Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Trouble With Trillions With Amber A'Lee Frost

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

Relive the fun of paying taxes in this week's podcast, as we chat about a fun season nine episode with Amber A'Lee Frost from the Chapo Trap House podcast! We talk about April 15, FBI informants, Harry Truman, and more! PLUS Amber tells us about her bootleg Simpsons collection and her recent trip to Cuba! Listen now or you'll miss American TV! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!

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I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that will self-destruct unless properly stored. I'm your host, Two Guys from Quantico delivery boy, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Fan of Castro Street, Henry Gilbert. And who do we have on the line? Hi, I'm Amberlee Frost from Chopper Shop House. Today's episode is The Trouble with Trillions.

Will this horrible year never end? We've never lost a year before and I'll be damned if we're going to lose one on my shift. Today's episode aired on April 5th, 1998. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, boy, Bobby. Singers Tammy Wynette and Wendy O. Williams both pass away. The Lost in Space movie debuts in theaters. And the Dow Jones hits an all-time high as unemployment reaches the lowest since 1970.

An economic bliss that I'm sure will never end. No, we're living it right now in the aftermath. All I know about Wendy O. Williams is that a Koopa kid is named after her. And that's basically where it ends. Yeah, that's actually the Koopa kid that looks like me. Oh, wow. This is like a very famous thing when people were trying to figure out my celebrity doppelgangers.

And I don't have any human celebrity doppelgangers. I look like Janice from the Muppets and I look like Wendy Koopa. Are you wearing the giant bow right now in your hair? That's between me and the walls. In the Lost in Space movie I did see it in theaters. It was weird to see. I think the last

time they tried to push Matt LeBlanc as like a guy who could star in movies. It all failed out. Were post-Ed? Yes. Yeah, I thought so. Well, they thought, what if we packaged him as an ensemble role with a bunch of other more famous people

that people like and Mimi Rogers, all that stuff. But no, it just didn't take it. I think I remember that was during the era when I was figuring out that a lot of these

sort of nostalgia reboots were very cynical. And when I started to develop a distaste for a lot of the cheap moves of mass culture and it's recently been brought back again for netflix as a prestige series and people swear to me it's good but they swear to me lots of things are good that i haven't watched on netflix so i'll take your word for it yeah i mean it basically wait until people aren't excited

about a show anymore to give it a try because you just really can't figure out anything through the zeitgeist and a lot of people will be really obsessed with the show and then you can ask them like a year later and you're like was that actually that good and they're like i can't even remember what i watched it's just we're just making so much media i put off always available i put off watching stranger things for so long that it's bad now and i save so much time. Yes, it's bad. I always knew it was bad. I mean, I was completely obligated to watch it because it's set in Indiana when I grew up, but it is bad. Amber, welcome to the show. You're our third Chapo-ite who's done the show so welcome yeah yeah excited to be here it's interesting like the simpsons is probably like we have a lot of you know overlapping like comedic influences obviously on the show but

the simpsons is probably if you want to go frankfurt school like the primary text like we all share and and hold very dear to our hearts yeah i think uh maybe felix is the one who doesn't reference the show or references it way less than you guys but you're very infrequently does yeah osmosis wise he is very much influenced by it he's a little bit he's the youngest one of us so that's part of it but yeah he also makes sense and style jokes i think without even necessarily being aware of it i mean mean, like, we're not like a scripted show or anything. But like the idea that the joke writing is really sort of frenetic and referential and irreverent. Like, there are definitely like jokes that I could

see that I'd be like, that sounds like a Felix joke. Well, I think per capita of the hosts, you do the most Simpsons references, I think, on Chapo. Really? I would think it would be Matt. I think you're the dark horse on that. The deeper references. It is, at this point, a knee-jerk thing. Because, like I said, it is kind of the primary text. But I do it a lot.

It's a really holdover kind of nerd thing that I can get away with because I'm a cute girl, but it would be really annoying if I weren't. It's a very useful shorthand in this era of politics, especially as white supremacy is flourishing. I enjoy hearing the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet. That's a very useful shorthand for how things are being communicated. Well, and Amber, you're a writer, scholar, political activist, professor, inventor of the term dirtbag left. I saw so many great things. How did Simpsons, you know, influence you politically?

Politically, it probably didn't. More of the sort of context of my life formed my politics. But I do remember my mother picking me up from daycare when the Simpsons first started because I had a I had a mom with good taste not a cool mom not like an Amy Poehler and mean girls cool mom but she was I had a young mom and she was like a Gen X like an older Gen X person single mom and she would pick me up and like literally be like it's Thursday night

you know what's on and then we would sing the theme song for the Simpsons which only has two words the and Simpsons uh together so it's like a very it was like family time for us and of course obviously I didn't get a lot of the jokes but I definitely sort of grew up with it and there was definitely it is strange how your relationship to the characters change. Cause when you're young, you think Lisa is the protagonist and Lisa is not the protagonist. Lisa is smug and annoying and you like her, but she's a little bit of a goody goody.

And as you get older, you're like, you know, maybe sometimes Bart, but mostly Homer, like Homer and Marge. But yeah, I mean,

it was a, it was a class politics show. They were, I think the family themselves were sort of the last of a certain type of default Democrat that doesn't, that ceased to exist after the 90s. You know, they were sort of generically pro-union without being sort of precious about it. Obviously they had the, you know, very famous union episode, but they would also make fun of lazy teamsters and stuff like that. But always with great affection. And it's interesting when you get older too

and you find out how kind of, let's say politically idiosyncratic the writer's room was, but what came out of it was, I think a pretty sort of coherent amalgam worldview, which is relatively progressive, kind of benevolent, thinks highly of people, and is very concerned with working people. Yeah, the union stuff you mentioned, that was one thing that really struck me in our rewatch of it. 1993 or two episodes, the way they make fun of unions or they're just like ah these unions so powerful and annoying it's just it feels very odd especially when it's written by people in a very

union field of hollywood too they're very both sidesy about it yeah well and also i think people again very politically idiosyncratic writers room i think people sort of looking at the episodes now try and figure out if the joke is reactionary or not. And I don't necessarily think that's the best way to approach that kind of comedy. Like, not everything has a hidden meaning or a subtext. Sometimes the joke, there's an example in this episode, there is such thing as kind of just a joke. Yeah. The surly teamsters is like one of my favorite and I'm a vulgar work wrist. Like it's one of my favorite Simpsons jokes. And I think it's done with a certain amount of like, like sort of affection and their affection for the shiftless people like Homer Simpson, like they,

the show likes people. Before we get into the episode itself. One more question I had, I thought I heard on a recent chopper. You talked about your collection of Simpsons bootleg shirts you own. I do. As part of my podcast billionaire lifestyle, I can now buy extremely dumb collectibles. addition to all the uh roast pheasant and fancy perfumes i get i collect bootleg barts which i keep an eye out for on etsy and i've bought enough of them now that etsy now finds them and suggests them to me um so i have like quite a few mexican parts very those are pretty easy to find jamaican

barts are easy to find i have one that's pretty rare that's Italian and it's Bart spray painting on a wall. And obviously, what do you think he would be spray painting on the wall? It's interesting to me. Cowabunga. Right. That doesn't translate to Italian. So what they did is they took a lesser known catchphrase, the I didn't do it, and translated it to Italian. Because you can't say like don't have a cow in Italian.

