Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Sweetest Apu With ToonrificTariq

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

This week's big first-time guest is the great YouTube video essayist ToonrificTariq, and we welcome him for a season 13 episode about Apu's infidelities! After a quick Civil War reenactment, Homer learns that Apu is cheating on Manjula in a story that is very of its time with the gender politics of infidelity. All that, plus a ton of talk about James Lipton, the mysterious lack of Jan Hooks, and so much more. So grab a Smooshie and listen along! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod! and our Instagram! Also, check out our newest shirts on TeePublic!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talking of the Hill, 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 our beds are the murfiest. I'm your host, the lightbulb gourmand, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? You can run, but you can't glide.

It's Henry Gilbert. And who do we have on the line? Our special guest today. I call the big one Bitey. Oh man, it's the little one. Well, I'm Tomb Riffick Tariq. It's great to be here. And this week's episode is The Sweetest Apu. In a Civil War reenactment, we need lots of Indians to shoot. I don't know which part of that sentence to correct first, but... This week's episode originally aired on May 5th, 2002.

And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby. Foolish by Ashanti tops the charts. The Nick's Tune cable channel is launched. And Spider-Man is number one at the box office with a record-breaking $114 million weekend gross. Oh, we're finally here. Yes, I've been teasing like, oh, Spider-Man's almost here.

Spider-Man's almost here. Now Spider-Man is truly arrived. And there's stars in the eyes of a young Henry Gilbert. I was waiting literally, I think it was 1992 was when I first read as a child that Spider-Man was coming. There'd be a James Cameron Spider-Man movie. And then 10 years later, after a whole lot of stuff happened, there was finally a Spider-Man movie. And yes, I could not have been more excited until Spider-Man 2 came out. And I was even more excited.

And yes, did it start this era of everything being super hero movie that we live in today yes yes it did uh it's a dark time for movie we're in hell but spider-man love it but it's a it is still a great movie i would say and uh yes the nicktoons cable channel i think that's where a lot of us saw if you you were looking for archived Nicktoons until they started all coming out on DVD and now they're just all on Paramount Plus, usually they were taped off of the Nicktoons channel and you'd see the Nicktoons logo in the corner of it. Absolutely. And do you know how long it took before this channel drifted into just showing, I don't know, Zoe 101 or whatever live action stuff they were doing at the time?

It's like, they were doing at the time oh that's like uh they they started doing that in like god like 2016 or 17 or something when they just kind of started to bleed in the sitcoms that they kicked off the original channel well i'm surprised it took that long because uh disney's uh cartoon channel really drifted pretty early yeah because they uh they hit the rebrand they used to be tuned disney and then like they hit the rebrand and then it flipped to Disney XD, which I guess was their way of, they were trying to do like a boys thing.

I think they're chasing, chasing to Nami. I bet again, I wouldn't know Jetix if it wasn't for, Oh, I want to watch gargoyles online. And the only place that it was were people who taped the Jetix off TV. And yeah,

the, uh, foolish by Shanti is top of the charts it's i only really know it because the music video that uh recreates scenes from goodfellas and terrence howard is the bad boyfriend in it i gotta watch that again i haven't seen that since i was a kid but i i hadn't seen it in a long time i was like oh wow it's one of those things where you if you watch an old music video, you're like, wait, that's a movie star. This has one movie star in it.

Yeah. And yeah, it's a bunch of scenes from Goodfellas. Weird. But recreated, right? Recreated, yes. Interesting, interesting. Terrence Howard is Henry Hill in it, basically. My wife and I were recently looking up old music videos.

We looked up Ashanti's What's Love. I guess it's a Fat Joe featuring Ashanti song it's a great song but it's also on the Joanna man soundtrack so technically it's a Joanna man video I want to say no my memories are they're really ashamed of that connection so Joanna man's kind of playing on a TV in that i think the joanna man clips are very limited but you know what i've never seen joanna man and i believe tommy davidson in it he always makes me laugh yeah tommy's great tommy's great i feel bad for that actor whose name i can't think of now because every time i see him in anything i go like hey it's joanna man i go like i should

really learn this actor's name you still have no i i feel like i did look it up once and now it's gone again. It's Miguel A. Nunez Jr. Okay. He was famously killed by Jason, I believe. See, that's when I watched, I think it's what, part five? I think it's part five. Friday the 13th. I was like, oh, it's Juana Man.

That's when I felt bad for the first time. I'm like, I really should kill him. Miguel A. Nunez. Okay. And you know, Spider-Man and its music videos, we all remember those with Sum 41, Spider-Man jumping around and they stick to the ceiling. What about Creed? It's just Chad Kroger in the hero song.

Love his groceries. Good stuff. But anywho, that's what happened the week this aired. And joining us today is a new guest. We have Toonrific Tariqik with us today maker of fantastic youtube videos welcome to the show for the first time tarik thank you so much thank you for having me this is like a this is like an honor it's like a i feel like i got my stamp as a simpsons fan now our our discord we were telling beforehand that our discord really enjoys your uh videos too that's how we got into

i've been watching them a lot over the last definitely the last uh year and a half. And I really, well, one of my favorite recurring things that made me go like, oh, we should invite him on the show was you often start videos with a clip from The Simpsons that's related to it. So you must be a pretty big Simpsons fan, man. Yeah, absolutely. I started doing that because I have pockets in my life where I just have like, I've always been a Simpsons fan, but I have pockets in my life where I just have this like massive hyper fixation. Like it like comes back after a while. And when I started to do the videos a lot more, it was like right in the middle of that. And I would just, my brain would just say like, there's like, the Simpsons has been on so long and they've done so many things that you can just find a reference for anything. And doing that was my way of proving that, I guess.

It only gets hard when, if I do a video on a show a second time or something like that, then it's like, okay, well. Either I find a joke that has to do with the theming or like now i'll opt out sometime to do like a family guy bit because that's that's also simple too but most of the time it's simpsons for sure oh and another of my favorites that i really enjoyed i think it was the first time i i added you on twitter was the your your interview you've done uh it's in two different videos but the the first uh video you did of your interview with dan haskett i i really enjoyed because i had never really seen him talk at length before about uh his work on the simpsons among a bunch of other stuff right yeah i um that was one thing i i know because i've like looked up to him

my whole life and that was one thing that i noticed was that uh when people talk to him they they ask him and rightfully so i guess right like they ask him about like ariel or like any of this stuff that he did at disney but like just finding out that he designed these characters that like have been around like all like this long and also like you know that's that clip that gets shared on twitter all the time like of uh of bart and uh the babysitter bandit the clip where uh she hands him the tape yeah and i that and like the chipmunks were two things that like i really wanted to ask him about uh just because i felt like and i mean the video kind of proved that he hasn't talked about that stuff a lot because the wikipedia said he designed edna

and he told me no to my face and then when i when i went back to it like a week later after the video came out that was removed so i think think I think I did something good there. That's good. Yeah, he's his career is is nuts when you look at it. Absolutely. Yeah, he's I mean, for for some artists, if they were so influential in the designs of like the first season of The Simpsons, you'd know it immediately. But for a guy who's like worked on legendary Disney stuff alone for his whole life and then tons of freelance gigs, like it's,

it's incredible what, what Haskett has done. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, and your chipmunks video was really great too, which I, I also liked because, you know, you are a little younger than me and Bob. And so I was like, Oh, it's interesting to see. Like I chipmunks came out when I was like four or something so I I watched it a lot as as a kid when it was new but you came into it you know on like DVD right yeah for sure like I um when I was a kid I had a sing-along VHS of the Alvin show and that was it like one day I was I would just

watch it on repeat one day I remember watching it and saying, like, do they ever, like, is there, like, more of whatever this is? And then that, like, led me to, it was, it was, like, it, there's a movie and there's a show from the 80s and went to the 90s, like finding out all of that. So I guess you could say I consumed it in the right order. You know, not a lot of people have that. They could say they consumed it in the right order. I also wanted to thank Tariq for doing a public service in that I've been watching your reviews of all of the peanut specials, all the Charlie Charlie Brown specials because I have no idea what most of them are about. As a little kid, I remember being in the video store and seeing, I don't know, maybe 30 Peanuts tapes and getting

so excited. I think I made it about four in before I tapped out. I'm not watching Arbor Day special, but The Girl in the Red Truck or whatever, that was the first time I ever heard anyone talk about it or review it and you had a really great take on that. This very weird Roger Rabbit-y special starring Charles Schultz's daughter as the babe that Spike the Beagle is after.

Very bizarre. And she's had, like, four acting roles, and maybe that was the last one. I think, ah, man, what is it? It's Flash Beagle, I think. In Flash Beagle, she did, I guess rotoscoped her um for some of the dancing and that too uh because her name is in the credits there uh as well i think it's like credited as like aerobics or something like that but yeah i i don't know i don't know like um around it at a certain point in like the the 80s like those specials they just kind of let schultz do whatever

sparky was getting goofy with it well yeah i was also curious you know uh we often have a lot of people from the same generation as us who we all have like this kind of we actually try to fight against it on here but there is agreed upon narrative of like when simpsons got bad when the good but like well so for you you know getting into the series like you were pretty young when this episode first aired what what did you as a as a simpsons fan but not of that generation like view of that whole narrative of what is the good seasons of simpsons or not yeah i was when i when i was when i was a kid and i started to go online more and i started to see the narrative that there was like a

there was like a cutoff i definitely like adapted to that for a while. But then when I started to get older, I also, because like, I started to watch the Simpsons every week around like 17, maybe like season 17. And to me, I was just watching the Simpsons. You know what I mean? Like, it was like, it wasn't really that different until I was told that it was. And then like, as I got older, like it it's definitely like like a different show in all in like practically every 10 years you can call it a different show but like i do i do a podcast about adult animation with my my friend johnny my good friend johnny two cellos and like we we both kind of because he's he's he's older than me johnny uh johnny's older than me by a few years and we both

kind of came to the the understanding that like we don't necessarily think that the Simpsons got bad we just kind of think that it got different like it just kind of morphs and changes and like it adapts with like the time period and if it was the same if it stagnated that would be like like the real issue I don't know I'm a lot nicer to uh a lot a lot of this show uh more than uh a lot of other people are a lot of episodes that like get a lot of the show more than a lot of other people are. A lot of episodes that get a lot of hate, I just kind of think are really funny. Well, I mean, I think we started this podcast of the generation who believe,

well, after season nine, it's over. Who cares or whatever. Maybe we would say maybe season 10. But now, of course, there are things to dislike about the post-season nine or 10 era, but we're finding things to like. This episode has both of them. Yes. I agree.

