after this one, they're working their way to 800 now. And this is the 300th like, and we'll never stop. We will never stop. If you guys aren't Bill Oakley patrons, you, you didn't hear us this say this, but Bill

Oakley is like, so you guys are going to keep just going? And we're like, yeah, we're going to be covering season 33 in 2043 for sure. Absolutely. And we'll be revisiting season three for the fourth time. Just you watch. What does 60-year-old Bob think about Dog of Death? You're going to find out in 2019 years. I'll have to relisten to our old episodes to remember my childhood memories at that point. I'll be like, well, it was my childhood again. But I get that their plan to make Marge feel normal

about the quickie mart again by having it play out in the house, but it was a big mistake to have her also act out the robbery with Milhouse as the robber. And I also couldn't believe they got away with a picture of millhouse pointing a realistic gun in his face it's too bad these aren't cells because that'd be a great cell to own i guess millhouse is undone uh he's not you know hit by marge or whatever but

silly string comes out of the gun and just uh confounds him and then so marge runs off to the basement and this is where aljean talks about how he knew agoraphobics it sounds like he worked with writers who were like long distance writers now lots of writers work remotely and it's just a normal thing but it sounded like from what aljean was talking about you know in the pre-covid times he had worked with a lot of remote writers who maybe had some level of agoraphobia and would just submit jokes that way if it does feel like covid made a lot more people agoraphobic uh there are still a lot of people out there who uh just never do anything social and it could be because they have valid health reasons it could be because they just are

very paranoid and have anxiety about covid yeah i mean i totally understand especially if you are scared of getting along covid or you know, or spreading it to people in your lives, like I can understand not wanting to go to like, you know, concerts or pro wrestling events or all that, that makes sense. But also, yeah, I think, I think for a lot of people, you know, it took a little while to get over the shutting yourself off all the time. Like it, uh, the, the COVID lockdown actually made me a reverse agoraphobic because I wanted to leave the home more than I did before covid because i was like oh i well i can't go anywhere except outside so i'm gonna walk every morning

now but in marge's case she does get in better shape just as i did in that scenario but though i hardly got as in good shape as marge but she does it without leaving the place but also i have to give a little finger wag to aljean here he's ripping himself off from the critic again i think he just loves an old man and dressed as baby new year because his brain has rotted not aljean's but the old man's this is just like yeah say hello to baby 37 everybody yeah that's uh franklin dresses up like that in dial m for mother which we covered a long time ago over five years ago on this patreon and that's in every opening segment of the critic right every opening in the theme song that's like one of the little gags is franklin uh as baby new year right

yeah he pops out of a cake that's right yeah no and dial in for mother i was just re-watching a little bit of it and i forgot how like you you know, I feel like almost half the episodes of The Critic are about nobody likes The Critic. A audience is tasked terribly with it. Yeah, when we covered it, it's just like half the episodes are about Jay getting fired. But I still love The Critic and my wife and I were just seeing if it was on YouTube for some reason. I forget what it was. And we just left the Critic YouTube channel playing and we just could not leave the television because we just were remembering, oh, it's this part and then this bit and then that bit. So, hey, if you're not on the Patreon, check out our Patreon at patreon.com slash hockey Simpsons. We've covered every episode

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Did I mention that we care? Even the webisodes. The Dial-In for Mother, it has another of my favorite it's the most self-conscious gene and reese were on screen about like oh people don't like this because it's not the simpsons where the guy literally changes the channel to the simpsons and says now this i get is that the episode where she's like feed him with my what i barely know this person like oh take my temperature mommy take my temperature, mommy. Take my temperature. I joke to you.

Yes, it's full. It's a lot of great shows. And it's got Geraldo, who also has a Rob Schneider-like tale of downfall. Though I feel like now I hear about Geraldo, the rare times when he's like, caused some stink on Fox News saying like, oh, hey, you guys got too racist even for me in this Fox News segment. What a hero. That's what I hear about him what a great guy he's just like colin powell who late in his life he's like

what have i said that i think trump is unserious well will you think i'm good then we had to see his fucking ass on the 2020 democratic convention oh you're right about that i forgot how recently he died but yeah he was dredged up yeah gross but yeah so also at this time they were doing a lot of what the hell are you talking about like well actually it's a long term runner Homer said it in Poochie to the wizard key question and then also uh in Homer goes to college when he's told like what the hell are you talking about when he's given the test but yeah now Marge has decided she's never gonna leave the basement again there's a good joke oh okay this is when sadly bart does talk in an accent unfortunately this again feels like real adr where bart does an apu impression and then homer just quickly says we'll

have to smoke her out the end like the scene just like slams shut there i mean yeah even if you overlook the problematic thing uh it's just not funny just like yeah i guess i guess he has to talk like apu because he's dressed like him but there should have been a joke if you're gonna do that i feel like there was a different joke that they must have thought was worse well also i do like that despite marge being a shut-in she still wants to hear church every morning and also that marge barely smacks homer in the face hard with a hymnal all the time when he falls asleep.

And then Homer is embarrassed about strangling Bart in front of Jesus. That's a good joke. A surprise to see Jesus at church is a nice joke. And then, actually, here's another thing they did a whole lot on for the critic, dumping on one specific sitcom from the 90s in our next clip here. Wow, honey, eating dinner downstairs is great, isn't it, kids? The air hockey table makes passing

the carrots a breeze. Alright, eat your spinach. No way. Yes way. Stop it, please. I'm trying to eat. And all those feet going by the window are really creeping me out. It's like we're at Cheers. I love that show.

Because you always knew it was only a half hour till Wings. Then you could just sleep till Monday. Bye, Mom. I'm sending the cat up with your lunches. Great struggling cat sounds. I know it was cut off. Yeah, Wings. Duckman made fun of Wings.