There's no idiom for that. But the crown jewel of my collection is I have the Middle East crisis art. Oh, I was going to ask you how many of these have Saddam Hussein on them? I have one that has Saddam Hussein on it. It's Black Bart as a Marine strangling Saddam Hussein. Wow. There's like a speech bubble as he's being choked that he's just saying, Arr, who are you?

And Bart, Black military Bart, has a speech bubble that says, Don't you ever and then scribble with me. I am your worst nightmare. Very clever. And at the bottom, it just literally says, Middle East crisis the day when Bart got really pissed off it makes no sense i love how i love that these things exist that the simpsons became sort of a folk culture product because graining was like not litigious about intellectual property no he loved collecting bootlegs yeah yeah i we kind of

took the same approach with choppa where we're like, look, if you want us to promote, like, you know, like, we'll pay someone to make shirts that we'll sell or whatever. But if someone just wants to make bootleg Chapo shirts and just sell them on their own, like, we don't care. And it has produced some really cool, funny art. I'm sure at some point it'll produce terrible stuff. Not as much as The Simpsons because we'd never be that big but i like that this is something that the culture kind of owned and did sometimes completely stupid idiotic things with but it was just like such a phenomenon i can't think of i can't think of anything comparable to that yeah there were no like spongebob osama bin laden t-shirts at my mall no i mean i would buy one if if i found that but

like and for it to keep going across all these different countries too it was really strange yeah so yeah yeah so this episode has some interesting uh background to it at a certain point in the production of this episode they wanted it to be about homer finding out he has a native american background a native american blood and it was all because mike Scully was really obsessed with having a third act where Homer leads a Native American revolt against Springfield. And it was all rooted in taxes because the idea of the premise was when Homer is Native American, he won't pay taxes. But then they found out that's not true. They scrapped the story idea entirely. So it turns out they had like seven jokes about Cuba. So that's what the third act is in this episode. Yeah you can kind of tell i mean this is this is getting to the point in the

series i was actually it was really happy you did uh the bush episode with virgil and matt because like that is i think very formative for me it's the first episode i remember seeing and because you know when you're like a kid you like a show or a book series or something, and you're a completist, and you think of it as one big thing, and you either like it or you don't. And then I think that's the first Simpsons episode I saw where I'm like, that was not a very good episode of my favorite show. It was polarizing even back then. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, you get into maybe this era of The Simpsons and they're starting to get a little less. I mean, I watched I watched well into the double digit seasons for quite a while. But like, that's when you start to notice, let's say they're not quite as sparkling or tight as they once were. This episode still has some, I think, like classic moments, but you can tell that it's sort of tacked on the cuba thing at the end yeah this episode is really more about gags than story it's just full of jokes which i like on it yeah it grows so big in where it goes from tax day it's it's

pretty extreme but i i also was surprised uh well actually it's funny that that really puts this in a pre-internet age the writing of the script, too, that they just have this old wives tale of, oh, you know, Native Americans don't pay taxes. They don't pay taxes. Yeah. How does that go? They would get away with all those jokes in a later episode, though. So don't worry. Oh, they saved them all for their.

I mean, everybody did the Indian Casino episode, every cartoon. So I don't fault them. It was a style at the time but i also was surprised that this episode that's all like taxes theft was not written by uh schwartzwalder i in my memory i was like oh yeah schwartzwalder wrote me too yeah but yeah it wasn't particularly rough on that stuff um yeah it was ambivalent right uh there's a lot of ambivalence in kind of that simpson show where it's like we're gonna go scene scene. So I don't want to like jump the gun on this. But yeah, like it's not, it's not a reactionary show, even when when they're reactionary jokes from say the most reactionary writer, like it's still kind of it ends up on the pro working class side of the ledger. Yeah, by giving Burns the most anti-tax speeches, you're never supposed to agree with Burns on the show.

That's not the stance of The Simpsons. I mean, Homer does, though, and he's an idiot. That's true, yeah. His sympathies turn on a dime. And it was fun to watch this episode, too, around tax day because we just had the fun of paying our taxes. Patreon income is very fun to pay taxes on, as i'm sure you know amber how it how it goes the only thing that brings me down about taxes is just knowing it pays for military stuff i'm like i can't this

probably food that's which is one of the jokes yes yeah that's true yeah do nothing nuclear missiles polish this episode oh yeah it was brian scully they said that came up with a trillion dollar bill turn for this one that's pretty clever i like that yeah yeah but he and max stone graham we talked about it before you know i've been super negative to him because he was the guy who wrote the mod murder episode but this one's funny he also does come off as a bit of a classist sexist in interviews but i do this is a funny episode i have to give it to me but okay why don't we get into the episode itself so it was always a surprising moment i'd watch it in my tapes that it begins with new year's eve i'm like wait what episode

is this yeah and then we're suddenly in april i love this beginning actually um because i'm a big proponent of the idea of like three springfields. Like I believe that there are three Springfields that they sort of invoke whenever they talk about the town. And I like the fact that they talk about the town as a sort of character in and of itself. But there's the Fools and Rubes Springfields who like elect Homer sanitation commissioner or buy a monorail from a huckster.

There's the cruel and vicious kind of mob springfield who beat a bunch of snakes to death in the middle of the town square or leave a little boy to like rot in a well and then there's like the heartwarming fellowship springfield where oh like they left the bomb shelter to go face a meteor death with Flanders. And this one starts out as Fellowship Springfield, but then the joke turns into Fools and Rubes Springfield. They're very fickle people. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think the writers ultimately, they're ambivalent about crowds

who can be cruel and stupid mobs, but it's not a misanthropic show they i think they kind of see the purpose of civil society i mean this is how we're thinking it of course but like the purpose of civil society is to like make sure the mob doesn't do idiotic or cruel things i love their cheers of the burning city hall that's yeah yeah any reaction of yay to an inappropriate thing is great but yes let's hear uh as everyone of yay to an inappropriate thing is great yes uh but yes let's hear uh as everyone else is celebrating ned is ned is getting hard at work yeah boy that sounds bad too god ned ned's working hard here's the clip well he's in bed of course obviously yes yeah he he went to bed hours ago that's yeah after some ice milk i I love that he goes to bed before New Year's, but will wake up at midnight.

So I was like, you could have just stayed up till midnight. No, he couldn't have. That would have been unseemly. Yeah, dinner at four, went to bed at 530. January 1st. Better get going on those taxes, Nettie. Hmm. Let's see. Cash register, Inc.