Things to hate and like. I agree. This is a weird episode. And on top of the whole, there's a whole Apu thing about it, which I, as I always say, if you guys want a really in-depth discussion about the poo episode or the appu situation i would definitely say listen back to our episodes of much poo about nothing and the two misnowspian petalons with our our guest shivam uh he gave us a ton of insight into uh its portrayal of the indian and indian american immigrants uh so i don't think we're going to touch uh i mean we're going to be talking about it but if you guys want a deeper discussion of that i think uh the check out those episodes

always point people back to those guys i also think they were really good podcasts they're great podcasts thanks to shivam uh but uh but yeah i mean also this kind of is an episode uh written by angry husbands toward their wives I mean, we were talking about this behind the scenes and I mean, some of these men on this staff at this time had been divorced. Some of them would be divorced. I'm not going to pin it all on one person because they're all of a certain generation

who believe certain things about men and women, of course. I will say perhaps Dana Gould has a bit to do with this because, you know, he's happily remarried now. He's got another wife and they seem very happy but then I see him posting stand-up on Instagram and it's happily remarried now he's got he's got a another wife and they seem very happy but then i see him posting stand-up on instagram and it's new stand-up he's doing but it's the same like 80s 90s battle of the sexist thing where he's like i know how to be a husband now i apologize before the argument starts jokes like that jokes like women only want

you to apologize and you know it's always like these little petty squabbles and things like that where i want to think generations have become more enlightened but maybe not but it is of an older mindset and we we criticize the uh the battle of the sexist stuff in futurama as well it's from that era from that generation as well yeah definitely we me and uh me and johnny we talk about johnny hates that um there's an episode in the revival season of Futurama where they switch genders. I forget the name of it, but it stinks on ice. Yeah. Yeah.

No, this, I mean, this one definitely seems to be of the opinion that Apu is bad for cheating, but he was sort of driven to it or it's like they, they seem to take it. And then on top of that, the temptress in it is just like she's nothing like she's not a character right yeah yeah that that was that was that was an issue that i had not only that but like we you were just talking about like things from the later seasons that you like like and dislike and like this this prioritize and then the first act that prioritizes the war reenactment stuff over like, why does Apu feel the way that he does? That's what I noticed.

And I wouldn't necessarily say that it like hurts the episode too much, but it's definitely like something that I noticed. Like they almost expect us to understand why Apu would even do this to begin with. He says it. He can't have sex with his wife. There. Yeah, that's enough. Yeah, that's all I can say. They think it's self-evident to the viewer

why Apu would cheat. And honestly, this episode, it ends the four-episode arc between Apu and Manjula. Of course, they appear in the future, not so much anymore, but this is kind of the end of their story. And I think this episode really sells out both characters because Apu was the polite overworker.

And then he became the very beleaguered husband and father. And after this, he would be the viciously henpecked husband. And his wife would be especially cruel to him because the bitterness of this did not end and manjula went from you know a sweet and plucky and independent uh woman to this awful harridan this this this squawking hen uh this is in the shows in the show this is what the show thinks this is not what i think but i feel like her character is really tarnished by this episode she's a real ball buster as it as the show from this point on now i want to uh it's also worth noting again that one woman was a writer on the staff at this time uh carolina mine and not a particularly powerful member of the staff

at the time either so uh yeah i mean if you watch modern day episodes uh about relationships and marriages between uh men and women i think they have a little more nuanced things to say about about both sides of it but yeah it's uh unfortunately this commentary tells you almost nothing about how this episode was made because james lipton is there for it and they're just like talking they're literally interviewing james lipton the entire commentary so you learn next to nothing about the episode itself which and asking him things that are easy to find even at the time like how did the actor's studio begin yeah no he seems a bit annoyed that they're asking him james lipton being a better

interviewer is just like do we really want to go into that here i was like yes listen to james lipton algae and like come on it uh yeah the uh episode is written by john swartzwelder the uh though you were saying you didn't say it feels like much I don't know why this was assigned to maybe Tariq you can weigh in on this I don't know if you have any thoughts but John Swartzwelder these are not the kind of stories he writes I I assume he didn't pitch this I think it was assigned to him what I think happened is he wrote the first act and passed it off to the divorced men in the room and that was that was that because the first act with all the Civil War stuff that is such a Swartzwelder thing because he loves old timey stuff.

But he does not care about A, writing about women and B, writing about relationships. No, no. Yeah, yeah. I think I've. Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't really think about it all that much, too. But there's even a couple Schwarzwelder type gags in the first act with one of my favorite gags in the episode and it's so early is when homer is pitching like a new flavor and he just says grape i feel like the swartzwater stuff

goes away uh in the last couple in the in the in acts two and three the whole thing about apu having to eat a light bulb that does feel like something swartzwell yeah yeah the and and the life chart feels a little like him yeah that too that's it but yeah no i mean well and yeah it's not to get uh swartzwalder is a very private person but to get a little into his personal life like seems like he has never been married like ever and he's uh he doesn't seem to be that into it uh it seems like a bit of a loner and this is i'm just taking it from mike reese's book about uh the show that he said swartz welder like would often write scripts where marge and lisa would not appear in it and they'd have to add them in later right okay

i was wondering where i heard that before i didn't want to like say it out loud and be wrong but that is okay that i heard it from i heard it from that book yeah absolutely i've heard that too uh but yeah so the uh i guess uh the episode begins though with the horrors of fatherhood like it's just again like straight uh straight away children are awful and your wife doesn't care and you're and you're suffering at all times like this and people say you and i are mean about dads henry this is like being a father is hell on earth yeah you're you work to death and you can't even get sexual release like that's the it's oh and also this is the funny thing they do one of the few things they actually say about the episode on the commentary is they acknowledge that the octuplets age faster than maggie that the octuplets

were conceived when maggie was a baby they are now like basically like two or three and talking and maggie is still just maggie and so this is it's one of the things they never really address but they it's it's funny okay because i was i was wondering about that i just thought i was misremembering i was like okay i guess they were always toddlers but yeah i guess not no yeah the episode where they're born like it starts with mandula getting baby fever from seeing maggie going like oh isn't maggie so cute like so yeah maggie is is ageless that's uh as as established here but yes our first clip here is uh showing how unhappy their relationship is mandula why did you bring the octoplasm to work? This is supposed to be our special time together.

Some special time? I get to stand around watching you sell fatty poisons to overfed Americans. You think that would deter me? But no! Look, please can you just take the children home? The porno magazine buyers are too

embarrassed to make their move. Look. Come on. It's good designs on all the porno buyers. I like that a lot. Yeah, this is in the early, you know, pre-internet days when you had to go. I worked at a video store a few years after this that did have a porno section. And you'd see the last of these

type of guys roaming around there and i just want to tell them like guys the internet man the internet exists like you don't you don't gotta rent these anymore get out of here yeah now the elephant in the room of course you heard it up front uh this is not the lovely uh and now deceased jan hooks this is a tress mcneil uh in an odd appearance for Manjula's real finale as a character even though again she'll come back again and again mostly as Tress and Jan Hooks will voice her one more time yes in the series too but yeah it's it's really weird that Manjula is not voiced by Jan Hooks in this episode and I think Tress it's also a white woman voicing an Indian woman but the other white woman did it better yeah actually I think I think Tress mcneil is voicing mandula as like a more vicious and crueler character much

meaner yeah she really is it's one and so this is again another thing they don't talk about on the commentary but it is now just a total mystery which is i'll i think this is good time to reveal it jan hooks definitely recorded some of this episode and they animated to it i don't know when they replaced it at what point but she is and i i have the proof here because there is a deleted scene later that's on the dvd that they did not re-record uh with uh with tress mcneil and so here a quick clip of that oh sorry i'm late i was spitting on apu's things and the time just slipped away see that's that's jan that's bizarre yeah that's bizarre yeah so they definitely recorded her but

she then for some of this and we know from some of their production notes that sometimes if they can't get an actor back to sub in some lines and they're like well for consistency's sake we'll re-record everything with somebody but i don't know to lose to lose their big name guest star and just replace it with one of their regular voices and tress mcneil like i don't want to assume like there's some juicy or spicy reason for it because she did come back she did come back yeah but it's just it's really weird and i do think tress plays this meaner like you just hearing that one little clip of manjula there it's like i don't know she's a little like softer and more human too instead of just like a cruel ex-wife i i don't know three what do you think yeah i'm not i get i totally get what you mean uh the delivery

in the the second one is like it's almost like playful a little you know but like she's like really like hard on this whole episode yeah i don't know and you get you get it because like i mean later in the episode you get it because like hapu is just like the worst this whole time but yeah not out the gate she's just like like really cruel and uh i feel like comic book guy here is the one eating garbage because homer has to enter the scene later so this can't be homer eating garbage and uh and also mo he bought that porno real fast and then then drove over to to get in his outfit for the civil war reenactment but yeah so i also think the animators did a really good job of like okay eight children growing crazy at a convenience

store what would that look like and they are they they are messing everything up so then we have a quick fade to homer arriving he wants to get a keg of beer and a six-pack to hold him until he taps the keg and this is when he tells apu about their civil war reenactment which is funny because apu can't participate in this one but previously in the sherry bobbins episode he was stonewall jackson right there's civil war the south shall come again yes yeah uh there's something about apu and civil war reenactments it just uh and and then this is where the opening clip came in where i have he's at least winking towards the casual ignorance of people like the joke is not that apu is this silly foreigner who doesn't understand american culture the joke is more that he knows American culture better than Americans do. So I at least feel like I'm not trying to say like, oh, this is really progressive.

But it does feel at least like it's in a better direction than it could be. And so, yes. But Apu also makes sure to list the reasons why he would do this is because he says that he works 22 hours a day and he has a frigid wife who uh it's like how do you not justify it i they want to have their cake and eat it too they just want to do a johnny carson joke and then they're like a homer should even just do the ed mcmahon laugh in reaction to it there there are a lot of these in this episode because later we have i'm sure i think there are at least three more because later Manjula calls Apu a Brahma queen and then Apu goes Mahatma, Mahatma, Mahatma

instead of Hamana, Hamana, Hamana. So boy, they love these. It's like, what is the most service level Indian stuff we know? How do we make a pun on that? This is when the squishy lady arrives. I cannot come. I work 22 hours a day and then I go home to a wife who will not touch me.

The Indian rope trick has become the Indian nope trick. The squishy lady! Oh my God. I know you must get this all the time, but can I suggest a flavor? Go ahead. Grape. Hello, Annette. how's life handsome oh take a penny leave a penny so i was gonna until i got this clip i was like i thought they didn't give her a name but they do

that her name is annette he says hi to her and annette but only once yeah this uh this uh tariq this is another thing we've noted that especially especially in Al Jean written things, sometimes they forget to give women names. They just are unnamed an entire episode. But there, I was like, okay, no. I was on name watch of like, okay, did they at least give this woman a name? But they only say it once. She is Squishy Lady or Squishy Woman

the entire rest of the episode. Yeah, because I didn't pick up on the name either because the entire time she is episode yeah like yeah that's because i didn't i didn't pick up on the name either because the entire time she is definitely squishy lady what and she has no agency like her the reason she exists is to have sex with apu that is she has no other she doesn't even i mean they could have at least had a scene where she goes like oh i'm not interested in anything like romantic apu i just want physical. But they don't even really, there's no reasoning behind her, really. I guess we only know that she has a nice house.