Simpsons made fun of Wings twice. I guess the joke is like once Cheers is over, once Wings starts, you can go to sleep. And then you just wake up and it's Monday. But okay, so we just hit the 30th anniversary of Frasier, right? People were posting memorabilia, like ads and stuff to remember, you know, the beginning of Frasier when people didn't know it'd be a big hit. But a huge ad I saw on TV Guide at the top of the screen was, From the Creators of Wings! Frasier!

Whoa. Yes. Wow. That was what they were selling Frasier with. And you know what? I'm sure Wings is great. I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it is the most cromulent must-see TV sitcom of its era.

And you can get it all on DVD for like $50 now if you want. I watched a good amount of Wings, but I don't remember too many episodes of it to be totally honest but i do our pals on gayest episode ever had done several good wings episodes and and also you know geez i guess almost a year ago to the day here was i can't believe kevin conroy passed away like a year ago now but he almost was cast on wings and tim daly's part and were he to have done that he probably wouldn't have been batman so be thankful that he was not cast on wings and then tim daly was superman eventually he ends up being superman yes yeah it's uh but also like wings has been off the air for almost six years its last episode was may 97 so here they are in february 06 making fun of wings still yeah a lot ofons writers at least a few of

them worked on Wings I can like Ken Keeler the Wings had a lot of like good early 90s comedy writers on the staff or at least like contributing scripts to it and it's not a bad I mean it's a clever idea for a sitcom of you know it's a workplace sitcom but it's at a small airport like a small you know tiny airport that just takes you from New York to Boston pretty much, or other parts of the Cape Cod area. And also, I mean, the cast full of, you know, you got Tony Shalhoub in there, Thomas Hayden Church, you know, lots of women as well. Oh, well, you had a crush on the redhead on the show, didn't you? Did I? I'm looking up who it is. amy yazbeck yes unfortunately she was taken by

john ritter but not anymore at least not for the last 20 years she was like the evil mom in problem child i think yeah that's right yeah i remember her like being tortured in that movie i think and also uh stephen weber he's good he's he's good indian stuff now i think but uh i'll tell you i'll tell you who wrote for wings steve levitan was a huge wings writer now one of the richest men on the planet and uh yeah i'm seeing a lot of frazier people in here sorry i'm just looking at the this is now i'm just me reading phil lezebnik i know rob lezebnik who the hell is phil lezebnik i assume they're related yeah that whole lezebnik family is in every writer's room man yeah ken keeler wrote an episode yeah yeah the lezebnik dynasty lives on well also frazier

was on an episode of wings too because they were the creators of frazier later on but you know i've had another of these instagram has finally learned that i live in the seattle area now because i'm getting specific Seattle ads on Instagram, including one which was, hey, it's a Mariners baseball cap, except it has a legally distinct version of the Seattle skyline that's on the opening of Frazier. So it's like both a Frazier and a Mariners cap. And of course you didn't buy this correctly. I did not. No, no. Well, also I feel like I'm not investing in Frazier stock right now because I feel like it's gonna all come tumbling down once people see that I feel like that new Frazier show is gonna be a big old whiff on Paramount Plus yeah as of this recording we're uh I think

about a week away so you tell us is Frazier good without any of the people who made it good surprise us Frazier isn't it funny too that Homer's like oh I love that show he's he's like remembering Cheers which was a contemporary of theirs at the start. Now he's like, remember Cheers, because it was like it's been off the air for almost a decade. No, in 03, it would be a decade, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. It went off the air in, I believe, the spring of 93. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So and you know what? If you like Cheers references, maybe watch that new series, Fiona and Cake on Max. You might be pleasantly surprised. Really? Like Cheers references. Yes. that new series Fiona and Cake on Max. You might be pleasantly surprised. Really? If you like Cheers references. Yes. But yes, Bob, you're right.

The sounds and animation on Snowball 2 being shoved up the vent is very funny. But this is when Marge realizes that she's just crazy enough. Actually, this is just like that episode of The Sting of Futurama we just did, where Leela's crazy enough to know she's crazy. And Marge is too crazy to go outside not crazy enough to have imaginary friends uh this is when I loved it on the commentary even Carolyn Omine is kind of like goofing on them of like well how about that act one actually pays off in act two it is a rarity on the Simpsons even in uh the classic era sometimes it just would be

unrelated act one and then here our story begins in act two but you know march starts lifting weights i have gotten more into the weights lately because i have you know a whole gym in my new apartment so about three four days a week i do about 30 minutes to an hour of uh of different arm dumbbell exercises dumbbell sounds like a fake word to me but it is the actual things i'm using the stupidest of weights i think the dumbbell i am a cardio man and i just i love the high of elliptical machines that i get an hour on that at least like 160 beats per minute i'm good i watch three episodes of one piece and then i'm ready for the rest of the day see now i read the one piece on the treadmill that's my thing i'm up to when listeners when you hear this i'm up to chapter 394 on my treadmill reading of it though yeah you know my the guy i'm

shooting for a fictional character to be physically like not joey joey heatherton as mober says here but the guy i want to be is it's agent 24 from venture brothers i want to transform from agent 24 in season four to agent 24 in season five oh you know i did not see this transformation so i assume it's dramatic no when he becomes a big buff dude in the series uh you didn't see that no i did not i have to apologize i've only seen up to seasons 4.5 of the venture brothers it's still at this point well he becomes a very he still has a bit of a tummy on him but he is a very muscular guy so that's my that's my dream fit now that i'm working on though i do do not have the kind of progress Marge has, which you get from being locked in a room with weights.