Well, that's a business expense, isn't it? I... Oh, but then I do enjoy the smell of this stuff, don't I? Better not risk it. Daddy, what do taxes pay for? Oh, why everything. Policemen, trees, sunshine. And let's not forget the folks who just don't feel like working, God bless them.

Nettie, it's 845. The post office is gonna be opening soon. 845? Here I am yapping away like it's 835. Oops, can't forget the mints. Getting your taxes out of the way no just mailing out death certificates for holiday related fatalities yes uh i've now learned the joys of writing things off thanks to our lovely accountant right right yeah so that's one of those jokes that like could have very well been interpreted as reactionary because he starts out with when we play for police but then trees sunshine and then the people that just don't want to work god bless him but like if you take that really seriously and that's supposed to be like

the sentiment of the show then you've completely ignored the fact that like this show loves shiftless people yeah like it loves homer Simpson, but we can still laugh about it. It's fine. It really is. And if you consider the source, it's Ned. He's like a condescending Christian. Yeah.

And I love that like low key judgmental, you know, vibe you have to Ned where there's like, obviously like this seething secret resentment he has for other people, which is happens in a few episodes where he kind of like explodes he actually is kind of a judgmental prick he's just extremely chipper and committed to this affect of christian mercy because his parents were hippies and he had to rebel in some way he has accepted that folks who don't feel like working will get money and he's just like

well it's just how it goes i gotta just yeah yeah i also i like that he's such a nerd he if he gets a slight amount of enjoyment yeah i think he can't write it off i should have put mints in our check we mailed to the irs i forgot to do that it was all digital for me so i don't know what i would do i like licking those actually no you don't lick stamps anymore it was a self-adhesive one too a lot of licking uh sound effects in this episode yeah the foley art is just really busy oh yeah right before this i meant to mention too in the uh when everybody's singing auld lang syne oh yeah i want yeah i noticed this for the first time nelson nelson and kearney they're drinking nelson's kind of uh one of them is pouring something off screen like just off

screen i think they're just getting away with that joke. It goes by so fast. And maybe I'd always been watching Krusty because you hear him just like, like I looked right at him. So I never noticed Nelson drinking. It's a bit of a risque joke for the, for the show, especially at that point. Yeah. I think,

I guess they could hide it in the crowd. Well, we just did Das Bus and he wanted delicious wine on the Island. So he's an alcoholic. We've discovered it. He should have learned from his mother's cough drop addiction. But no, to be extra pedantic,

Ned, the joke's on him because the post office is closed on January 1st. He'd be in just the same if he mailed it on January 2nd. Right, right.

But I guess God would know if he'd not mailed it on the 1st. Exactly. Yeah. The Simpsons will be right back. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. We care about you.

Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? This isn't the line for Metallica. This is Henry Gilbert saying thanks again for listening to this week's episode of Talking Simpsons. And a big thank you to our guest Amber Ali Frost from the Chapo Trap House podcast. We are so happy to have her on here and to share her Simpsony memories and thoughts with us. And we hope you guys enjoyed it too. And if you'd like to hear next week's

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But yes, then everybody goes to the post office. It does a like a dissolve into April 15th, which back to fools and rubes springfield yes i i love that it is across like class like i guess burns isn't there but everybody else is there no matter how he's there yeah yeah frank uh a technocrat he's there he still didn't put his mail his yet either yeah and kent brockman is punished for his hubris that's great which the simpsons loves doing those those jokes that's a very favorite kind of joke for them is someone being smug and then quickly finding out that it's not going to work out for them yeah it's it's a wonderful world where hubris is immediately punished in this universe i've i've been to the post office on

the 15th let me just say i'm a total dweeb uh who would have a relative do my taxes until a few years ago so uh i never took the responsibility to myself i i sorry but but when i would go to the post office on april 15th a couple times i would see the people like all like just sprawled on the floor writing it out there like it it's it's it can be a tense day yeah this is in berkeley california i've seen it so that's yeah i'm late on mine this year and that's just gonna be how it is that's cool we we won't tell let's hear some of kent brockman interviewing the uh the people of springfield this is kent brockman live at the springfield post office on tax day it's literally the 11th hour 10 p.m

and tardy taxpayers are scrambling to mail their returns by midnight. Sir, why did you wait until the last minute to pay your taxes? Taxes? Isn't this the line from Metallica? Sir, why did you wait until the last minute to pay your taxes? Because I'm an idiot. Happy? Of course, not everyone is an idiot. Some of us took our receipts and pay stubs to our accountants months ago. And at the risk of sounding a little smug...

Oh, help! Does anyone have a calculator? Myron? No. Krusty sent Ken up for the perfect segue. He did, yeah. I'm an idiot, all right? He just gives up. He's like, I'm an idiot.

I would assume Kr crusty fired his accountant on a tax bender at some point oh wait we already saw his accountant in uh oh right homing the clown that's right when yeah he was betting on the um yeah yeah he must have fired that guy after that or he just quit after after the uh the harlem globetrotters thing probably it's time to quit yeah i also like the the gag of frank knowing that someone miscalculated from drawing on his back. Just the feeling. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and the line, it's literally the 11th hour, 10 p.m. Very good.

That's a very funny line. I feel like David S. Cohen was behind that. Yeah, I think so. It's a very Futurama-y line, I think. It's also weird that when Otto learns that he's in the wrong line, he remains in there. He's committed that long to it. I guess that means he either paid his taxes already or he just is

below the income level to pay taxes. Yeah, I don't think he's making... You know some people just don't pay their taxes, right? Yeah, I guess so, yes. Myron is a very good accountant name. I like that. I wish... We should name our accountant Myron now. Our accountant is named John.

Don't give too many details. Not accountancy enough. Yeah. I can really identify with Homer in this next scene because I've had that sharp emotional turn of thinking, I'm smarter than everybody else. Oh no, I'm worse off than them. Yeah, yeah. It's quite a comeuppance. Will you look at those

morons? I paid my taxes over a year ago. Dad. What is it, sweetie? Did you see a scary picture in your picture book? That was last year's taxes. You have to pay again this year. No, because you see, I went ahead and year-wise,

I was counting forward from the last previous. No! I like Homer's condescension to Lisa too. Like, see, is there a picture in your picture book? Yeah, Lisa is getting dumped on a lot in these later years. Yeah. Yeah, and she's sort of smug and eye-rolly too, which

you know, when you're young and watching it, you're like, oh, clearly this is the only smart person in the room or whatever. But then you become an adult and you have to pay taxes and you're like lay off lisa give me a break yeah you know that we're not too far removed from smug atheist lisa from this angel skeleton episode oh yeah yeah no i think well that's really all the space that they have for lisa or anybody else in this any of the other family members this episode just have like a one-off joke and i think she has some of the best ones in this yeah even

though they kind of sell her out at the end oh yeah it's a weird kind of cast show like a burns smithers i mean it's on a you know a burns smithers homer driven act which is really weird bart is semi-non-existent in this episode yeah i think he has too this might be the fewest lines bart's ever had in an episode i think he does weigh in briefly here as homer fills out his taxes i put the tax forms on top of your to-do pile a month ago i have a to-do pile march how many kids do we have oh no time no time to count. I'll just estimate. Uh, nine. Homer, you know we don't have...