Yes, yeah. There's that, it's later in the episode, but it's so matter-of-fact when Apu goes to talk to her just to break it off. She's like, oh, so it's over? All right. And I don't even think

that's really the gag of the scene, but that's how it's written. Yeah, she's just kind of like a nothing character yeah i i would have liked you know but then they wouldn't have had time for silly things uh right but but yeah i would have liked to at least know like well why does she want to have sex with apu like does she but well and there's a deleted joke that makes her intentions even darker uh which we'll get to later when that scene comes but oh oh i missed this oh yeah yeah i uh but well you know if we if we draw if we dwelled on her we would not get all these f troop jokes up front yes by john schwartzwelder yeah so so we head to the battlefield i also do like they love lincoln jokes like it's the harvard writers they love to

joke about abraham lincoln so civil war lets him do a lot of that. And, uh, and I got to think, I say this every time we see a very complicated thing, but just imagine Matt Nastic and his, the animation side of guys. They're like act one giant battle with three different armies fighting each

other. Then a giant robot comes into like, it's nuts. It's nuts. What there has to do here. Yeah, definitely. The Simpsons will be right back.

A new Malcolm in 30. Now, can he keep a secret? Nope. It's a new simpsons when you really care about someone you shouted from the mountaintops so on behalf of desjardins insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care?

Whether you're in the greatest generation or not welcome to the break and a big thank you to our guest this week tarik of the channel on youtube tune rific tarik definitely check out all of his great stuff we were so excited to finally have him on the show we love his videos that he does on youtube he does a lot of fun chats about animation history i mentioned on the show but seriously if you're a simpsons fan start with the one he did interviewing uh animation legend dan haskett about his work on the simpsons among many other things thank you so much again to tarik for coming on he's welcome back anytime and also if you enjoy the talking simpsons podcast you should know that it's only possible because of the support of people at patreon.com slash talking simpsons

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$10 level everything from akira to a goofy movie spider-man into the spider-verse to beaves and butthead do the universe so much stuff there for you to check out please see for yourself one more time that is patreon.com slash talking simpsons and it's a uh fantastic pan across the battlefield here with uh we see the cletus and the hillbillies are on the uh the confederate side and thankfully i was i was on watch for this hibbert and carl both on the union side so i was like okay good i was on watch for that as well yes yeah um there's a fun misdirect of uh getting barney to drink beer which they tease that it's going to be barney then has like a major like alcoholic freak out and then he just goes like oh you're right it didn't do anything and then Homer just nods like uh-huh that that will happen next year though in the Spelling Bee episode season 14 that's right

they're they're pretty uh Tariq at this point they're kind of done with sober Barney like they don't they don't like writing Barney sober anymore I mean, he isn't, I can see that he's harder to write for when your crazy drunk guy now doesn't drink anymore. Well, and also, though, when you know how people actually fall off the wagon, like, this is a depressing moment because lots of people who, you know, are sober for a long time, they're like, ah, well, one drink hurt. Then they have one drink, like, see, nothing changed. And then quick fall down the

slippery slope there yeah i have a i have a friend of mine he recently he started to watch the simpsons with me like when new episodes would air and he was very confused because i because the for some reason the last time he watched the show barney was sober and i was like that was like 20 years ago it's so different now man it's not it didn't last that long i don't think he's been sober until uh since 2003 i think that was it exactly 20 years ago yeah i i think you know like in the movie which also is 50 16 years old now but in the movie like he is at an aa meeting but then they they really are just like oh if we want to have a joke about an aa meeting then barney will be there if you want to have a

joke of drunks at a bar barney will be there like it's it's entirely situational right because he's in both in the movie in both places he's he's as needed uh and so yes, we get the setup of the Civil War stakes. And I do like the spongy situation of like, well, okay, so that Springfield was both in the north, the south, and the east to keep them in, out, and next to the Union respectively. So stupid. Very sports water. And very stupid and uh yeah they uh so just to make sure it's clear to you like okay so they could be in any part of america uh springfield for that tour also great design on the east uh army that they're like in plaid outfits and very confused about where they are too i love it and uh so they start the i also really love the designs of uh skinner and quimby

in their uh also in their politician of the 1860s garb yeah it's good everyone needed new designs too yeah it's crazy oh yeah i didn't think about that yeah no every these are the things we only really think of and after watching commentaries where directors were finally able to say like boy yeah it's great to hear that this uh like this episode where they do three different storybooks that we have to completely design every character in the show three different times uh they the writers admit they often when writing the episodes do not think about how many new character models they're gonna have to put on their animations yeah that that's just that's just kind of what comes with an animated show that's like written by writers because i've learned that in just kind of making my own things

where it's like i learned what i do and don't like the draw and like what takes longer and what doesn't so i'll just like find myself creating like creative narrative cheats instead of like okay well let me not invent this whole new location that they go to um maybe they can do this on off to the side the battle begins i like that mo is just using it as an example excuse to hit a guy with a stick instead of pretending we see though for me the war is the war for me is over is hibbert says as he rides away which is i think like a famous saying and what i think it's i definitely think in like a ken burns documentary some letter to home said that line i tried looking it up it turns out a lot of people have said this okay oh really

when i searched for it online one of the most recent news stories was it was robert downey jr using that quote to say that this was his last avenger oh that's hilarious the war of earning millions and millions of dollars you know i've done it enough his bank account has won the war uh and as the fight continues we also get to see that uh stonewall jackson now no longer played by apu he's played by disco stew who's rollerblading around the battlefield. On grass. Way to go. Yeah. You know, pretty impressive.

And also, Homer's keg is stabbed and bleeds out, which he's sucking the wound. Keg rentals, no joke. They can be pretty expensive. I've never rented one, but I've heard from friends who were like, oh, for the party. Yeah, just to see it get stabbed here and then like what it what it becomes when he returns it this is such a lot more worse happened to it after i also think that i don't know they that that one guy in the confederate army should not be playing with such a uh sharp uh bayonet yeah seems dangerous so yes this is also when

we get to hear about the greatest generation. We are gathered here this Memorial Day to once again honor you World War II veterans. Truly you are the greatest generation. Keep it

coming, bro-car. Lauding your legacy is a labor of love. You're damn right it is. You can't thank us enough. Every generation stinks but ours. Uh-oh. Sounds like America's enemies are at it again.

Greatest generation to the rescue! And when I come back, i want a foot rub yes master you know whenever i hear that music i just think of uh bugs bunny or popeye cartoons i don't think of them in the actual like the like especially like hearing bugs bunny sing from the halls i'm out to zoom yeah pop i just ate spinach yes yeah yeah and uh yes tom brokaw in case you forget he did write a book in 1998 called the greatest generation and it was all about senior worship yes yeah it's it's it's saying that generation one before him they went through the depression and then they fought in world war ii no generation

ever had to do all that and blah, blah, blah. Like, I mean, you know, I think there's truth to it. But also it's like it sold a lot of books to seniors who were happy to read about how great they were and how they're the best. That makes all of this so much funnier because I definitely was laughing because I just like Abe saying keep it coming. I think that's hilarious. It's like, come on, give me some more. I like that. But like that makes it even funnier knowing that.

These old people cannot be satiated. They want a foot rub when they come back. I also, season 13 is the fist-shaking season. It happens twice in this episode. It's a great way to add some spice to your scene, the threat of violence. And I didn't know this because i have not watched uh like national news in a long long time but tom brokaw retired in uh two years ago in january 2021 so yeah okay

yeah i didn't know that these impressions won't get much traffic anymore he you know what that shows he stuck it out until the inauguration he was like okay i can't you know he was probably thinking i cannot do another four years from now. I cannot do another presidential race like I'm going to die. I'm time to enjoy my own generation. Though also in all that greatest generation stuff, I'm like, don't ask those people what they were doing in the 50s and 60s. You know, I'm reading here. He basically wrote two sequels to this book because it was so popular. The next year it was

the greatest generation speaks letters and reflections and 2001 an album of memories personal histories from the greatest generation so he was really milking this generation cow and i think there were multiple tv specials too like uh yeah but i do love like every generation stinks but ours that's uh i mean i feel like that's still today with every generation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, of course, all of this giant fight as the greatest generation joins the Confederacy,

which does not surprise me, to be honest. But we then get a reference that would be completely lost to time to me if it wasn't for Kevin Smith making it famous. Because I never saw the movie Wild Wild West. I never saw it, but I remember Cartman doing his own version of the Wild Wild West song and talking about the big metal spider. Oh, yes. Yeah, that's true. I forgot about that, but the reason I know is exactly why you know.

I never saw the movie either, but that's why I know too. Was it John Peters who wanted to put a giant spider in everything? Yes. Okay. That was, yeah. I could tell you the whole story, but just look up Kevin Smith's Superman Returns script story where he talks about how he was hired to write a script for the superman movie that was going to be made with tim burton part of it was working with a producer who all he wanted was a giant robot spider right if i'm not mistaken isn't that the that's the one with nicholas cage right is

because yes yeah okay yep because i saw that i saw like there's like a documentary on it i think it's called the death of superman lives uh and i saw that years ago and it like the the payoff of learning where that spider ends up years later is so funny i i think that that story is told by kevin smith is better than all but like three of his movies i think it's one of the best things he's ever done and i want to remind people that 20 plus years ago we would pay 20 to hear a kevin smith podcast essentially so if you see a podcaster today thank them yeah also the fun story with john peters is that if you see the movie licorice pizza if you know the kevin smith story it makes one scene in licorice pizza a hundred times funnier oh what i'll just well i'll spoil it the character of john

peters is in the movie uh like there's and he's played by bradley cooper cooper bradley cooper thank you bob yes yeah i've never seen it i only know one bradley yeah my roommates have been pitching licorice pizza as like one of our movie nights for a long time and i've never budged but that just might be the push that i've needed yeah no you'll you'll have a big laugh when you realize it hit me and my husband like hard like he says all right so bradley cooper in the movie playing john peters but we don't remember the name and then in the scene he stops and tells a character like you me we're from the streets and that's when i gasped like wait that's what kevin smith said that guy said this is this is a kevin smith guy so yeah

it's but did he make the webs made of nylon i love how he actually says like nylon has been released uh yes we we again feel for those animators like okay so first two giant armies then a third group comes in with tanks then a giant spider walks on the thing and hits covers them with webs like boy i i'm sure they were glad to instead later have to just do like a bunch of scenes in rooms of people people people talking in rooms but so uh the battle is over and uh homer needs to return the keg i looked up some local places i don't know if there's uniform but a deposit for a keg is often 15 to 20 percent of the cost of the keg itself so homer could be out about a hundred

bucks here i'd say uh and poor guy i also love how homer says why do you always take the side of local merchants that's a good line, too. So Homer returns the keg. This is when he also, I think it's funny and mean, but Homer doesn't know how to spell up whose name. Like, is he stupid or just never learned how to spell? Just stupid and ignorant. Yes, yeah. But this is when Homer makes a shocking discovery.