Isn't it surprising they didn't do like a prison weights joke here with her? Oh, yeah, yeah. The second you said locked in a room with weights, I'm like, oh, yeah, they missed the obvious. I'm not saying it's a problem, but I'm surprised they didn't do the obvious. Marge is acting like a prisoner style jokes. Though I guess that's what happens with Ruth. So that's where they put the prison muscles joke in there absolutely true uh but yes marge starts getting buff there's a i do also like the joke that you think that she's watching a workout tape and she's watching

a cooking tape that just sounds like a workout tape in the one of the bird ladies that's how you know it's on yeah and the one because like one two three four five eggs and you know that makes sense for a cooking show this is me explaining the joke by the way but i love how feel the burn makes no sense for a cooking show but then they kind of work it into something that could make sense it's a good joke i i like that so then marge is showing off her body to the family and a point of this episode is is that women can get in a little shape but not too much shape because then a man won't find you attractive that's the dangerous thing about for women getting in shape that's where this episode loses me where there's this revulsion of uh from their

from their point of view women losing their womanhood and of course a lot more disgusting things factor into that as well in terms of uh how that mode of thinking can affect real people but at this point in the show it's still like oh a woman uh two fit disgusting yuck not feminine two genders everyone there's just two the homer describes her as having the body of joey heatherton which i wouldn't know the names of these 70s sex symbols if it wasn't for simpsons jokes about like her and sybil danning like yeah yeah mo mo uh had some joey heatherton reference earlier in the show but in this case it's like i don't know i looked up some old bikini pictures of joey heatherton she i mean she has a flat stomach but

she doesn't have like amazing abs or anything homer's just saying he is attracted to marge which this again in the show written mainly by men, though a woman is the credited writer on this episode, so many jokes about, well, what does Homer feel about the attractiveness of his wife? Yeah, we need to know what he feels about this woman's body. Great, very subtle joke. Again, I'm sorry for explaining a joke, but I'm appreciating it for all of you listeners. Marge saying, you know what would spice up this hollandaise?

A lemon, where a hollandaise is a lemon-based sauce, in case you don't know. Without the lemon, it's not hollandaise a lemon where a hollandaise is a lemon based sauce. In case you don't know without the lemon, it's not hollandaise. So I like it. That's another joke about how Marge is like a very bland cook. That's a great that is on a higher level than it seems. And it's also I like that it feels realistic for writing about, you know, recovery, because sometimes you all of a sudden you realize like oh wait i got over this i didn't even notice it like it never is like an aha moment you just go like oh yeah i ran outside without even realizing i was afraid you know it's very natural how it works on her and and is this

the same lemon tree that she bought lisa for her birthday the one she loves playing i thought that was a peach tree you're right yeah it could be two things oh well then also lisa has her boaty tree back there lisa has a there's too many trees back there but uh yeah that's uh then it okay so this is where it does feel like aljean took over because the references are coming fast and heavy i mean i definitely see her running around saying i'm not afraid they don't do a musical sting to it but but I think it's an It's a Wonderful Life reference, don't you think? Yeah, yeah, maybe a bit. Yeah, I guess they could have leaned more into it, but I'm glad they didn't because,

I mean, we love Al Jean. He's a great guy, but he loves referencing the Godfather. And these references are getting a little long in the tooth in 2003, especially recreating an entire scene shot for shot including mistakes made in the scene yeah okay so so here's my thought on this godfather thing that we actually just did you haven't heard it yet but we've recorded our mr plow one and mr plow does have a sequence where i'd say it's about 20 seconds of bart being hit with snowballs that's supposed to be a shot for shot recreation of james conn's character being shot in that movie and so you know it's similar things but this is a heightening of it but also

I think that a reason I wouldn't have done it is that even though it is a Simpsons thing to do when I saw this in 2003 I was thinking well this is just Family Guy Family Guy does a minute long full recreation of a scene so it feels like Simpsons ripping off Family Guy, even when it's really just them getting back to their roots. Well, there's a real Family Guy moment, you know, coming up. But I guess it's, to be fair, the Simpsons had a certain shtick, and then Family Guy did that shtick, and the Simpsons backed away from it. So now, whenever they lean back into their old shtick,

it does feel a bit like Family Guy. And especially for Al Jean, we were talking about the critic already, like, family guy ripped off the critic as much as it ripped off the simpsons and i mean and it's just algae yeah this is no different than the season four uh last uh exit the springfield of uh don homer walking through the marketplace and being offered donuts it's like a remake of a scene but there's a simpson character in it and then Family Guy that they made that their bit seven uh six years later yeah yeah I uh but it it just feels weaker in the moment when Family Guy is popularizing it so much there but yeah I mean seeing it all here I also I wish the the mugger didn't get one joke at her saying like uh oh how's it going still living in fear that's a joke I was like I don't like that joke but I like they I mean it is every step of it i re-watched the scene and like even the biting of the hand

to get him to try to let go so she can pick him up and i mean i i will say i'm a reason i'm cool with this godfather reference a little bit is because if they were just gonna have a scene where marge beats the shit out of this guy's revenge that might be uncomfortable they want if you have the distance of a parody then you just feel good for marjorie just like oh this is fun marge gets revenge on the guy and marge gets over her fear of the outside by beating the shit out of this guy yeah it makes the ending beating scene less exciting less fun but i do like even march gets the like the last kick on him just like jimmy kahn does or sunny corleone gets on carlo in it uh and then the scene ends with wigum telling everybody you know why don't you why don't why don't you take the law

into your own hands too i mean that's what the cops want you to do wanted you to do as well they weren't going to do anything and just like in let me see springfield connection she has her own cool action catchphrase like you've just been marginalized and in that season six episode she says i don't think that's a very good idea when she's drawing her gun oh that's right man i wish i wasn't just being reminded of the better version of this episode that they did before but so for act three i wanted to ask you henry for act three how much do you think al jean wanted to license dude looks like a lady it feels lacking this episode feels lacking without that song given the sentiment of act three boy you're right i hadn't thought of that but i especially with how much goddamn music is in act three i am shocked they didn't get it maybe i

aerosmith wasn't letting it out anymore maybe they didn't like using it as a joke anymore. Or maybe somebody at least said, that was in Mrs. Doubtfire. We can't use that. That officially made it too hack if it was in Mrs. Doubtfire. I wonder if it was in Joanna Man. We have to consult Joanna Man. It had to be, right? At least the trailer.