Shut up, shut up. If I don't hear you, it's not illegal. Okay, I need some deductions, deductions. Oh, business gifts. Here you go. Keep using nuclear power. Homer, I painted that for you. Okay, Marge, if anyone asks, you require 24-hour nursing care, Lisa's a clergyman, Maggie has seven people, and Bart was wounded in Vietnam.

Cool. 24-hour nursing care, Lisa's a clergyman, Maggie has seven people, and Bart was wounded in Vietnam. Cool! Cool! You really have a lot of talent, Ken. So sad. There was no punchline there. That was just a really dark joke about Marge's unfulfilled creative

impulses and talents i mean it's an ongoing theme in the show yeah um that she is at many times a bored housewife and i don't think they treat that as a tragedy but i think they acknowledge that she has like a complicated inner life and yeah she has interests and talents and you know she gets you know crushes and you know has creative projects and and she has a few ill-fated careers and things like that i think they had a great uh you know i think the show has a great affection for women and kind of like um housewives in general but oh my gosh what a weird dark joke to end that like scene on it's an interesting moment where after watching her husband fail spectacularly yet again she just

reflects upon a life that she could have had you know the joke was that the origin of that painting by the way it's the first time they've said it yeah i think it's the first time they refer to the painting yeah i've looked like at all i looked up the history they in later episodes they'd give it different background like there's one where lisa is drawing it in a flashback and there's another where it's implied that they have multiple copies that constantly keep getting destroyed as part of homer's insanity but i like this origin the most that it's just a nice painting marge gave that homer completely forgot she even did i enjoy them finding the origins of these very mundane things like the kitchen curtains with the corn on them yeah as we get into these later seasons uh i mean this one as as a kid when i saw this joke i could only really see it through you know child eyes towards my mom and it

just made me think of like oh has my mom ever said a sad thing and then i just am like well what do i have what can i comment on this i'm a child this is not about that man of just a wistful sigh from your mom and you're like oh what's going on here well because like the moms that marge are you're not supposed to have dreams like they yeah yeah well especially you consider like the time period for this like things have changed like so rapidly for women and like over the past like 30 years. And the people writing this episode probably had stay at home moms. And you can definitely feel that like in in the writing of Marge, which is who I think they're very sympathetic to and allowed to develop. And that the strategy of writing things plot based and kind of reverse engineering, I think the show accidentally became character driven because they were like, okay, well, we're

going to write wacky plots and write jokes around it or whatever. And then the characters kind of developed after they adapted to that writing style. But for Marge, it's like a bunch of people thinking about their mothers and creating a composite like put upon housewife yeah she is the mom of the 60s filtered through these uh 90s writers heads totally totally yeah i did want to mention the car accident that homer gets into on the way to the post office so in simpson tide we saw him murder a man on screen i think for the first time first time. Yes. That car gets vaporized. That is a hilariously gruesome car accident he causes at that crosswalk.

Oh, God. That car gets T-boned and completely shattered more than any car normally would be in that kind of accident. It's extra gruesome, just so you know. The animation is almost weird, how crushed it is. Just so you can be sure, multiple people died in that. But Bob, you legally have no leg to stand on. He didn't look. He didn't see, so it's not a crime.

Though Homer is a good legal mind later when he points out that Marge's name was on it too. Like she should be in just as much trouble because of this. But yes, Homer drives through and I counted it. It is 12 chimes of the bell it is accurate they went though i mean it's impressive that the post office stays open till midnight in uh in springfield as well yeah what is this post office and there are these weird rules like it has to be in the bin or it won't be mailed no one will pick it up off the floor i like that these stakes are only in homer's mind like i have to get it in the bin. But it's fun. It is fun.

And the randomness of how it's decided who's audited, it's how I've always imagined it does work at the real IRS. You're the one unlucky person who fell in that trough of severe audit. I mean, there is a random audit, yeah. Though we talked, too, about how June Foray got audited. Voice actress June Foray, she got audited for like a decade straight because right she was on nixon's enemies list yeah well i used to work for an organization called democratic socialists of america and we got audited yearly how how random how random yeah

damn that number generator the guys are talking about what they do with one wish which uh joey heatherton i had to look up i didn't know who she was i just knew her from uh being mentioned being at like bob hope uso shows ah okay i mean she's definitely the type of uh sexy dame of the 60s and 70s bob hope would have been in love with for sure uh playboy model but she's still with us 74 today but that really dates mo's uh libido there that really does i do enjoy lenny's low effort wish yes yeah oh i love it i love it so much i love the the you know stein becky and canary row bar flies um they just they just don't have a lot of ambitions they're just kind of like good guys that get drunk on the weekends and like that would be for example something that i don't know if you refer to this specifically but that's like a felix

joke the guy who's like an iron an iron shirt uh that is yeah that sounds like him that is a real felix construction of a gig i also love how non-plus they are at homer being dragged away by the irs people get dragged out of those a lot yeah actually that's the first of many times uh so we go to commercial we come back and homer is waiting for his turn of his audit with him is it's lucius sweet yeah don king yeah he looks like don king and sounds just like him then that's the late paul winfield doing his voice for one line my guess is they made sure to have paul winfield do it because some lawyer told them like if it's not clearly the guy from the previous episode don king could sue us over license likeness he has tax problems like don king too yeah yeah yeah and there would be i'm sure he's

litigious oh yeah and this is the version of gill they really lean into like if you look at his previous two appearances i love gill gill is like one of my all-time favorite like i mean like to take like that nervous jack lemon character just ejective into like various situations it's like never not funny to me this is like gil steps away from death row gil and in the previous appearances he was like sort of halfway to where he is in this episode and from this episode he'll only get more desperate like i feel like they found yeah the gill they wanted it's a continuing degradation of him yes yeah i know i i really love it and then i i like i had never seen like i didn't obviously i don't understand these kind of like stock characters or archetypes or anything at the time but like remember seeing glenn gary glenn ross like as an adult and being like, oh.

This might be my line in the episode just because I say, I definitely say put in a good word for old blank quite a lot. This is an egregious miscarriagement of taxitude. Oh, this is bad. This is really bad. You're working your slave and you steal just enough for a sweet lick of that shiny brass ring. Don't I get a lick? Doesn't Gil get a lick?

Simpson, Homer G. Hey, put in a good word for old Gil, would you? Yeah, his resentment is really bleeding through before he could cover it up. Yeah, no, I love it. I love also the kind of malevolent bureaucrats, which are kind of another Constance Simpsons thing. Like it's very intimidating by bureaucrats, very intimidated by kind of like the opacity of these structures. There's a bit of Kafka anxiety to all of this stuff.