Now you just take the kids home. I've got to return this keg. Are you sure you can get your deposit back? It's in pretty bad shape. Why do you always take the side of local merchants? Now, Apu, when you gave me this keg, it had dents, and here's proof. Hey, Apu. Here's proof. A proof? That giggle is none of my business.

Or is it? Squishy lady, you've had less than eight kids, haven't you? Haven't you? Oh, boy. All right, boy. Well, I mean, it also feels like we talked about it up front a little bit, but it feels like the show is also trying to get you on Apu's side and make you think, come on, you can see why. Yeah, I don't get that either.

There's a few bits in this episode that I like that. Well, this one, one i mean this line especially just like uh it's it's a joke about a tighter uh vagina than another one right like i'm saying that i i'm gay i don't understand these things but i that's that is what i feel that joke absolutely is yes i mean too it's like see our dumb wives had to to have children and now their pussies aren't as good. Is this what the point is? Like, I don't understand. They ruin their bodies.

They won't let us touch. Yeah, it's so mean. I don't know. After that mean joke comes one of the best classic physical humor bits of this era. It makes me laugh every time. Homer, it's kind of like a Sideshow Bob rake joke style joke of repetition. But Homer continually backing out of places as the cue plays over and over again. We can't even do it justice on our podcast.

It's all visual, but it's so great. And I love how it comes back as he hops down the street backwards on the ladder at the end of the episode. Right, right. It's because it's so silly. And like it was it was making me laugh the whole time and like for some reason and that's just that's my fault for thinking that the bit was over but when he like laid in bed i'm like okay i guess that's it but then the thought bubble comes out and he dreams about that it's so funny yes that that gets me every time too and also that he enters his house

and we see him go up the stairs too not just the enter the house cut to the bedroom we see every moment of his travel to the bed and and yeah that all and i love the music joke of it too that like alf clausen it seemingly just composed like a four second sting and they're like all right repeat the sting don't embellish it don't make it better just play it in a loop just play it over and over also this is not on the dvd there's only two deleted scenes on the dvd but they definitely mentioned that i think animated a slightly dirtier shot of they definitely pause on homer's reaction longer and that's where you get the squishy lady eight kids line but they imply that they had like

a scene of like them getting into like kama sutra positions as they called on the commentary that apparently fox's censors did not like the the sexuality of it which i think you would just see arms and legs sticking up from behind the boxes i mean that's all it would be which again anytime i hear about that stuff i'm like i know what was happening on family guy in 2002 like there was way dirtier stuff 30 minutes later yeah i don't i never i never understood stuff like that like um there's like bits like in like i guess like futurama and like simpsons where like they wouldn't let them do stuff with like weed i guess but like and it's at the same time there were family guy episodes specifically about weed about like brian and like

explicitly showing like bags of weed and stuff like that i never got that i never understood why they weren't allowed to do stuff like that yeah it seemed like standards and practices like was really choosy on what i mean i think too definitely they're thinking about like reruns and different plays like well simpsons reruns are going to be everywhere so we can't at the time i don't in 2002 no one could have imagined that we'd be on season 23 of family guy family guy's gonna be over now is that crazy like family got 23 seasons hey american dad uh is it is going to be at 21 that's yeah pretty soon yeah but i support that it's it's it's bizarre what the simpsons being around so long has done to the rest of animation. We're still amazed by how long The Simpsons has been around, but nobody's batting an eye at South Park or SpongeBob.

You know what I mean? Those discussions of like, wow, that's still here is just kind of like, oh yeah, they still do that. It's almost, it would be weird if they didn't. Yeah. If you're newer than The simpsons then you're not old like the simpsons never stopped so nobody thinks of you as an old show right that's a good point i wonder if if the simpsons would have ended like in 2009 or something would all of these animated shows be going on for so long i think the simpsons just established you can just do this

forever right yeah definitely and i don't i don't i don't think family got helped because like half of the main cast is one guy who is the guy that made it who created it when he was 24 so like he he got he has so much family got left in him it's ridiculous yeah you know that's funny too because the yeah the creators of the shows in the late 90s and early aughts like also matt and trey on south park they were dudes in there like early to mid 20s so they can they're going to be doing this another like 20 years uh but you know outside barring any crazy accidents or whatever right but yeah i you know what these all these shows that aren't the simpsons but are now over 20 years old they should all be thanking the simpsons for giving them kind

of like critical armor because nobody is writing like uh south park really has been on too long or family guy's been on too long because it just feels new yeah even arthur uh the pbs the pbs kids cartoon like that just ended last year and it started the year before i was born i was able to like go to college and like rent an apartment in the time frame with like that show running is is wow yeah uh so yes homer goes to bed uh he'd also well speaking of family guy they're having a lot more cutaways in this than they've done in a little while because they did say when family guy started they kind of wanted to cut back on it because it was family guy was doing it then and they're like yeah we look we look like we're doing family guy

when really it's family guys more taking inspiration from simpsons and how they used to do it but but that's a whole other conversation yeah that uh tarik did a great oh another one since tarik one of my other favorite recent ones you did was your really great cataloging of which characters can hear stewie and which can't. Thank you. I really liked that one. That was great. It was very scientific. Thank you. It was all based on memory

because I marathoned Family Guy when the pandemic started and most of everything I wrote in that video was just based on like, I definitely searched a lot of things up just to like make sure, but a lot of it was based on memory. And also you wrote about how the Brian and Stewie relationship recently. I also really like that one too.

Oh yeah. Thank you. I'm a fan. I'm a fan of that one too. So Homer has a dream that has a word he doesn't know in it. And it's also a very stereotypical dream. But in its defense, it is Homer's dream. So he would have a very culturally inappropriate vision of what an indian love nest would be let's say that but um so yeah

that i also like when homer's looking up the word eunuch he goes to the letter u which is not where it would be in the dictionary right i mean it would be with an e right i thought it was you oh it's with a u yeah oh okay all right well then i'm the fool you're the eunuch here i'm gonna have to look that up uh but yeah they this is when again marge also takes some of the shrapnel and the anti-wife feelings in this because she is a a prying wife who has to know women can read your minds yeah you can keep no secrets from a woman but yeah homer explains to her that uh in his role as customer he saw the whole thing which that's a great line too but this is when a lot of

collar tugging happens yeah yeah it must be something big something you did no something No. Something you saw. Ah! Appu is having an affair? I know! Can you believe it? Oh, Manjula's just gonna die. How did you find out? In my role as customer, I saw the whole thing. Oh, this is so awkward. Today's the day we play badminton with them. Oh, I hope no one makes any double entendres.

Oh, Appu, you keep scoring while my buck is turned. Are you sure you're not cheating? No, Manjula. Do you want me to find another partner? No, no. No, no. Let's just keep playing. What's the score? Dirty love. I dirty love i mean dirty love i mean anyone for penis i'll just get the shuttlecock oh love that whole bit it's fun to be a simpsons fan that's so nerdy that you can align when dvd commentaries were recorded and what they were writing because if you go back to the uh lisa versush Commandment commentary, they're talking about how the joke is that Apu would even be in the Simpsons home for an event.

And Al Jean says, and right now we're writing an episode in which they have a weekly badminton game. That's so funny. You can align when they're recording it with what they were writing at the time, which is why a lot of things from that era come back in this era. Because it was like Al Jean's like, oh, this is a good idea let's do that yeah but was it the charles nelson riley is that the uh yeah yeah it's i think it's that one the that they i love a collar pull uh joke it's always funny and and also that this is a great this is a scene in so many romantic comedies or also like in so many sitcoms of, oh no, we're doing the natural thing of our weekly badminton game and then or racquetball or whatever.

And then people talk around things that Marge is like setting you up like, oh man, there's probably going to be a lot of double entendres in here. And they just hit it so hard. I love it. I love all of these. They're so, you keep scoring while my back is turned like killed me it made me laugh so hard that the first time i'm hearing uh uh you must be cheating is right now that's the first time i heard that because i laughed so much. And I love Homer saying penis for no reason.

Yeah. Anyone for penis, like, oh, no. I think the joke is instead of saying anyone for tennis, it's penis, but they're playing badminton, so his wires are all crossed. And penis and tennis are similar words. Spelled, yeah. They're ready for tennis.

It comes on a 10. So then we cut to Marge being sad watching the uh the wedding video which i do like continuity there like they remember that it was the wedding was in their backyard and they of course would have all the footage for it and they animated new stuff this is a new scene right yes yeah which uh homer then uh this also shows you al jeans back in charge it's time for a godfather reference uh oh that's what this is yes homer singing the italian song on stage is called uh luna luna luna meso mare it's the if you at the very start of the original godfather the mother of the corleone family comes on stage and she sings this song and then everybody joins in and

it it was a big like italian wedding song which then makes it extra silly that homer is singing that on stage at an indian wedding so uh but yes it's a uh it's a godfather reference uh which they planned on doing a callback to in the episode but that's that's in the deleted scene with jan hooks's voice at hand i'm glad you caught that i just wrote down homer sings ital nonsense. Well, it's definitely, he's not saying the words right, for sure. Out of all the Godfather scenes to parody, that's a rare one. It's a deep cut.

They're finding new meat on that cow. I've heard them say on a commentary before that you could clip every Godfather reference from The Simpsons and maybe put together the entire movie at this point. And this covers the wedding opening that they previously uncovered. So it helps in that super cut.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will say, okay, so full disclosure, when you guys told me that we were doing this one, I thought that this was the wedding episode. So seeing it on the TV, it confused me for a second because I was positive that this was the wedding episode. So seeing it on the TV, it confused me for a second because I was positive that this was this episode. Not only that, but

it's something about the way that Homer is animated on the television while he's doing this song. He almost looks like he's... I know they would do it sometime, but he almost looks like he's green-screened on the background. So I feel like it might have been some archival stuff going on and green screened on the background so i feel like it

might have been like some like archival stuff going on and where they just kind of put him on top of it there is definitely a line weight issue in it homer does not look anime on same levels then my my uh uninformed animation guess is that this is the last season they before they went digital and because he has a full band behind him i think that's so many cell layers that when they then put the homer footage on top of them for the uh you know cell photography they they lose a lot of the density there like basically the top of his hair disappears yeah like it it really fades into the background that's that's my guess that it's one of their like last cell animation problems they they have in the series yeah but it does look weird it looks subbed in

but for sure right because i know uh well that's i'm i mean i i do animation but even like this this like just this error is just kind of like amazes me how they were able to do certain things so i'm a little confused myself but like i i think that at at some points like um man what episode is it uh that references uh dr strange love when they're uh then homer's on the bomb and uh oh yeah no that's in uh that's in the vigilante episode in season five okay because in that in that in that shot um what i think happened is i think they filmed the background separately because it was moving a certain way. So they had to sort of like green screen Homer on top of it and like time his animation differently. And I think that's what happens here because the same effect happens there.