At least the trailer. Well, also, I'll say on the music thing, OK, you can do a long Godfather reference, but the very next scene cannot be a rocky reference like you can't do basically from the same year ish are these two movies like not exactly but basically the same to go from a godfather straight into the rocky fanfare which i at least do chuckle hearing him say on the commentary that like well the fanfare is technically public domain so we can use it as much as we want yeah that whole like getting strong now that whole stuff is uh the license but i guess the fanfare is public domain and we're gonna meet ruth powers here but

we're gonna talk about her next week on new kid on the block in terms of pamela reed and everything and uh her introduction but it's weird that these are back to back on our schedule we did not plan it that way yeah but yeah i mean doesn't the joke of marge brushing her teeth feel like it's supposed to zoom out and reveal something it's like it feels missing something yeah in my in my notes i i bitually wrote she does some slightly comical training there there aren't any real gags she's lifting laundry like it's um like it's weights but that's kind of it and so then she ends up at the venice venice beach or muscle beach version of springfield which i guess people are familiar with that because it's a major

scene in barbie in the barbie movie yes it's pamela reed she's back and i think she's really good i wish i feel like they cast her because they thought they'd be using her all of the time but here's when things get crappy. You know, another four inches on your neck and you look pretty hot. Ever thought of competing? I don't have those kind of muscles. Well, you could if you use these. Steroids! I can't take drugs. I have so many anti-drug bumper stickers, I'd be making a wire out of my tailgate.

Steroids aren't drugs. They occur naturally in the body, like sweat or tumors. But aren't there side effects? Yes, side effects yes their main side effect is greatness but if you'd rather be weak and helpless no no i feel good with no repercussions oh god yeah i was shaking my head on camera at that pop i reference so we'll talk a lot about ruth Powers in New Kid on the Block next week. What I don't like is that they brought her back for this because Ruth Powers in New Kid on the Block and Marge on the Lamb, I love her character, and I love that she is like a realistic single mother,

world-weary, still horny, and very funny and sarcastic. And here she is just an evil pusher but i will say pamela reed is bringing it with this voice acting in this one scene i i love her their main side effect is greatness she's just so just beaming with steroid energy but uh uh yeah not like this not like this don't bring her back for this i do love that she compares it to tumors is something that occurs naturally in the body also that yeah she's Pamela Reed was handed and I this could have been any character I think it was just them remembering oh yeah we could have this character back but I think also they

misremember that she so Ruth is not introduced as an ex-con in her previous appearances do they think that she went to jail at the are they misremembering that she goes to jail at the end of the Thelma and Louise episode? Yeah, yeah, I think they are under the impression that after Marge on the Lamb, she went to prison. But I believe she did make appearances, she was a pretty frequent background character after New Kid on the Block, and even after the incidents that happened in Marge on the Lamb. So, yeah, I don't know. She also, in breaking continuity, she appears in the flashback for Marge's baby shower, even.

Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah, totally true. Totally true. I think Marge got a head injury and forgot she met Ruth before. Yeah, so let's just say it was a misremembering of that. But, yeah, I think that her being like a pusher of steroids and also that she has a perfect body, I do wonder if she is like, to me, it now just reads as her hitting on on marge when she said you'd be pretty hot if you just got four inches to your neck like maybe it is that a prison joke like a like a light prison joke that well and of course

going to prison makes you gay as we all know and of course also if you have sex with a woman who has a lot of muscles you're basically a homo as well we with it we learned a lot from this episode of course i went to the simpsons wiki and you can if you look up a homo as well we we learned a lot from this episode of course i went to the simpsons wiki and you can if you look up a character you can see where they appeared and you know that when they have spoken lines it appears in bold and she's kind of like in every episode after march on the lamb because every episode has a crowd and she's in that crowd and she's very easy to identify so yeah there was no jail time for ruth powers i think james l brooks had big plans for her that then i i honest, well, you know, we'll

talk about it when we do that episode. That's next week. It's the next regular episode we do, but yeah, so it is next week, but all this, all this steroid stuff, uh, I sadly know a lot about steroid use because most pro wrestlers do it. So I learned facts about it. This was when the concept of roid rage was getting more well known in the public though i do think that it definitely in my opinion from seeing its effect on wrestlers i do think it can increase

your violent tendencies but also you probably were a psycho to begin with and it worsened your violence and on top of that i think well maybe just the tech has improved and people are using different steroids that have better effects now but back then an entire generation of my favorite wrestlers are mostly dead because they did a ton of drugs and muscle relaxers mixed with steroids which leads to an enlarged heart that gives out in your early 40s and they all had to become drunks because they couldn't get health care right yep well also if it's the end of the day of a very long day of travel, then what are you going to do? You're going to pop a couple somas for muscle relaxers and then down alcohol. And sometimes you don't wake up when you do that or you develop, at the very least, a horrible addiction that will take you decades to beat, if ever.