Like it's like you don't know how much trouble you're in and you don't know what they're going to do to you and you're not smart enough to think your way out of it these guys do it like every job for the irs they interview homer they show him the film they are monitoring the intimidating suits yeah and they also fly a plane at the end of the episode these guys are working hard they're working hard for their money yeah you know talking about selling out gill too this is the first time he's committed a crime like in his previous ones he's like he's just bad at his job and very put upon but in this one he's like i embezzled tons of money and gambled on it got desperate that's that's the character of gill

he's pushed to the edge homer is getting interviewed by those scary IRS men. And in this next clip, I really love the childishness of his apology. Mr. Simpson, this government computer can process over nine tax returns per day. Did you really think you could fool it? No, sir. I'm really sorry, sir. An older boy told me to do it. You're looking at five years minimum. No, sir, please. I can't go to prison.

They pee in a cup and throw it on you. I saw it in a movie. You won't be seeing any prison movies where you're going. Prison. No, please. I'll do anything. Anything. Well, let's just start. Agent Johnson, FBI. I'm very happy to meet you. From now on, you're going to work for us. Okay, but could you pay me under the table? I got a little tax problem. I enjoy knowing that Agent Johnson was waiting on the other side of that chair. The rare double-sided chair.

I love that double-sided chair. And the childishness of his response and then that dumb kind of vaudeville exchange, which a lot of going straight to the I have a little tax problem thing. A lot of these jokes feel like very 1940s fast talky vaudeville jokes. Oh, yeah. Which is like, it's weird that they even into the later seasons, the thing they keep going as that kind of joke style becomes even more and more anachronistic. Yeah, they were joke styles last heard on the radio, I think.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I love it. I think it's really funny. I like that kind of anachronism, but it is really weird. There's also a bizarre thing in the scene that somebody points out on the commentary. It's Ian Maxton Graham.

I never caught it until he pointed it out. Homer's bundle of tax stuff turns into a ball of string for like one shot and then back into the ball of tax stuff yes i don't get it is there a cut scene maybe who knows but it's just a weird animation goof one of the weirdest ones like they just you can't accidentally draw a ball of string it has to be like a joke i don't know i think it could have just been a miscommunication on prop drawings and maybe one person it's a brown ball of string versus a brown you know are i guess there could have been maybe they did cut a joke where they opened it like it actually your entire thing was just a ball of string it wasn't that but but then that wouldn't work because we saw he put stuffed papers in there yeah yeah i don't know i will never know i do love how he shoved a bunch of earlier before just his just shove all the papers in there tears it up you tape it all up and just pray to god it

works like that i i had that stance a lot with bosses and handing things in just like just take it i pray i pray this works yeah homer is then given the job of uh selling out his friends lisa's very anti-government in this episode yeah yeah well she's really ambivalent about this stuff and like she can never decide whether or not she's like a goody goody or or a rebel or whatever and that's i think kind of like the purpose of her character is to kind of embody that both the childlike faith in the system and also the sort of the realization that actually things are corrupt like lisa goes to washington is obviously the most oh you know it is it's like the the early episode yeah i mean on choppo like we say that elizabeth warren's biggest problem is that she's lisa yes very true she's like a goody goody and she thinks that she's Elisa. Yes, very true. She's like a goody goody. And she thinks that she's shocked

when people don't play by the rules. She's a little bit naive. She still has faith in things. She doesn't ever like get bitter about stuff, obviously. But it's almost like she just walked out of like a seventh grade civics class or something. Yeah, you know, I had read a quote from Elizabeth Warren recently.

It was an old quote but i had not heard it before where she talks about why she was a republican and then she quit and she was like well yeah i saw the the uh the system wasn't working and the capitalism wasn't the way they said it was i was like you were like you were quite an adult when you realized that yeah yeah but i i very naive yeah I wanted to take that as an earnest statement. I did. Yeah. Oh, she's very earnest.

And that's the other thing about Lisa. She's guileless. And so is Elizabeth Warren. I believe she believes what she says. Maybe that's why Lisa turns to an anti-government person after telling Homer to pay his taxes on time now. Now when she sees Homer being put into service of the government, she's like, hey, this is wrong. Now your government dies. This wire he's wearing is very obvious, but less obvious than the giant hat he wore.

See, yeah. To spy on Apu. Which is a better joke, yeah. Yeah, this is one of these things that comes up in season nine a few times. We're like, I think they sort of did this joke before. Not that they're intentionally repeating themselves, but it's just, there's only so many things you can joke about. And it's a less crazy version of that. Yeah, I like homer's posing of holding his stomach to keep it upright i do like that they'll also man they let you know this is 98 there's like does this make me look fat joke like that is a very 1998 yeah it's very much of the taste like chicken variety of jokes

yeah i also like how when homer asked them uh what's the signal to get out they just closed the door on him we find out later he does have a suicide pill so he might have forgotten yeah he's he's fundamentally very childish and scared throughout this entire ordeal which is like um that's why it's funny it's funny watching him being nervous and incompetent uh in this next clip homer selling out his friends i love this whole talk this is again the the weight of the series really being felt here as they go over previous episodes and a rare speaking role for charlie yeah he he only as we find out he only gets to speak when horrible things are about to happen too that's true hey so you're watching a ball game looks

like a good one any of you involved in any illegal activity? Because I could sure go for some. Oh, God. How about you, Lenny? Testing, testing, Lenny. You saying you want to commit a crime, Homer? Maybe, but first I need to hear about some other crimes to get me fired up. You mean like the time you was running moonshine out of your basement?

Or that telemarketing scam you pulled? Uh, like those, but involving you. Oh, you mean like the time Barney beat up George Bush? Barney? That was me. And I'd do it again. Why stop there, Homer? My militia has a secret plan to beat up all sorts of government officials. That'll teach them to drag their feet on high-definition TV. You're under arrest for conspiracy.

Hey, how did they finger Charlie? Somebody must have ratted him out. That's ridiculous, Moe. End transmission. Charlie is really a single-issue voter when it comes to HGTV. It's true. The government didn't do the changeover until 10 years ago.