Yeah, it is. It does look like a composite thing. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But I want to go back to what Tariq was saying earlier that he confused this one with the marriage episode this one is also very similar to their previous episode I'm with Cupid in which Apu has to win Manjula back by doing a bunch of different tasks

so they're very similar in their execution here and I like that one better because there's not infidelity and Manjula is played by Jane Hooks and she's not mean she's less mean she's less mean there's all that yeah i there's you know in both uh boy this again i don't want to assume too much about the producer writing produces on the show but it's like i feel like in that one it was by a staff of writers who were just overworked and they felt bad that they never saw their their spouses or or partners because they were always at the office writing

simpsons this to me makes me think that i feel like some simpsons writer had a squishy lady at the office this is based on a real thing i feel like this is based on real infidelity i maybe there was a squishy lady in the past yes yeah maybe there was not a contemporary squishy lady but it's it's based on a real so uh but again i don't know this is uh it but i feel like this comes from a place of reality here also in some of their battle of the sexist stuff homer make sure to say to march you're not in any physical pain the only kind of pain a man can understand yes this was the men are for mars women are for venus era of relationship comedy i'll at least say they get the one with all the monsters that's a good joke

yeah that's uh also a good joke i like when march says she's contemplating who to tell and over said she says or let's tell Krusty? Yes. Love it. So, yeah, actually, I have the clip here. It's a short one, but bringing Krusty into it, this feels like a joke about pitching jokes in a writer's room. Maybe I should just tell Manjula.

Or you could talk to Apu. He already knows. Let's tell Krusty. What would that accomplish? That guy's hilarious. His reaction would be priceless. Apu is cheating. That's sad.

All those kids. I think he's building to something. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.comcom care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care

homer really wants a spit take he's so it's great when that comes back and march is like i keep telling you he's a desperately unhappy man it's uh it's great i love like it feels like homer is a writer on the show going like it'd be funny to cut to crusty i bet he'd have a funny reaction crusty is just not like he's a miserable he's i mean uh crusty is a multiple times divorced man uh he he knows the pains of infidelity uh so it's it's pretty funny but uh yeah so we then cut to homer talking to apu he's been avoiding the topic by doing the past one down uh a beer on the wall thing and so apu is trying to get him to cut to the chase he then tells a story about mr and mrs pepper and salt and And then in comes sexy Mrs. Dash, which the woke police, I'm joking,

but Mrs. Dash is no longer that. It's just Dash. It's not a gendered name on the seasoning anymore. Interesting. But if you're looking to cut down the sodium in your life, switch out seasonings with Dash. It's not bad and it's natural. It's not full of fake stuff either.

Would you cheat on Mrs. Dash with the human lady? Oh, man. You know, I actually am more into the... Man, there's a barbecue sauce guy I think is very attractive. There is no human lady. Oh, okay. But yeah, so Marge finally homer cut to the chase because

it's 11 at night another great joke in this one i totally forgot but because it could go anywhere when a woman is in the bar and mo wants to class it up he instantly pulls out a top hat and puts it on like that's a great joke that also feels very swarmswoldery ma'am but this is when they finally tell apu they know apu breaks down this also feels like another of those jokes where they're trying to take apu's side where they're like but it was only once like oh okay good good for you you only you only cheated on your spouse once great like yeah but um uh and then there's also a great joke that i was really okay at this point in the show if there's a joke about mo with a woman and serving a drink i fear what direction it's going to go in right so i was very happy it was not that direction uh that that instead he was

serving her windell in a glass that uh that looked blue uh this is fortunately not the roofie joke that we heard in a previous Moe appearance in the Paul Bunyan scene. This is funnier and better. Yes, so much better. Trying to serve her because he has no way to make a blue drink that he just puts. Store brand Windex.

Then Apu is going to break it off. The squishy lady arrives. I do like, as far as a euphemism uh measure my syrup levels that's i think that's a good line uh so then we get a we get a play on the tying the cherry stem with your tongue bit which barely that dates back to victorian times like that's that reference isn't there or even farther back like elizabethan times i thought twin peaks invented that but they never did it with licorice rope they may i wish they said twizzler it's really too bad they can't i feel like they're getting they're not allowed to do as many brand names on the show at this point yeah i i've always wondered like when did like they have to stop like especially

like around like the 20s they like started, like, Mapple and stuff like that. Like, they started to make a lot of stuff up. And that's always, like, made me wonder. Because it hasn't always been like that, right? Or has it? No, I mean, they, well, definitely in Bill and Josh, two of our favorite writers on the show and showrunners, they got so many jokes out of very specific things. They're like no this

is going to be armored hot dogs like we are going to say that the name very specifically or so many specific brands they they were into but uh yeah i mean we've definitely heard in other and in other uh tv shows too that you know you're the bosses on the say, don't give free advertising to a brand if another brand is paying for it. So they don't want you, like it's very possible Twizzler would advertise or a competitor, what, Red Vines, I guess? Maybe. Yeah.

Or if you say a disease monkey came out of a thing from Pier 1, you have to change that joke later because Pier 1 gets mad at you. Exactly. So that's really really that's how they feel the pressure from brands uh and yes yeah then he cannot resist when she spells out do me with the licorice rope uh which yes that's when there's another very hacky joke of mahatma mahatma mahatma instead of humana humana humana so he's definitely having more sex with her so he's

continuing to cheat on his spouse and that is when oh, I really don't like this scene of Manjula. Manjula realizes he must be cheating on her because she isn't pressuring. He isn't pressuring her for sex. Yeah, that's gross. Yeah, I don't like it. This is an ugly dynamic. And I'm glad I don't see as many jokes about this. And it's something that annoys me about this kind of,

again, battle of the sexes comedy in that the stated thing is that women, they don't like having sex. And if you have sex with a woman, you have to trick them or pressure them. And your wife definitely does not like having sex with you. So it's off the table. Yeah, yeah.

It's, you know, it's how they were brought up, that generation, let's say that. I don't want to keep making excuses for them, but... No, I get it though. Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, it's how they were brought up, that generation. Let's say that. I don't want to keep making excuses for them. No, I get it, though. It's like they grew up on the I hate my wife brand of comedy. Like, here it's like men and women are so different. But, like, before that it was like bang, zoom, straight to the moon. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is weird because i will see people on facebook my age people i have not talked to in a long time i don't know why i still look into their lives but i do but i see them regurgitating the like i hate my wife i hate my husband style comedy and i'm like guys come on we like we're much younger than this aren't we yeah i i thought so yeah i mean look you get well it's like i don't know like you've every relationship has ups and downs but yeah i feel like uh maybe at least the joking of like uh my my dumb wife wanted to do this i hate this or whatever like i though honestly i i've

complained about this before but facebook every time i use it, I get these. They know I've watched cat videos before, so they'll give me a lot of pet videos. And the ones that disturb me the most are the ones that are framed as like, here's my husband with the cat he said he'd hate. And it's like him petting the cat or nuzzling up to a dog or whatever. And I just hate that it saddens me that they are framed as, obviously, my husband said cats are stupid but now if i got but i got him he loves this cat i was just like damn it makes me sad that there's so many husbands out there just like oh i'll never love a cat right i don't know yeah it's

as somebody with a cat i completely understand i completely understand i can't believe there's still guys out there who said or just like flat out like cats. Cats are bad. I don't want to catch cats. Cats are the best. I love them. I'm more of a brood boy myself, but I'm friends with cats. But yes, this is so Manjula suspicious because first off that he's not pressuring her for sex and then that he gets very defensive about infidelity.

She decides it's time to investigate. Appu, come here a moment. This better be good because you are interrupting my faithfulness. Oh, boy. I took the tape out of the store surveillance camera. Look. Oh, Appu, scratch and win. Mmm win that's good adultery oh i am so sorry manjula oh get out of my home mappu man so that's another like art fern thing that hank is area loves doing like that

that's good like he i think aljean likes writing that, having been a Johnny Carson writer, because whenever you hear, that's good blank, that's a Johnny Carson character. And we're too young to know about that. We're too young for that. Yes. Like, yeah, we're already too young for that. Tariq, I'm not sure how much you're aware of any recurring Johnny Carson bits. All my knowledge comes from commentaries. All my knowledge comes from simpsons commentaries so like i had i but again it's been a while since i've listened to them so

i had no idea that's what i did i did write that's good adultery in my in my notes just because i felt like that was such a bizarre line yes this is not doing uh any favors to manjula's character because she just magically you know finds her way into the quickie mart gets the surveillance footage it'd be better if she stumbled upon it by accident or something it just feels like this woman's prying into my life yeah it also really cuts to the chase yeah and did she really have any inkling as to what was going on outside of a poo no longer pressuring her for sex no i guess that yeah i mean i guess that's the only one in the scenes are back to back so there's no time for it yeah i mean well again like women are underwritten entirely in this episode so they're just like all right time to make her the uh to

know about and also i feel bad for the like i know like it's it's supposed to just be a funny joke but i actually feel really bad for manjula that she not only gets to learn about it but has to watch on film her husband have sex with another that's like when when i saw this scene i didn't think that that's what she saw on the tape because of how like underwhelming her reaction was like it's just kind of like a gasp and then then she tells him to come in. You know what I mean? Yeah. She, uh, it's not a realistic reaction. Uh, but yeah, for the rest of the episode, it's not about how hurt she is or whatever. It's just that she, sorry, go ahead.

No, it's that she is only rage. Like she's just pure rage. Revenge. Yes. Payback as she says. Uh, so then we get another joke that I was like damn i wish they did more of this apu meets kirk van houten oh i always thought karma was baloney but not anymore mmm carmel baloney hey kirk van houten i live across the way if you don't like losing the cribbage stay out of my place well okay no no i'll let you in i'll let you in god i'm really lonely

yeah not a lot of kirk in this era really until they get back together uh the parents i love kirk so much and he is perfect to be his new divorced loser friend it's so good they i wish they did more in this episode really yeah i mean because kirk we've said it before i feel like they cut back on kirk some because they didn't like the mean divorced loser jokes i feel like they're like we're not into that like but cuts a little too close right the point. Well, yeah. And also, yeah, you mentioned that a few years after this, they put Kirk and Luann back together once also Luann's back on the show

because currently Milhouse's mom doesn't appear on the show because they fired a voice actor when they killed off Maude. They'll hire her back soon, thankfully. But this was something Al Jean mentioned on another commentary where he said, like, you know, I can't unkill Maude, but I can put Kirk and Luann back together. And he said he implied that he had been tempted to to divorce Apu and have Manjula take the kids back to India as reason for like just to reset all these giant changes. And watching this episode, I am surprised they like this was their chance. Like, I wonder how close if they weren't so busy talking to James Lipton in this episode i am surprised they like this was their chance like i wonder how close

if they weren't so busy talking to james lipton in this episode maybe they could have mentioned like how was their draft of this where they just went like all right and that writes manjula out of the show and all the kids yeah i wonder yeah that's real that's because too like talking through this episode is really making me realize like how much of important narrative things in this one that they just kind of, like, yada yada a little bit. Like, yeah, like, we were talking about how Apu's wife, how she finds out. And we don't see, like, any of those emotions of, like, how does that make her feel? Like, what does she think about? What does she think about doing?