So, yeah, no, I mean, steroids are they are bad. I'm sure there's people who could tell you like, ah, you can handle it. Just don't overdo it or all that. But yeah, I mean, this is just uh i guess uh hubbub or whatever hollywood hubbub as i call it but i hear that you know these mega hunks are just selectively on steroids for a very short period of time to get like the one shirtless scene in the movie perfect or just to to turn kumail nanjiani into like a hulking beast perhaps yes yeah allegedly allegedly in a video game unlike in this episode too it's like well actually they it's it's clear in this episode as well steroids don't instantly give you muscles they make it easier to grow muscles and work out and

they help you recover i mean i read one wrestler's autobiography where his pro steroid statement was one pro wrestling is not a competition like bodybuilding is so you're not getting an illegal edge and two a big thing that steroids does is help you heal your muscles as in you know and working out is like technically tearing muscle so if you take steroids your muscles heal faster so they get bigger faster and also just doing the job of pro wrestler you're beating up your muscles all day so steroids help with that too but yeah you you don't get green eyes i'm gonna tell you that right now that does not happen i don't think you chug uh i mean the one the weird thing about this is if you're going

to do the anti-drug thing at least show how the drugs are actually taken marge just takes it like spinach basically i mean that's why you heard the popeye sting if marge got a shot in her butt it would be weirder i guess they didn't want to do that this is also around on the commentary where they literally use the term mannish to describe talking to female bodybuilders and i remember a lot of uh you know there was the uh the tragic story of the life of the pro wrestler china yeah joan laurie who she faced a shitload of this cruelty in her life i was definitely thinking of the wrestler Chyna and all the jokes that I can remember,

many of which were actually on the programs featuring her. It was a bad time for this kind of thing. And this made me realize that it's really transphobia month on Talking Simpsons because this month, I think it just happened, but we also covered the Futurama episode Bend Her, which is another can of worms. So we're having a lot of fun in 2003, folks, with these topics.

Also, just to let you know how much it was normalized then and why this feels crazy now is, I remember Howard Stern also just a regular segment on his show would be getting in female bodybuilders to mock in this way. He would have them on in person to say that they look like men or ask like but you were a man right or say do you know you have sex with this guy or whatever like all these things like it was just normal it's not good but it was like just to let you know how that's how things were 20 years ago yeah and we start getting into that territory with

marge adding estrogen blockers to her workout cocktail or whatever. It's just like, oh, she's losing her womanhood, everybody. Yuck. So this stuff about her supplements, I will say when I work out, I actually did it just yesterday after I did my arm stuff. I do do a little bit of basically one of my diet things too is I'm trying to in the morning instead of eating like anything for like breakfast or even an early lunch, I just have like a protein shake, which is, you know, 30 grams of pea protein and other like non-dairy proteins. And when I was looking up like, oh, but what's your stack? Like what do you, as in your pre-workout drink, your mid-workout drink and your post-workout drink? Like that's what Marge is doing here.

It's the stuff you put in you right before or after you exercise. But every time I looked at the stacks, uh, like listing, I was like, Jesus Christ, this all just seems like I'm sure it does have an effect, but it just seems like a scam.

Every page I went to was just like, well, here's the $800 of stuff. You need to put in a blender before you lift a barbell. Lucky for you, this stuff don't work. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. But the, the protein drinks are at least they're not, honestly, they're basically like a Nestle quick Quick that's good for me is basically what it tastes like to me. Just a nice little chocolate drink. Yeah.

I mean, I have a protein bar for breakfast. It's like a candy bar that's good for me. But yeah, so as Marge is taking all of her stuff, she then becomes Superman, which also like Al Jean feels bad about. He's just like, oh boy. Also, I feel like that estrogen blocker for minty zing i feel like there was probably a worse line there i think could be uh could be but yes this we have a quick little joke here that takes takes auto to a new level not so fast bus boy

man what am i smoking oh yeah but that's a good. And you've got it written by Carolyn Omine, the acceptor of the High Times Award for the show, writing that joke. Yes. Yeah, yeah. We have, like, I guess it is not an endorsement of pot in this episode, but just, like, a fact of life. Like, the bus driver is driving while high and picking up your children. Now, so I wanted to mention one thing, Henry, and I just looked it up now while the clip was playing. Like many issues with On the Simpsons in this era there's a King of the Hill that handles it much better

and it's not steroid use but there's an episode from 2003 called The Incredible Hank in which Hank is like basically feeling very low T he's not a lot of energy at work or in bed and just very like very low energy so Peggy starts doping his coffee with testosterone and he

becomes a real roid rage guy so that that's a much more fun episode of of a show that's dealing with you know altering your body in negative ways for short-term gains my first thought when you said king of the hill i was thinking of the one where bill gets in shape and becomes a bodybuilder oh yeah there's that one too i don't know if steroids play into that one but um i know macho man's on that episode right yes who he was a big fan of steroids macho man was marge then like he's so strong she can pick up the bus and rip the back of it off of it and just waves at everybody with the bumper like uh she's she's gotten big and yeah it's just like you know things they're turning her into superwoman and i but i also don't think marge has a bad body in

this bit too but okay i guess it's time to talk about one of the worst moments in the show oh absolutely so in this in this next scene here marge she wants to snuggle homer wants to talk about his feelings and he's using it to segue into you know i feel that you know using steroids is wrong or whatever and marge mounts him says let's do it uh homer is trying to rebuff his bulky flower as he calls her and she says i wasn't asking and then we cut to him uh looking exhausted sitting at the breakfast table now i will say i won't use the term ripped off for this joke but it's the same joke that family guy did two years earlier on an episode called lethal weapons it's an episode in which lois gets buff and this exact same joke happens, except Family