So 10 years after this episode is when the SD signal signal stopped being transmitted who knows how fast it would have gone if his militia had carried out its terrorist plot japan was way ahead of us they really were we were behind they usually are though now the idea of charlie running a militia is a little less funny to me yeah i guess even then in 98 it's post the uh city bombing yeah yeah but yeah militias were more dangerous than the 90s than they are now like they had bigger numbers and the southern property law center hadn't sued the majority of the big ones out of existence like people kind of forget like there was a heavily armed right wing in the 90s that completely dwarfs whatever we have now

maybe we have facebook to thank for distracting them with memes and their other groups there yeah i mean you know what as long as they're like on reddit maybe just like keep them busy with that and then they won't stockpile the guns if there's whatever we have to do to defuse that i also like that homer is just proud he's like i'd beat him up a second time if i could yeah yeah that's great yeah charlie he he would appear other times but pretty much when they just need another body in a either the bar or at the power he was sucked away in a tube previously right yes yeah for uh for asking for minor safety regulations maybe that's what radicalized him you

know after he got back from wherever he went uh yeah some vaguely foreign country place yeah to be read as middle eastern certainly but uh let's not dig farther homer sells out charlie he's apparently going away for a long time which hey that's you know disarms a militia good good there homer then there's uh like the duck feeding scene is definitely a JFK reference. JFK movie reference there. Then Homer immediately sells out Marge. Like this is one of the many mean Marge jokes in the show. Under the threat of taking a walk.

Yes, yeah. I mean, I do get mad when an unplanned walk happens. I'm like, you know, we should have been told me we were doing this walk. So they go to watch their film. I do like the joke that cheese is the code word. I just think it's made slightly less funny by the callback to it later. I think it works better. Like, you know that it's going to happen.

You should have just let it hang. You didn't have to bring a poo in for it. They kind of over-explained the joke. Yeah. Usually they have a little more faith in a joke like that on the show, so it kind of surprised me. But here's the film strip part one that Homer watches. Mr. Simpson, please cover your ears while I say the secret access word.

Cheese. Good morning, Agent Johnson. The film you're about to see is top secret and contains adult situations. In 1945, the people of Europe struggled to rebuild following the war. Shut up, Simpson. To ease this crisis, President Truman promised relief. American tax dollars will help our allies who fought so poorly and surrendered so readily. To make good on this drunken boast, Truman authorized the one-time printing

of the largest denomination currency ever, a trillion-dollar bill. Ooh, a trillion-dollar bill. That's a spicy meatball. The man chosen to deliver this precious cargo to europe was about his wealthiest and therefore most trustworthy citizen see montgomery burns that was the second instance of people cheering inappropriately in this episode i love it every time like just insulted basically all of europe yeah the victims of nazis they just are insulting them all as losers who gave up. What, too soon?

So, Amber, you, I think, are definitely a bigger expert on history than me. But from Googling articles, Truman, well, he didn't seem drunk. He didn't seem drunker than most presidents pre-1960s. Or most adult men. Yeah. Yeah, my impression of him is pretty average. I don't think that was a reference to anything in particular. I think it's just funny to call a president a drunken braggart, especially like a president that people don't necessarily have any memory of.

I'd like to go back to a drinking president. I mean, he openly was like, I have a bourbon each morning. Like, yeah, I well, actually, yeah, that's that's kind of interesting because Obama, he was the have a beer with a cop guy, but he was in between, you know, AA George W. Bush and apparent teetotaler Trump. I don't really believe that, but he says he's never had a drink of alcohol in his life. Yeah. Well, we had born again, George W. Like, yeah, no, I mean, like, a president should be drunk. Yeah, Truman was, at the very least,

they could find a thing of Truman saying that he had a bourbon every morning. That's just how he got the day started as president. Oh, wow, a breakfast bourbon. Apparently, bourbon was his drink of choice. Mine as well. In 1998, a TV ratings joke that also was a very specific thing. It's the second one I've seen, and the first one was on this show. Yeah, the stabbing, the ratings stabbing a man to death. very specific thing it's the second one i've seen and the first one was on the show yeah the uh the

stabbing the rating stabbing a man to death yeah i also like that truman is just such a he's kind of a smug jerk about it and and also that he's so full of pride that he prints himself on the trillion dollar bill yeah yeah and like looking like a dumb triumphant idiot. And also the idea that the most trusted man in America is the wealthiest. Wealthiest, yeah. That's a good class war joke, you know. Obviously, he's so rich now, he wouldn't steal more money. Right, right. And I had to Google this, but I do believe the prime ministers

or the foreign leaders, the trio of them, are drawn to look like the post--war leaders of england spain oh really in france definitely the brit looks a bit like anthony eden and yeah but they all look the same they're all mustachioed uh thin man that's why churchill stands out because he's like the one who isn't a tall mustachioed now he liked to drink yeah yeah he did uh but yes uh let's let's hear the second part of that film strip. Unfortunately, the money never arrived. Well, this is a kick in the knickers.

Should we complain to somebody? No. I say we just act snooty to Americans forever. I agree. This film will self-destruct if not properly stored. We believe Burns still has that bill hidden somewhere in his house. But all we've ascertained from satellite photos is that it's not on the roof. We're hoping that as his trusted employee, you can help lead us to it.

But Mr. Burns gave me my job. And he hasn't fired me even after three meltdowns and one China syndrome. I can't betray him. I'm afraid you have no choice. Yeah, Mr. Burns. I did not see him coming upon this first viewing of this episode. It turns into a Burns episode and I love him. Though he is the very much the newer Burns of this era

where it's less about a cruel man. It's more like an easily deluded rich person. He's like cruel for two scenes and then he's nice. Yeah. Yeah, and not my favorite direction with burns i feel like he was very tacked on here i also like i love smithers as a character and i don't think they made the best use of the smithers jokes that when the simpsons is making fun of like the cruelty and decadence of the wealthy at its best it's like some of the best kind of class war humor you can find these jokes

were maybe not the best yeah i do i do like that burns though they couldn't i think you have a pretty good case the second he doesn't show up with a trillion dollar bill of arresting him then so it's weird they waited 50 years that is surprising right well i i did think the the satellite photos like it's not on the roof thing. That was a decent joke. That's a good joke. I did like that one. Yeah.

Well, the FBI admitting how limited satellite photos are helpful. Yeah. And also like wastefulness and like absurd, you know, security culture stuff. I also like that joke at the time because you'd see all these movies that would, you know, like oh the cameras can do everything they can watch you everywhere so then the opposite joke of like well 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 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. Care, care. Did I mention that we care? Can't see. If you got a roof, we're kind of screwed. We can't see that. The China syndrome thing,

that is a reference to the jane fonda jack lemon film about a nuclear meltdown i might count three meltdowns on one china syndrome he's definitely caused two by this point it's hard to tell in the frank grimes episode you could maybe chalk up three in there based on how poorly he runs it or uh or also when he um has to order a new uh diablo Canyon? Yeah, from Diablo Canyon. Yeah, that could have been the China Syndrome. But Homer is wrong that Burns has fired him multiple times. He did it three episodes ago.

Yeah, that's right. I know. He seemingly was rehired, too. Yes, yeah. Well, he's a forgetful man. Also, this next scene caused me to look up what a remolad is. I don't think I've ever had it. I don't eat French cuisine all that much.

I don't either. It's, uh, based on Googling. It's a, like a French tartar sauce. I don't know. Amber, have you ever had a remoulade? Oh, hell yeah. Okay. It's good.