And it's not the very last bit of the episode is is like, well, of course we'll get to it. But the very last bit of the episode is kind of like trying to make us like put us in a real place. And I don't think it works that way because they didn't do the work here. They didn't want to be real the entire episode until the last like 10 seconds. Yeah. And so the focus is on poor Apu. You know, things are pretty rough for him. Don't you see he's sorry folks come on jesus but but mr james lipton also sorry one last thing i mean it's a funny joke because homer says carmel baloney but apu's saying i always

thought karma was baloney is is really selling out his character a devout practitioner practitioner of hinduism saying karma is stupid yeah he's like i actually never believed in him yes it's a real i i laughed at the extreme sellout of this character that it was but yeah that he's never believed in it before now but all right james lifton let's talk about it so james lipton he's on the show and he's on the commentary uh so just to give a timeline of things james lipton who was the host of the inside the actor studio tv show uh which ran for over 20 seasons um which started in 1994 he was he had a crazy career for decades before like he became famous with that show in his 60s yes that's true he was always much older than you thought he was because of just for men

a beard and hair dye and like he born in 1923 he'd be 100 where he's still with us uh today he was trained as an actor by the famous stella adler was a writer for television soaps and bob hope specials for years uh and then he started uh the actor studio teaching program in new york uh and he was going to do interviews with actors and then they make a tv show out of it like well these famous actors are going to come and do interviews let's just film it so it had grown and grown and grown to then in so he on the commentary says that the parodies of him started with will ferrell and snl and that is the most famous guy who parodied him but they it was happening at least two years beforehand and henry and i know all about this

yes yeah because on mr show uh david cross played a version of him on a show called inside the actor yes yeah which is so actor-worshipy they literally go inside of an actor's ass. They literally travel into the actor's ass. Who dares question the great actor? I mean, the Will Ferrell one

is great and it's really about how James Lipton is kind of like a pompous buffoon in his own way and just very over-the-top and pretentious. But the David Cross one is very vicious, which is why it's funny that David Cross had to act with James Lipton later in the rest of development. Yes, yeah.

That felt like a prank on David Cross. Yes, yes. Cast him in the show. Yeah, it was. And also, when doing my research, I was like, okay, so Mr. Show was the first one, right? But actually, I had forgotten, the Mystery Science Theater Werewolf episode that's from april 1998 they were mocking him even before that mr show episode i had no idea by the way my favorite one on snl is when uh

james lipton will ferrell playing james lipton is interviewing screech played by toby mcguire yes that's a really that's a great one look it up if you can i don't know if you can i will also you know give credit to lipton that he if he what he realized that i could be a bad sport about this and be bad or i could be a good sport and get to do guest starring things on so many tv shows and so he went along with that it made him more famous it certainly did it did yeah but he's he was known for being a rather pretentious uh a guy who apparently david cross first became aware of him because they all went to the cable ace awards which that's another thing that is very dated to say uh but that

mr show didn't win an award and then lipton's show won and he gave a very uh very pretentious speech about saying, like, I know the quote because David Cross said it all the time, and I want to give a special thanks to my wife, Karagalipton, for redefining the universe. It is sweet, but also way over the top. Yeah. Well, I mean, wouldn't you expect that from a man

who based his entire thing on the French scholar Bernard Pivot? I would. Yeah. I'm always thinking that. And also, so another timeline thing just to get in here is that Lipton did this. This airs early 2002. What airs almost a year later, 11 months later, the Inside the Actor's Studio about The Simpsons, which is one of the most famous episodes of Inside the Actor's Studio, I'd say. We've talked about it a few times,

and I really dislike that episode. Tariq, I don't know if you saw it. I don't think I have. What happens? Well, you can't find it anywhere now except Russian streaming sites that have a lot of pop-ups, but I re-watched it because of this,

and at the time, I will say what was very special about it was that you never got to see the actors do the voices live like okay never this was an amazing thing you never saw and very rarely did simpsons get any kind of like real interviews about the craft of doing it right now we've seen many many things about it and so it seems very shallow now i guess what makes it special even though i dislike it is probably the last time you would ever see harry shearer doing the character voices in public and i had seen him appear on like conan before a few times in doing them but i feel like at this point he was about to become solidly bitter about everything right if he wasn't already he probably

was already wanted to be a good sport but we all know how he is and there's no way you'll ever see him doing this in public uh anymore it's funny hearing him say complimentary things about the show and we know that he does not like the show and uh but also the another interesting thing about it is that it is probably the final time all six leads of the show are on stage together and i doubt it will ever happen again all six of them are in the same room it's uh it hadn't it was rare when that happened like when they're all on stage they're joking like i actually rarely ever see most of these people like i've never oh i didn't know that about you dan that's how you got into acting like all this stuff it yeah so it's interesting in that way it's it though also too that it went

like two over two hours but it's cut down to 45 minutes so you just see like damn i wish i definitely when i was watching this time i was like boy i really wish there's an uncut version of this yeah yeah definitely yeah i hate i hate when stuff uh like that happens but i mean they had to fit in the commercials and it's an hour long thing but they and they do explain on the commentary why julie kavner left people assume she was insulted by something or she didn't like it. She had to leave because she had a ferry booked. Yeah, she had a prior engagement. So she's like, I got to go, guys.

So yeah, she just vanishes in the middle of the special. It's really weird. But also, I want to see the uncut version just to hear Dan say fuck as Krusty, which he says in the show, but they bleep it. Oh, yeah. I think you'll have to i think you'll have to go to the actor's studio and request the footage it's probably on file somewhere it has oh man it better be better be in their archives but so yeah lipton he would retire from

the show in 2016 pass away a few years later they try to do one season with guest hosts but it really isn't the same like the point of the show is to see James Lipton's very special version of interviewing people with his 10 questions that he got from Bernard Pivot. You know, and it's especially funny because actors are such empty people with nothing really to say for the most part. There's a few ones out there that are intelligent, but they're actors because they can be empty shells that you could fill them with anything. So he's just like swooning over attractive idiots who can do their job well but essentially that's what his job is and speaking of them writing the show you hear them writing the show on the commentary at the end of it they say we should have you on again within there i think they're joking around because six months after this dvd set comes out he returns to the show in an episode

an episode airs from season 22 that he is in so i think that's them knowing they've already recorded a guest spot with him again and putting it in there yeah gotta be gotta be but uh that that inside the actor studio thing you're talking about it reminds me of that uh i think conan did the um serious jibber jabber i think that's what it was called when he had uh yeah all the writers it kind of reminds me of that and i think it'd be cool to see something like that with the actors yeah no i wish you could get them all i i love that serious jibber jabber one because there's at least one one guy there is saying like decides not to be nice he's like you know what no i'm mad about this thing still. He's airing

Jake Hogan. He's airing the Dirty Laundry. You know, I'm getting these ads about Conan O'Brien, the world's first podcaster, and all of his famous celebrity friends. Are Simpsons friends ever invited on his show? Not after season one. He doesn't need non-famous friends, I guess. Conan O'Brien, he's finally got

the success he needed in a podcast. In our field. Television wasn't enough yeah right uh but yes why now we've talked all about him let's hear james lipton on the simpsons welcome back to inside the actor's studio we've met rayner wolfcastle actor novelist barbecue sauce spokesman now can we meet mcbain let me get into character Novelist, barbecue sauce spokesman. Now can we meet McBain? Let me get into character. Okay, I'm McBain. All right, Mendoza.

I'll give you the Maxwell circuit if you put down my daughter. Ah. Oh, it's a pleasure to eat your lead good sir that's uh not as funny post rust oh you're right yeah this joke about a actor shooting someone that's so funny oh yeah i mean i also like when he's playing mcpain he brings up mendoza his nemesis hey that's some good continuity there you know i've said this before they're way into doing these stunt episodes these days they should just do the mcbain movie as an episode uh you can include the things you've already made but just flesh that out that's my pitch to matt selman i would love it i agree i think that's great that's a perfect they they do so many great stunt episodes in this last

year like that is a perfect one for it. I'll let them steal it. I just want to see it. But yeah, I mean, that is a great joke about, like you said, the vacuous actor on stage. It's just like, can I meet, like Lipton would ask these dumb questions like, can I meet Indiana Jones or whatever? Well, he does that on the Simpsons one where he's like, now, Dan, Homer has a certain kind of snack food he enjoys gorging upon. Can you please let us know, can Homer let us know what he likes to eat?

And then Dan would say, I like donuts. Beautiful, magnificent. And the entire audience is like, yes. Man, I know you guys hate it, but you're kind of selling me on that. What the hell is that? It must be seen to be believed, Tariq. What the hell is that? It basically is to be believed uh what the hell is that i gotta it basically is say the line bart as a tv special it's great yeah so if you watch it basically six

minutes is him asking each of them for about a minute each like so how did you get started as an actor blah blah blah pretending it's a regular episode and then seriously through three commercial breaks it's just like so you're also mr burns yes and what would mr burns say about and what about smithers oh i mean that's it's it is so much of it i and i feel bad for uh yardley uh and nancy are not trained improvisers like dan yeah harry and and azaria are so they actually kind of have to like read off of things they prepared stuff because they're not ready to improvise a character nor the door should they be i'm not saying yeah or anything not to dwell on this too long but i think that james lipton is not interested in voice actors or voice acting and he thinks it's some kind

of fun party trick he never asked them where does this voice come from or like who do you like to impersonate to find different voices it's all about you know interrogating the actor to get them to say a voice as the character and that's basically it that's interesting well i mean also james lipton like does not give a shit about like animation oh yeah that too that's not even a little bit his honestly the parts where he seems the most engaged is either asking about this is spinal tap to harry shearer which sure is happy to talk about it is a funny great movie or talking to yardley smith about her time on broadway and the stage acting because she's like the most real stage actor in the group you know so i take it he doesn't he doesn't ask dan about uh his five seconds in space jam no No. No, that does not come up.