Guy takes it more in a rape joke direction in which Homer acts, sorry, Peter rather, acts like a victim of sexual assault after the incident happens. I'm glad they don't do that here. It seems like Homer enjoyed his time, even though he limps away at the end. But yeah, same joke as family guy in The Simpsons you never want to see that no no but of course when you're going to end up copying family guy if you're doing a joke that's sort of about being a sexual predator like if yes like oh man it's family guy did every joke about consent and I I don't know if Carolyn Omine wrote this

joke but I'm sure all the men on the writing staff would or thinking, yeah, it'd be terrible if a woman dominated me and forced me to have sex with her. I would hate that. Yeah, it's, ah, boy, it's weird. I mean, it also does seem to be arguing for like, well, the man should be doing this to the woman a little bit here. That's what's wrong. But I also, I feared at first when Homer, okay, not to get too lewd, but so the reason

Homer is walking in pain it's because his hips hurt from Marge riding him is that oh she's on top yeah definitely yeah the scene ends with her on top well again I feel like family guy would have done the joke that Homer's butt hurt to imply like pegging happened or something like that's that's what family guy would have done I'm not sure if 2001 family guy knew about pegging yet but yeah perhaps not they just had like peter at the breakfast table with stewie like crying or something like that it was similar that was a sad joke yeah very very similar joke but uh well also i feel like homer saying the line of uh afterwards to the kids your mom has a lot of stuff to shave i feel like he was he said a much dirtier joke about why marge wasn't there in the

morning yeah yeah but still uh you know again we're easing into transphobia here we're the we're the I feel like he said a much dirtier joke about why Marge wasn't there in the morning. Yeah, yeah. But still, you know, again, we're easing into transphobia here. We're the frog in the pot and the water's being turned up very slowly. But yeah, I mean, Homer, obviously Homer wouldn't want to have sex with Marge because she's bigger than him now. And that's disgusting. No man would want that. No, I mean, again, this is when they say on the commentary, like, dude basically married to a dude i was like yeah i mean hey it was 2010 common school of thought conventional wisdom we weren't talking about any like queer or trans issues out loud in that era so you know i can't blame people

too much and i'm sure if you ask them today they would be like well yeah i was dumb as hell back then i didn't know any trans people and this was a shitty thing to say also even from just like yeah it's baked in transphobia and also there's a bit of like you know people who would consider themselves feminists saying these things it's like oh so you define that a woman can only look one way that if she stops looking a certain way then you're not a woman anymore like that also is just cruel to even cis women as well oh yeah absolutely yeah not a fan of this does feel very mean-spirited yeah i mean hearing marge say i wasn't asking and then veins pop out that is a low yeah not as low as panda love but it's a low for me i mean i was referring to the next scene at the competition but yeah this is a mean-spirited joke too and we have like an episode in which the entire family comments on the smell of maggie's shit and then we have marge let's say to put it kindly forcing

herself on homer and we see the repercussions of that so we're brushing against some lows in strong arms of the ma happy 300th episode everybody yes yeah i again i'm i like you said i'm glad that this is not the 300th episode for that reason, which is so sad because I had so many nice things to say in the first hour of this podcast. But yeah, so after all this, it's time for the competition and another horrible joke. Now, let's meet the ladies who are doctors as sure as are women. The Iron Maidens. My caramba. I'm off women forever. doctors as sure as our women the iron maidens my caramba i'm off women forever oh boy well i mean we'll talk about it and bend her or maybe we have i forget the schedule but yeah this is not funny because this is a thing that people

want to do to children now and it doesn't make you laugh like it did in 2003 if you were of this mindset so yeah not a fan not a fan of this stuff the i mean just the very the topic that cannot leave our conversation of like the idea that these people have that they view like men are entering women's sports to to compete on a different level when you know if you're saying you're like no these are trans women shut up well so and again the fakeness of it the flimsiness of that argument too is from people who say they're not transphobic they just care so much about women's sports when as you see in this episode women's sports are a joke too in the mainstream like people don't view women's bodybuilding or women's basketball or women's

soccer on any particular level of seriousness or treated like economically as a real sport that men watch, but only if they can say like, well, wait, what if a trans woman were to compete here? Now I care. Yes, and I mean, I don't want to go on too long, but boy, I can't believe South Park kind of recently did an episode about this. I was done with that show for a very long time,

but I can't believe people are still hanging on after that like macho man, woman episode, whatever they called it. Yeah, that was for a very long time but i can't believe people are still hanging on after that like a macho man woman episode whatever they called it yeah that was basically a babylon b yeah headline it was a babylon b headline for about 22 minutes it did sicken me yeah yeah that was a real again when i thought like oh you guys learned your lesson on climate change maybe you also learned your lesson about your the extreme transphobia you had with the mrs garrison arc and like nope doubling down except now they can't do the joke that it's just disgusting they can't do that joke anymore that's too hateful apparently but they can be like uh sports we're worried about it in women's sports yeah i mean you're saying uh earlier henry you're totally right where these commentators

uh like don't retweet them to dunk on them you know just leave them alone because everything they say is in bad faith they don't believe in anything ben shapiro has actually no thoughts or opinions about barbie ben shapiro knows his hat is on uh stupidly and he doesn't care about it the fact that you're making fun of him gets him out there and that's all that matters it's all a bit uh even the even the wet ass pussy thing was a bit he was doing and he understood like i will look foolish but also millions of people will see my face and that's all i care about i feel like ben shapiro in particular he has become so rich off of that that it's like guys at least find a new person to dunk on it's 2023 dunking on ben shapiro is

meaningless and you're just making it more rich the only thing i want to read about ben shapiro or tucker carlson is their obituary found dead in their own home yes that's what i want to see otherwise i'll quote tweet dunk on that but otherwise not so much yes yeah sorry to be self-righteous but like we're living through a new wave of this and it sucks to see and it sucks to see a show i like enter this territory even when it was considered more acceptable i guess i i just it's like this is where we were as a society yeah and again they i mean they're getting a lot of fun or they're trying to find the fun in oh look at these women women shouldn't look like this like that's it's gross or weird and i mean