It's good. I love French food. You gotta, you gotta get it on that. Yeah. Decadent rich people food every once in a while. Is celery root standard though for it? Or is that, uh, that is that? I don't know what that is. I don't know the difference between celery root and celery. Like, is it just celery?

I don't know. I like some fancy food, but I couldn't point out celery root on a plate. So it's just a fancying up of tartar sauce, sort of like how aioli is fancy mayonnaise. I mean, basically, yeah. I'm thinking that the joke is that celery is such a boring vegetable that that being it makes it a very unexciting remoulade, perhaps. But actually, let's play the quick scene of Burns is very mean to Smithers

in this episode. Here you are, sir. Wild raspberry compote, celery root remoulade, and pheasant underduck. I hope you enjoy it. Oh, stop fishing for compliments, Smithers. Go home to your can of mushroom soup. Sir, a kind word now and then.

I'm choking it down. Isn't that thanks enough? Sometimes I don't know why I bother. So, yeah, this is a good example of, like, that dynamic is usually very rich. Like the, you know, By burn smithers dynamic and the put upon you know gay assistant or whatever i actually did think the pheasant under duck was funny yeah it's a it's a quick joke the rest of the stuff you just hear it it's a mess of fancy food words that you think could be real or maybe aren't but then it like, we're putting a bird on another bird. It's funny.

And they drew it too. I like that. It's very well drawn. But they kind of don't know how homophobic to be with Smithers sometimes. And I actually think they do better when they lean into it and just make silly gay jokes about him being like a fancy gay guy. Like those are the better and i think sort of more affectionate and not actually homophobic like jokes or whatever but it does seem like they dance around it a little bit and they instead

of making actual jokes where he's campy they make him sort of fussy or something yeah it's more it's more fun when he's collecting dolls or something like that dimension singing a bet middler song like he does later exactly yeah and this it's more that he's this this goes more into the burns a sexual view of him which i i much prefer the writing of smithers as a gay man who among the people he is attracted to is burns but others uh i like al jean the current showrunner of the show he's talked about how he would usually view smithers as a burns asexual as in he's if he says as al jean puts it if burns was a frog he'd be attracted to frogs it's just about burns not so much the gender which i i really prefer smithers is just one of the rare gay characters yeah and he's a

big flaming homo that goes to like fire island and like that that's a fun character and he has like dimension i think making him burns sexual is one it's like flattening and two it ignores some of the best smithers being gay jokes yeah that the simpsons have to offer a good affectionate anti-homophobic laugh at gayness he's the world's biggest sycophant who happens to be a gay man so yes exactly exactly and those things aren't are kind of not completely unrelated but they're not codependent so smithers i who i guess would normally be answering the door i think for plot purposes that's why burns is so mean to him because the smithers like you know what i'm

just going home early today so that's why he doesn't answer the door when homer arrives in the next scene oh you're right like smithers would be around to tell mr burns like this is homer simpson yeah here's who he is let's explain it they had to get rid of smithers early yeah one of the drones from sector g or whatever and uh yeah in this in this next scene homer meets with burns this feels like the last release the hound jokes that i remember like i i think this bit implies in this next clip but this bit implies that all the hounds are dead that he just forgot to feed them or they were given away or just it's a little insidery i think they could have done more with it because yeah release the hounds is now like a is it for

simpsons watchers just like a it's like a funny thing uh but like they didn't do anything with it they just didn't show up like you forgot to write a joke the joke is nothing happens they they just shrug at each other just an empty thread yeah uh but i i do i love homer's delivery in this next one of the um i don't know what to tell you now what smithers hey you're not smithers uh i'm homie simpson your trusted employee employee hey what a pleasant surprise a pack of vicious dogs should be ripping you to pieces uh i don't know what to tell you very well come on in perhaps i have something I can scold you with it'll be a few minutes

so what brings you to my home well Mr. Burns you always come off as kind of a gruff crotchety loner but we both know that deep down inside still cold let me get you a towel i love burns is very formal insistence on maiming homer like well i have to injure you in some way you're

unwelcome here come in yeah because he's like cruel and evil but also he's very civilized which is like a funny it's it's a good take on him that's like a good like it's just sort of disappointment and impatience with his inability to maul or scald i just love his oh very well yeah he's he's a billionaire from a different age so he's still like i have to invite you in uk i get one chance to hurt you and if i fail fail, it's my fault. Yeah. And same with like, if he failed to burn his face with boiling water, he's like, well, I'll get you a towel. Fine. Yeah. I did take the reply of, I don't know what to tell you, to bosses. It's just a great like, what are you going to do?

Like, I can't do it. Well, because Homer's big thing is that he doesn't expect to not be treated poorly. Yeah, that's true. You're in your right to maul me with your dogs but he's also at a loss for words right i should be running away from dogs right now as or at least a robotic richard simmons it should be one of those things uh and then as burns goes away homer searches around uh that brand joke i feel like it should be something funnier than just a bunch of yeah andtime brand. Something old-time-ier.

I just don't imagine Burns eating a bunch of just like, you know, normal brand you'd buy from the supermarket. But it is a return of the very 19th century pantry that was in Homer the Smithers. They just reused the design of Homer the Smithers. I love it, though. Yeah, it's really good. I like it. Also, Homer should know what's in there because he was just Smithers. It's the cereal that got set on fire, right?

When he poured it. You're right. Yeah, that was okay there's there's continuity here that's what we care the most about on the show it's not what's funny it's continuity so yeah then homer homer is uh using up his suicide pill like twice he's just so excited to use it they should not have given it to him and then we get a reference to collier's magazine, which I love. This is this is very much a Matt joke. Oh, yeah. And just to some degree, a Felix joke to things that just don't exist anymore are hilarious to Felix and Matt. Just like old, irrelevant, anachronistic things are funny to both of them just all by themselves that that it absolutely tickles them so like i i think about like when he oh god he also brings up some starlet oh spring buyington yeah yeah you know like try saying no

to her that's very much a a matter or a felix joke as well like and it's the kind of joke that you don't totally need to get the reference for to laugh at kind of if you just barely know know it as a reference like it's almost funnier because it's just like this is old people's shit and that's what's funny about it yeah collars magazine last published in 1957 i think i knew about it because when i was getting into classic movies you would see like oh where did the story come from it's based on the story originally published in collier's magazine like so many like hitchcock things were from collier's magazine okay yeah yeah yeah i think i think it was probably some old movie i had heard it heard of it from but it also just it just sounds old it's just funny and like his weird delight at it like you know like

he's joan crawford showing off his estate or something like it's just it's just like a very funny like vanity overcomes him it's like star snoop yeah stars yeah i love that he's been you get the sense he's been waiting a hundred years to finally be interviewed by colliers and i will say yeah flattered burns the new burns i like yeah he's very flattered uh that he has all these stories to tell i know those uh i do love him chrisman on the podcast he'll make a reference like this and there's kind of no reaction to it and then he's like come on yeah when they don't land he just gets angry those are funny but yes actually i do like burns in this next in this next clip his excitement over call yeah his vanity is great yeah Yeah. What is this? What are you doing? Um, uh, uh.