No Herman's Head questions either. Now, Yardley, you played Louise, the virgin, on Herman's Head. What would Louise think about this? Well, the only other thing Azaria gets asked about is Birdcage. Right. And I'm sure he does that voice too, right?

You don't need to ask hanky's area to do that voice a voice a voice he no longer does uh it's now a tony rodriguez right yeah yeah a friend of friend of the show uh tony rodriguez yeah who does a great job but yeah so they then turn off the tv and this is when this also felt like a missed opportunity for jokes with the kids they tell the kids that apu is not living at home anymore and then we get neither of their reactions we just then hear marge go like oh if only i was like wait can't we hear what bart and lisa think of this like well why why don't we hear them respond to homer right right yeah they're pretty pretty disposable this this episode for sure except for impersonating uh gods yeah which homer did in the wedding

episode that's the bit that you know i'll give that a sec but i so we do have a quick cutaway joke to what homer is visioning and this is funny because we're doing this right around the same time we just did the dog of death episode this is like that king homer cutaway and i do think it's funny i like how it's's a 70s sci-fi film Homer puts himself into, which definitely makes me think it's a Dana Gould pitch. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

But this, to me, doesn't make me laugh as much as the Homer who's the biggest man in the world and covered in gold. And I think it just shows you the difference of animation execution makes a joke better or worse. And like this...

Tariq, I don't know how you feel about this cutaway compared to other ones right why can't i not see the hang glider bit in my head well here i've got i've got a clip of the fantasy here are you thinking what i'm thinking you bet i am You can run, but you can't glide. USA! USA! Okay. We invite both Manjula and Apu for dinner, but we don't tell them the other one's coming. And Krusty, we gotta invite Krusty.

I keep telling you, off-camera, he's a desperately unhappy man. But if we remind our poor men, Jewel, of why they fell in love, maybe they can work out their problems. Yeah. Because if they don't... Was that a fish shake, too? It was a fish shake. Okay. Yeah.

So, okay, I didn't remember the first half of the gag but i remember the second half when he does the the few people which is so funny because i watched this episode like two hours ago uh no i mean i i i like the design it looks like they're in running man or uh something like that and then omer but yes if they don't another fish shake it's a lot of fish shaking in here but yeah marge is plotting plotting a wacky sitcom scenario this is where there's the manjula arrival so the deleted scene where jan hooks is in it it's her manjula arriving to this and yeah that's where uh i mean here you can listen to more of jan hooks in the clip here oh sorry i'm late.

I was spitting on Apu's things and the time just slipped away. Oh, what a coincidence. Apu was right here. Hey, the kids. Manjula, they're playing our song. Oh, wrong, ay, ay, que can yo churlima, con la rica bonavare. Manchula, they're playing our song. Oh, wrong-a-poo. Our song is your cheatin' heart. What is this, stumped-up band?

Boy, Jane Hooks is so much better. Yeah, man, just hearing it, like, the character comes alive. Yeah. I don't understand why she's, they, clearly they recorded her and animated to the scenes. Right, right. This feels like a late, a late replacement, and I don't know why.'s they clearly they recorded her and animated to the scene right

this feels like a late a late replacement and I don't know why we'll investigate this yeah I I feel like it's not going to be a happy story right uh but yes it's a call back to Homer singing the Godfather song again which uh if I had to guess why they cut it it's because in one of the shots where Homer is singing Bart bart and lisa are not with him and then in the cut back to him they are there so i think it was just an animation error and that's that's why they cut it but okay yeah but jan hooks estate they need to get on fox or disney to get some money from this dvd because they used this footage of her voice and i wonder if they paid her i wonder when you really care about, you shout it from the mountaintops.

So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care i wonder yeah so yes then comes in all right this ganesha thing like well uh i want to stop for one second because I love Homer saying, this is going great. A big laugh before this stupid joke. I didn't like it in season nine and I don't like it now.

It's just also thinking you can fool these people. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Wait, one more wholesome thing before we do that. Because Marge is my favorite character in the whole show. I don't know if that's the answer that you guys hear that often, but I love Marge. And it's such a Marge thing for her to get so excited for this stupid sitcom plot idea.

She giggles when she explains it. It's like, we're going to get them together like i love that i was made it really made me it really made me smile she's like smiling really hard it's like adorable and then no you're right even though it's like uh not nice to hindu people uh i like what marge says it's this thing all right yeah so yeah okay here's the construction of why i don't like it all right yes it is a very silly sitcom thing of oh you're you know it's a parody of that stuff in like the hardy boys mysteries or adventure brothers parody this as well of uh like oh we are your god listen to us and these simple people like it's it's so it's parroting that the joke is on the white people in this but in the season nine episode with the wedding homer dresses up as ganesh and no one is fooled

even for a second and the joke is just oh could you not even his family is cool with this they're all just like homer why why are you doing this like right right and then homer gets punished instantly yeah and meanwhile in this case marge and the entire family all agreed this was a good idea. This was the plan. Yeah. All right. Like, Lisa at least should have been like, no, this is horrible. I'm not doing this.

It's weird that, I mean, maybe it's the John Schwarzwalder touch when he's like, who is Lisa? Oh, yeah. The sister? Yeah. Right. Though, I do like that Bart's impression turns into dracula i do think that's kind of funny i i did laugh at that but well now i know if i have bad tandoori i'll call it bland dory that's good yeah no i i mean it's a good line of like i know you all have gone to a lot of trouble to meddle in my affairs but you cannot change my mind with

one night of blasphemy and store-bought tandoori or should i say bland dory march's gasp is very over the top yeah i love i love a reaction like or should i say and then somebody guess yeah also i do kind of like the line of uh i know we were meant to be together ever since my mother forced me to marry you which uh he makes one more attempt to convince her and she shoves divorce papers in his face then we also see that there was a delivery of a fudge mahal that homer refuses to pay for but he does want to lick the man's fingers through a mail slot which so there's there's a romance happening somewhere right in this house all right and so then oh boy this is really informed by real life yeah i mean i know divorce

is a terrible thing to go through uh seemingly especially in california but boy this has to come from someone's experience and another show people on this show worked on was the critic and there were a lot of alimony jokes on the critic sure so i feel like it comes from that same school of thought but you know we need divorce lawyers. Yeah. Somebody's got to do it. Somebody's got to do divorce. But yes, this is divorce.

I call this clip divorce. Lawyers are evil. Appu does not have very much money. Are you absolutely sure? Because legally I am allowed to shake him by the ankles and see what falls out. It's established in the case of lawyers versus justice. That was a wonderful day for us. Now, we have eight children. Will that affect the settlement? Perhaps.

No offense, but you remind me of the monkey man who slaughtered my family's chickens. Yes, I get that a lot. I have to think all of this over. I still have feelings for Apu. I understand. Who is Apu? The face of divorce is not as beautiful as I had hoped. Perhaps there is another way. When will you humans learn that your feelings, as you call them, can stand in the way of big cash payoffs? I wanted to see more of this guy because it's a very funny performance.

A lot of the joke is them saying, we're not going to be subtle about our feelings about divorce at all. It's so mean. It's so mean. I mean, the lack of subtlety makes it so great. Like, when will you humans learn? It's so mean. I also like when he's like, who is a poo? Yeah.

He's only thinking about the money. And yeah, his miserly muttering as he rubs his hands together. It reminds me of Mr. Magoo when he's playing Ebenezer Scrooge in the Magoo Christmas special. But man, yeah. Again, the bit is like, yeah, all divorce lawyers are just out for greed and they're out to take someone's money. It's like, oh boy. It's, yeah, again, a very male and Californifornian rich guy uh yeah but again i'm shocked like why didn't they just do it why didn't they why did they not want to pull the trigger i guess i guess it wouldn't

be a very sweet ending maybe that's why they're like oh this would be a depressing ending and they're they're feeling they want to be a little nicer so yes they decide they're not going to get a divorce uh mandula because Marge convinces her. I mean, this is very Marge. And she's like, come on, give him another chance. She doesn't want anyone to get broken up with. This is when they decide, well, this clip is called Payback and Suicide. All right.

Girls night out. Exotic male dancers at the Golden Banana! No, I want him to suffer. Oh, well, when Homer does something wrong, I write a list of ways he can make it up to me, then I shred the list and put it in his food. All right, we will write a list. At the Golden Banana?

No! Over, under, round and round, so your feet won't touch the ground. Now, let's see what awaits me in the next life. First I was a tiger, a snake, a clod, a goat with a hat, then me, a tapeworm, then assistant to Lorne Michaels. It's going to be a rough couple of lifetimes. It's hard to be an assistant to Lorne Michaels it's going to be a rough couple of lifetimes it's hard to be an assistant to Lorne Michaels he's a tough taskmaster he goes through them a lot it's rare to see a character attempt

suicide on screen and it not be Mo yeah I bet he learned this rhyme from Mo though oh yeah he probably taught him I love that Marge keeps wanting an excuse to go to the golden banana she's like i have a golden i love it she's i love yeah i love i love like happy marge where she's just like excited to be

around people i think she's really dying to have a friend to yeah she can't go the golden banana alone it needs to be a girl's night out right the tapestry of lives uh is very silly uh but that that he had been a clod is uh drawing of alfred e newman from man magazine always welcome to see that but uh well tarik you mentioned that you know the lack of emotion up until the very end when his uh a strange wife sees him about to kill himself he called she makes a joke he just says oh don't be such a brahma queen like that yeah that is not a very realistic reaction to seeing uh your partner try to uh end their life right especially literally the last clip you played before that she says i still have feelings for a poodle so like there's still some kind of emotional thing there but he's about to

like fucking hang himself and you know i mean yeah like the and i mean that's just the episode prioritizing like the gags before before the the characters and i guess some sometimes that's fine but like you know when you at the end when you kind of bring it to a real place it's like this is the wrong episode for that at this point yeah if they're gonna go that dark with it then just have it be the divorce or whatever like right i had of all the suicide attempts in the series i had forgotten that a poo me too me too yeah and the rest of the episode is about him having to accomplish tasks on this list which again is why i confuse this one with i'm with cupid and that third act is all about this and i wish this third act

was all about that as well because the things he has to do are funny i just wish there were more of them yeah it's uh well and also it definitely ties into like women are vindictive and want to like uh take everything from you or just destroy if definitely this is about shaming and destroying apu uh for for uh his yeah i mean which he deserves like this show agrees homer also even tells him like earlier in the show like yeah you are scum like he doesn't he doesn't comfort him so okay yes he's given a list of things i don't think he actually does lose weight in the episode nor is he ever called slime q slime dog ever later in the show he doesn't wear the name tag either no well then this leads to the uh secret

deleted scene on the dvd you gotta go to a secret place on the menu uh but they reference it on the commentary this is a joke that i am really glad they cut oof so apu breaks it off uh with the net or squishy lady she's just very like ho-hum about it. Just like, yeah, okay. Like she felt nothing other than sexual pleasure. But the scene ends. If it had continued, they walk away and it is revealed she is also having sex with Chief Wiggum. Wiggum is there too. Yes. Yeah.