i wish if i could change another joke in here i wish they'd gone a little more with like i like that professor frank likes that this woman is hitting on him i want professor frank to be like oh yeah hey call me later like that's a fun pairing nerdy professor frank with this giant woman yes i like those two together it's great but also yeah the the song she sings by the way is the man who shot liberty valence which it's a great movie and a corny corny song but i mean i mean i don't want to linger on every transphobic joke but the frank joke is nice lady instead of uh you know saying nice lady like jerry lewis he's questioning are you a lady so yeah every joke is that kind of joke in this scene it should have just been like call me later or whatever like at least let one character or comic book guys right there too comic book guy

especially with his wonder woman fetishes should really want to be with these ladies like comic book guy should want this lady to tussle his hair instead yeah he loves xena exactly yeah aljean's talking constantly saying how uncomfortable he is seeing marge in this design and it is i mean it's extreme to see marge this way you're not used to seeing it but and also in in classic simpson style though marge gets second place no simpson ever gets to win a contest yeah why did they come just to boo her and you're wondering where i'm like you keep wondering where the show was going it's like okay she went to the competition uh well now what and then the final scene is just so weird it's just so bizarre i i feel like they

couldn't figure out a way to land this story because the logical conclusion was to end with marge attacking the robber and you know getting her revenge but i feel like they didn't have the confidence to follow the story of agoraphobic marge throughout an entire episode which is why we have the wacky third act fix get ready for las vegas style action at bet mgm the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service,

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Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? Well, and also to keep talking about how we think a King of the Hill episode did something better. We just did the To Spank With Love, which also is about Peggy has a traumatizing incident happen to her. And the response is to become an authoritarian and be too tough on it. And then in that one, she fixes herself and comes to a realization instead of needing her husband to give a speech. They actually pointedly don't let Hank Hill give hill give a speech to her yeah that's correct yeah he's denied

a few times to step in and fix things and yeah i handle much better it gives the character the dignity she deserves even if it is peggy hill and she's a bit of a pill but here it's like a man has to talk sense into marge it's like oh come on guys but yes first when she wins second place this also did remind me of like aren't there a lot of jokes in this season of husbands being made to do things not wanting to do their wife's dumb hobby because definitely it feels like the joke of like second place now this will just encourage her they're like god i hate doing this shit it must be uh you know i've never had an la wife but maybe they're into all kinds of kooky hobbies that

these these comedy writer husbands are like i'm trying to write a sign joke. I have to go to a macrame class? You're spending all my money on life coaching lessons? Come on. Or swing dance classes? But yes, so then we go to Moe's. And so this to me feels like somebody is pitching what a Schwarzwalder ending would be. But it just

it doesn't work and i uh let's just hear the clip here so then i pop my delts clench and bam not a dry eye in the house oh i'm so proud of you honey you bulked up but managed to keep your femininity and that's why i didn't win sorry sir sorry starting, I'm gonna up my glycol load, use a denser ripping gel... Denser?! Damn straight! I didn't sacrifice my period for second place! I hear that. Uh, listen, Marge. Um... How can I put this delicately?

I don't got enough booze in this place to make you look good. Maybe death will stop your yammering. Marge, easy. Everyone's pilot, almost white. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you mentioned how the scene will end with Homer talking sense into Marge. But what sets Marge off is a man doesn't find me attractive. Yeah, that's boy there there his mouth movements are so off

i shudder to think about what mo actually said in their first draft i have to assume it's much worse much much worse i i would assume he probably said did you grow a penis or something something something that bad uh i don't i don't need to pitch transphobic jokes why am i saying that look but i mean marge is finally going to kill mo as she should he's a bad guy and he's treated her marge terribly the entire time she's known him but yeah that i also do i do laugh at how lenny says everybody pile on homer's wife that's it's a fun extra line to add in there and this is a real like licensing bonanza at the end of this episode so first we hit love is a battlefield then we hear edda james is at last

and then relax by frankie goes to hollywood that that little joke there has to be like like a hundred thousand dollars right it's getting up there but yeah but like every time she the jukebox is hit it changes to a new song and they're just like some of them aren't appropriate for for a barroom fight which is fine but boy that's a lot of money and then we have anchors away which is not like it's public domain but then we also have adagio for strings which is public domain but it's also platoon so it's just like well let's get a platoon reference in here too that anchors away thing i was like well to make this more like a popeye fight right like is this but they're like i i think they didn't really decide correctly on how cartoony they wanted this barroom brawl to be or not in here.

I mean, my favorite joke in it is that we don't see Marge beat up the sailors. We just see them roll up their sleeves. And then when they leave, they sadly roll their sleeves back down. I wish they had that. Maybe they maybe laugh, but I wish they would have like walked across the street into a gay bar or something. There should have been like some funny destination for them. Yes, I am pitching jokes for a show that aired 20 years ago. I also think Disco Stu should have Disco Ducked. It's not worth pausing the screen unnaturally to add an extra line there.

I don't think that's a good one. At least play Disco Duck. Give Rick D some money. It's also funny to see the list of characters that like, okay, who can we have Marge beat the shit out of here? Charlie is there. Legs, but not Louie. Hans Moleman.

She's beating them all up. But yeah, so i've got the next clip here is homer's speech so yeah i was just dogging on it being kind of weak that it's like oh and then the husband gives a sweet speech but i'm glad his speech is about marge's nice qualities and he misses how she used to be a sweet caring person and it's not him saying you're an ugly giant like he's not saying that but also it's a bit loaded because he says he's reminding her of the woman she used to be the fear is she's no longer a woman or she's turning into a man or whatever they think is happening but i feel like they're hitting the uh the woman part of that pretty hard oh yeah well also on the commentary

the producers audibly wince when they show marge at her most hulked up as she's breathing hard with the guy with lenny over her head but yeah here's homer's little speech somewhere in the sea of full hormones is a sweet wonderful girl i married the woman who instead of swatting a fly, will give it a bath and send it on its way. I'd sure like to go home and have Chiffy Pop with her. Oh, my gosh. You're right. Steroids have turned me into everything I hate. Let's go home, sweetie.