He comes in the doorway wearing a robe saying like, like hey can I eat your ice cream because I already did so boy yeah I'm glad they cut that because this woman there's not much to her to begin with outside of just a thing you have sex with yeah and that would have made it worse yeah so she's just the woman fucking everybody else in town

I'm glad they didn't do that with squishy lady why hide that scene yeah they strange that they even put it on there, but yeah. So, all right, we go through scenes of Apu trying to do all the things to make things up to Manjula. He replaces Squishy's with Smushy's. I do like that the new hideous man who is there sees it as a a challenge to try to seduce apu i kind of like that yeah i also enjoy the the very specific flavors of shopping bag and dog wet dog fur or just dog fur yeah i can i can imagine a taste of a shopping bag in my mouth shopping bag that's

funny uh and then uh we see homer riding up who which i thought that joke like ah that's too broad but when it turns into a cutaway to new yorker comic then i was like all right that's pretty funny that's good and yeah up who got published in the new yorker which uh as a kid at uh doctor's offices i would page through the new yorker when killing time in this pre-smartphone era and i would read comics i was like oh a comic and then it would make no sense to me yeah okay i thought i was the only kid that went through that it's like uh and it would just be like one panel and just have like like a uh like one sentence at the bottom like where's the where's the gag where's snoopy i don't get it yeah on sundays in the newspaper i would also

along with the comics i would look at parade magazine and there was one comic in the back howard huge a one panel comic about a giant dog never funny it's a great name though it's a great yes yes you know what who's who's better him or marmaduke which is uh there's less of howard huge so okay so that makes it better and you know what i just got the pun so uh but so uh yes uh they also have a good uh if you ever look up the photos of the late richard avidon it's uh it's a good recreation of it in the the this photo pictorial of Lenny but so yes we have the final act of penance that Apu must do in our next clip not bad eh I bought the issue for Richard Avedon's pictures of Lenny Eliza where the devil are my slippers

my fair lady performed with all our public cast. Done! Woohoo! Yeah! It was magic. He took a cockney flower girl and turned her into My Fair Lady. I liked all the roles filled by minority actors. What? I didn't even notice. Appu, you have completed the list. You may now move back with your family and your never-ending disgrace. Wait, wait. You forgot to eat a light bulb.

Thank you very much, you big, fat blabbermouth. Sorry, sorry. It's been a rough month. There you go. Don't worry. I soaked it in the toilet to soften it up. Lots of loud stage whispers from Homer in this episode. Yes.

Oof at that joke about race-blind casting and things. Why? I didn't even notice. Yeah, I didn't even notice. I mean, I do love the way Bart's delivery of it. I'm like, why? I didn't even notice. Yeah, yeah.

But yes, and that is the final line of my fair lady where uh henry higgins has successfully taught this woman to do his bidding and to be a proper lady at the end of it it's uh it's something i read a whole article about how there was a recent performance of revival my fair lady where they changed the ending of her lee to her leaving henry higgins at the end when he's demanding his slippers so uh yeah it's uh another one of those very dated things but uh how do the kids how the kids say all of those complicated lines to appear my fair lady together there's a reason they don't show us yes right uh and yes but i mean even that line

of like you're never ending disgrace of just like that feels more like on the cheater side of just like man these women never let it go if you cheat on them like that's why when we come back to them at any point in the series she's angry with him yes yeah but annapu says it's been a rough month so all this happened over like a month-long period i didn't even realize that he said that. Oh man. Yeah. It's a,

he's, he's been tortured quite a lot. Uh, but we have one final line here that yes, this is where the, uh, the heart, uh, is attempted to come back in.

So back in the old bed, I never realized it was so wide. Yes. Back to our marital closeness. Maybe we can't rush things. Oh, Apu, I want us to be a family again. But it will take some time. We will know when it feels right again.

Whenever you are ready. just want a little of that but yeah you said this earlier tariq uh not earned in any way it's a sweet scene but it comes after a montage that starts with a poo trying to hang himself and ends with him eating a light bulb right so yeah that i because that especially hearing it back like i think i like the scene like in theory right like even if this is the story that you want to do a poo cheating on his wife if you just kind of treat it with the same amount of sincerity that you would treat a story about like homer and marge then i feel like you can have this scene here no problem but like otherwise they kind of position you in a way any chance that you could have taken anything that's happening seriously is like gone so by the time we get here this very real moment with like this drastic lighting like it's very

clear we're supposed to feel something here and i think that's why it like it it falls because the episode just kind of like spends the whole time telling you that it disagrees with that stuff. I think there's a really like there could be a really great episode about like more mature, like this scene shows a more mature discussion of like, well, OK, one partner cheats. And how do you rebuild a relationship from that if you want to continue? Where does it come in to continue where where does it come in like how how does it work and uh but i mean those are difficult questions to answer that you know aren't aren't always funny and it's definitely harder to get comedy out of that than as opposed to like uh tying a noose and i mean i guess my my final thoughts are there's

some really funny stuff here but I just don't like what it does to Apu and Manjula how it sort of redefines who they are and their dynamic between each other and it kind of ends their story and of course uh they're not in the show really anymore uh but there was still like a lot of time left for them but they just are very tarnished characters and I never liked the octopuses to begin with, but this makes it even worse. But yeah, I'll just remember this one as lacking Jan Hooks and also for Homer backing away from things

multiple times. Yes, yeah. My final thoughts to Mirror Bob's, I think there's some good jokes in here, but it's stance on men versus women in this. I really am not into, it's dated to say the least uh and i i mean the james libson thing is fun uh though a lot of other places have been doing the james libson

stuff too so it felt like simpsons almost came to it too late and really i just want to like i want the jan hooks cut like that's what i want i want to because that little bit i clipped out there from the deleted scene i'm like she plays this much more nuanced and fun and then just tress i feel like who tresses great actress i think she was given the direction of no flatter flatter more angry like yeah yeah no i i totally agree i have this is the era of the show that i go back to the least like when i re-watch stuff just because i uh i don't know some of the some of them are just kind of like a little mean i guess i guess that's the word i'm looking for but like i was surprised just watching it just like how much i was like

laughing and how much like there's a lot of like really really funny stuff it is not that many besides like you know like the obvious stuff that we talked about later on but there's not that many besides like, you know, like the obvious stuff that we talked about later on. But there's not that many like groaners. But yeah, I think ultimately, as far as like it functioning, like as a narrative, I think it like it like disregards a lot of things that I feel like it shouldn't have in order to make the story work. I feel like they they the first scene of the episode is them saying like, OK, so who doesn't like his wife? OK, so let's do a civil war now for like seven minutes and then like maybe we'll come back to that and i feel like if you just swap that because even then i like all that stuff i think it's funny but like in a story like this you have to prioritize apu and his wife's relationship in order for us to understand

what the stakes are how does he get to this point how can someone cheat on the woman that he has eight kids with like what really gets him here and I think they just kind of try to let the imagery do all the talking early on

but I don't think that's good enough and even in the middle it's like it's all really playful. They don't treat it like a big deal. When Apu was confronted about it, he just kind of spins the block and does it again. You know what I mean? It really needed more time and a much better

approach, for sure. But thank you for joining us, Tariq. Great first time guest. We hope you'll come back. Please let us know where to find you online and what you're working on lately we love your videos you got lots of stuff going on so on YouTube you can find me TumorificTariq

T-O-O-N-R-I-F-I-C-T-A-R-I-Q I do videos on animation animation appreciation practically I just did a video this month on the short-lived animation domination cartoons. I'll be talking about Simpsons. I just, uh, Bless the

Hearts, Son of Zorn, Alan Gregory like those. Anything two seasons or less. So you can find me there. You can find me on Twitter. The exact same handle. Currently right now, I am I guess you could I'm fluctuating through a whole bunch of things, but in terms of videos, but my main focus is my pilot. between Insecure and Bob's Burgers. And you can follow me wherever for updates on that

because I'll be sharing a whole bunch of stuff about that real soon. Before we go or anything, I just want to thank you guys for even reaching out to me. This is really cool. This is an honor. I am typically afraid to go on podcasts because I am afraid that

i'm gonna say something that i that like i don't mean or i'm gonna sound dumb or something like that i'm like really shy in that regard but when you guys messaged me there was no way i could turn this down and i'm really happy that you reached out thank you no that uh yeah no we again i we we love your your videos and uh yeah you know another one i i loved i uh the the one about uh hip-hop and animation uh when uh that you had on ian jones cordia we've had on our show multiple times like that was another one i i really enjoy i learned a lot from that one too it was it was really good yeah that's my uh my friend, my friend, Nick,

my friend, Nick, who does, uh, does cartoon videos to Nick Tondo. He told me that you guys talked to Ian like right before. And I thought, I thought that was so funny because I saw what episode you talked to him,

uh, about, uh, the furious yellow. And that's the perfect one to talk to him about. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

He had so much to say but yeah. No but thank you so much Tariq. Thank you Tariq. Absolutely. So thanks so much to Tariq aka Toonrific Tariq for being on the show. Please check out everything he does but as for us if you want to check out more of what we do in these episodes one week at a time and ad free please go to

patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Sign up there for five bucks a month you get just that, but also access to an extensive, vast catalog of everything behind that $5 paywall that gets you a monthly new episodes of talking Futurama and talking to the hill. And it also gets you everything we've done. Mini series wise for the past,

let's say almost six years on Patreon. So that's over 100 mini series episodes covering other things like Batman, the animated series and mission Hill and the critic and a episodes covering other things like Batman the Animated Series and Mission Hill and The Critic and a lot of other things going on back behind the paywall. So please check it out at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons and there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that

you can access all the $5 stuff of course but you can also access one mega long, extremely long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that Henry? Bob, you're talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast where we go super in depth into a film just like we do on the simpsons and that often means talking for over five or even six hours about an animated feature film last month you can hear us talk about the batman superman world's finest movie which uh brought together the characters for the first time really in animation.

And before that, we did 1941's Dumbo. And this month in March on the Patreon, you're going to hear us talk about the Aardman classic Chicken Run. I think you're really going to enjoy that. We've covered everything from Akira to a goofy movie, Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse to Beavis and butthead do the universe

and you gotta sign up just to hear our surely longest podcast we'll ever do six and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash talking simpsons as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast is retro knots the classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retro knots sign up there for two full link bonus episodes every month Henry how about you follow me on Twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g I'm always tweeting up a storm also if you're following us on Twitter you should definitely be following the official Twitter account of this podcast,

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of all of our previously released free podcasts, head over to TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 3's Colonel Homer, and we'll see you then. Oh, this is just too inaccurate. Ah, well then, you're definitely not going to like my steam-powered super spider. With the stepping and the squishing and the webs made of nylon.