Club Soda will get that blood out. Ugh. Well, there's only one way to recoup my losses. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Don't you have to buy insurance first? Oh, crap. Yeah, I did notice girl, woman, her in that speech. So they're really just letting you know like you need to be

feminine you need to have the qualities of a woman not this freakish man beast that you've become their words not mine doesn't it also make you sad that marge has to just go back to how she was before she can't even be just kind of in shape like she is in act two like no marge you have to stop exercising entirely she has to burn her weights in this giant furnace, which is a funny gag. I mean, it's funny to see that, yeah. I was thinking it right as they said it on the commentary of like, Moe's going to kill everybody in this bar. Like, it's a bar full of unconscious people, and so Moe's going to burn it down with people

inside to kill them. This is like the fifth time he's lit his bar on fire for insurance. I feel like the insurance company should stop taking his calls. It's an old scam marge i feel like marge could lose a little size but instead not only does she have to get rid of her workout equipment and just get back to normal but also i really don't like this last joke that it seems to be like finally the man is initiating sex as he is supposed to in the final scene here you know i really do miss being a lady. And I miss being your knight in flabby

armor. Oh, mate. Ready for a real workout, Marge? Good. Can you wax the car? Oh, oh, oh, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Yeah. And then the sting one more time.

Once again, I mean, we've talked about this, but I miss being a lady. It's just that all these things that you never would have thought twice about if you watched this like a decade ago or longer, maybe like 15 years ago, they just hit so differently now and it just feels so ugly. Yeah, it's much uglier now in feeling. Again, I don't want to, I don't think the intention back then was that horrible, but you know, intention only goes so far. I, again, I don't think they do this now at all,

but I do kind of wish the last joke was at least, maybe Homer could like being picked up by her. Like, you know what, you know, you don't have to lose all your arm strength. I kind of like being picked up, something like that. it's like oh you're gonna be a lady again and i'm the man who will initiate sex as is proper in our relationship is now about gender norms yeah it's it is so reinforcing gender norms again it's like there's a way to do this ending where marge is like you know what i did go too far in body improvement but i should just keep working out but it's also crazy that this is the same season.

They do this the same season she gets boobs when trying to get liposuction because she's worried she is slightly fat. Yeah. I mean, we have cat Marge, boob Marge, buff Marge all in one broadcast season. It's the Marge transformation season. We've hit them all now. Yeah. It's a crazy season.

I wish it was at least a little farther from Marge having big knockers. Like, do one or the other. And I know it's it's a crazy season i wish it was at least a little farther from march having big knockers like do one or the other and i know it's production wise it's the previous i said broadcast i said broadcast yes let the record show i was saying that for the list your honor yeah i said broadcast but yeah i uh boy i this third act that needed another rewrite i think this is in general and i'm glad algin can cop to it on the commentary. He gets too sweaty on third acts and goes for, he too often goes for wild swings on the third act instead of the natural story.

It's like you said, Bob, the ending is when she beats up or gets revenge or reconciles in some way with her mugger. That's the natural end to the story. So just build up the second act some more and then make that the end of the episode with the mugger that's the natural end to the story so just build up the second act some more and then make that the end of the episode with the mugger yeah yeah i'll reiterate what i said earlier in that like i feel like this could have been a good emotional story about marge

overcoming trauma but like you said henry it ends too early and then it's a detour to transphobia town uh and it's not fun to watch that uh especially now and you know it ruins what could have been a good story and it's also a bunch of transphobia which i'm not down with and it just you hate to see a thing you like get that ugly but uh yeah this is an unfortunate episode that i would not recommend i've just watched the first two acts it's a complete story and then you're done how about that if they were to make this episode now there there'd be an entire thing about marge just having people on instagram messaging her posts with like crush me mommy like everybody loves giant ladies on instagram oh workout workout fitness model absolutely yeah yeah they didn't know

what we'd be into or what people were currently into they weren't on the internet enough in 2003 they didn't know aljean turns on the internet to see what simpsons fans are saying about him then turns it back off again doesn Doesn't look at anything else. Well, again, I love Al Jean, but we need a PA to teach him how to use his phone and how to post screenshots. Because whenever I see Al Jean post an image, it's always his entire phone. The entire image of whatever's on his phone. You can always see what battery level is Al Jean at? Well, look at the latest picture he posted.

You'll see it. You can see the Google search he made to find the picture of an episode that he did yes oh yeah teach us a PA on the Simpsons teach Algin about Frankie Eck as well I think he would really love it if he knew how to use it yeah we're trying to help him we're trying to help Al but uh yes thank you for listening this episode folks if you want to support the show and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking Simpsons sign up for five bucks a month you get just that but also access to everything behind that five dollar paywall that includes over 150 full-length miniseries episodes covering things like the critic mission hill batman the animated series

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over four or five or even six hours long last month we covered the anime classic of 1986, Project Echo. And at the end of this month, we're going back into the live-action world of Muppets for The Muppets Christmas Carol, another total classic and perfect to set up for the holiday season. And we've done five whole years of What a Cartoon Movie, over 200 hours of What a Cartoon Movie at your fingertips. Everything from Akira to A Goof goofy movie is right there for you sign up today to even hear our longest podcast ever six and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit it's all there and the five dollar things bob mentioned at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast is

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I'll call for help. No, hurry. I got plenty to read. I'll call for help. No, hurry. I got plenty to read. Woo, Twilight Zone magazine. Oh, no. My glasses are broken.