No, I get it. I'm on to you. You're from Collier's Magazine, aren't you? Are you going to put me in Star Snoop? Uh, yeah, sure. That thing. Well, I won't go without a fight, wink wink. Let me show you around.

I hope you don't mind a little walking. Here's a scoop for you readers. Oh, yeah. And then comes the Spring Barrington line. Yeah. Who was one of the earliest actresses in Hollywood history. Like, she died in 1977 at quite an old age. Yeah, I think Hollywood was the second part of her career, actually.

Like, 1930 was her first movie. Like, stage and radio and stuff like that. Stage and radio. That he would know her then is quite funny. Yeah, there's a lot of... It's just funny, yeah. There's a ton of old-timey stuff. He talks about the new Packard when the taxidermy was up in Cuba.

It's all very good. And Chaplin's... I didn't know this until they mentioned it on the commentary. Charlie Chaplin's body was stolen after his death oh uh he died in uh over the christmas holidays of 1977 by 78 he was buried and then almost immediately exhumed and had his body stolen the robbers buried him in their backyard but got caught in may and returned to the body so uh oh my god i had no idea i didn't get that reference at all i didn't know that at all so that implies that burns bought the clothes off of him before they returned the corpse what were their plans for this yeah he's

the person that exhumed the corpse uh well he's these two guys who apparently were in a real financial bind and they just thought like this thought this would pay off some debts. See? Charlie Chaplin's corpse. Are you going to unload? Yeah. They seem to think they've extorted out of the family, I think. You get one bone at a time. Oh, God. Homer is just like, ew.

And then Burns thinks it's something to be very proud of that he stole a dead man's clothes. Homer is smart enough to realize that Burns robbed a corpse in that joke. And then we get kind of like a Disney's Hall of Presidents moment with the Hall of Patriots. I like that a lot. It also feels like a very old money kind of thing of these guys to brag about how their ancestors were in the Founding Fathers or something. When they very likely were like Sam Adamsams's third best friend or something yeah or if they actually were they they like owned slaves and exploited people yeah i'm guessing the slave ownership is not mentioned in the hall of presidents yeah or hall uh sorry the the hall of patriots right and though i do like that he's proud that they killed the Fenway flounder.

It was. Also the depiction, the likeness of Montgomery Burns with the trillion dollar bill, like that is actually less silly than how Ben Garrison draws character. Yeah, that's true. That's really true.

I love that drawing of him as the ultimate Patriot. Yeah, with his curly locks. It's how they dream of themselves like the the uh super rich like him they do that a lot um with you know burns is you know portrayed himself as a much more muscular and you know olympian style like figure in a few different episodes and i like that they will intermittently show burns as like sort of a disgusting frail old man i don't know it is interesting like when marge paints him and all

of that it is interesting how they even give him sort of dimension and his vanity and his ego are sort of part of that they don't make him into, I mean, he's evil, but evil people are still three-dimensional. And I like his insecurity and his susceptibility to flattery. I also think that that idealized body was partially designed by Smithers. I'm going to, I'm going to. Yeah, yeah. Burns then also has a very funny line of saying like, oh, it'd be silly for me to put the trillion dollar bill right there. No, I keep it right here. And he just pulls it out.

That's so great. It's a pretty big bet, yeah. And yes, Burns is caught, and Homer has to make an important decision in this next clip. I love this. Is that the trillion dollar bill in his hand? That would be pretty careless of me, wouldn't it? I keep the real bill right here.

Wow, that must be worth a fortune. Nobody move! What the... Montgomery Burns, you're under arrest for grand, grand, grand, grand larceny. I'm not the thief, the government is. Every year you make hard-working Joes like my reporter friend here pay income taxes. And for what? Aid to ungrateful foreigners.

Do nothing nuclear missiles. Tomb polish for some unknown soldier. Yeah, he's right. You crooks in Washington had put a sock in it, punk. Oh, you can silence me, but you can't silence Collier's magazine. Tell the people, don't let the government push you around. You have a choice. Fight back. I'm going to write the best darn article.

Oh, wait. Take that, Uncle Sam. So Homer is being basically enslaved by the government, but it takes this speech from Burns to realize that the government is bad. I like, he is the highly suggestible type, as we've learned. Yeah, that's, again, like, the thing about Homer is that he's very excitable and he's very suggestible and he's very passionate for brief moments in time. So he's impulsive.

For a second, he's convinced he actually writes for Colliers. Yeah, exactly. It was suggestedulsive. For a second, he's convinced he actually writes for Colliers. Yeah, exactly. It was suggested to him an entire career. Also, good, pretty good joke of threes there. What was it? Foreign aid to ungrateful countries, useless nuclear weapons, and tomb polish.

Good joke of threes there. All three things were funny, but the third thing, as is the rule, was the funniest. Yeah. You got to balance it. Otherwise, the whole thing just falls apart. Even the most angry libertarian would not be bad about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's completely irrelevant, the substance of what Burns considers frivolous, because Homer is just responding to his passion and his oratory. And this is the second joke about tomb polish on The Simpsons. Oh, yes. The first was with Dr. Nick Rivera's first appearance. He was selling the tomb polish. Well, spiffy can be used on anything, but it was used on the

grave of Edward Allen Poe. They robbed his grave. At least his headstone. Defiling the dead is like an ongoing Simpsons joke. There are two defiling the dead jokes in this act alone.

Yes, that's true. I think one of my favorite gags, it's not even a joke in that it's just purely visual, was from the episode where Homer is sanitation commissioner. Ron and Todd are burying their bunny and a dead bunny just bursts out of the ground, which is literally it's just it's not even a joke. It's just a gag. It's all animation.

It's so stupid and gross. And I remember just being doubled over laughing. I also enjoy W wigum using the head of the town founder oh yeah the troloquist act bouncy yeah yeah it's great yeah and they loved it filing the dead well that anger over foreign aid thing that reminded me of like you guys on choppa especially i think you and matt talk about how that's the chief canard of so many conservative when it's like that is hardly anything we like percentage wise we're so cheap yeah we don't give foreign aid to anyone ever it's such a tiny it it's almost always like something so emergency oriented

like disaster relief like we don't do anything to help with the development of the third world or anything unless unless we are trying to sort of neoliberalize it be like hey we'll build a school if you make it for profit even perth or rico is too foreign to help exactly i also i love homer's excitement writing that article he's like i'm gonna write that best article uh they end the act with a cute gay panic joke of him putting the hand on the bottom. Homer is very much like a little kid in this episode. He's in over his head, playing pranks. And I love how Burns just lets himself be. Homer just carries him away and Burns is like, oh, all right, you're just going to carry me.

I mean, he's used to it. He likes to be babied. And there's a couple as Act 3 begins and they drive out of the place. There's a couple of callbacks to recent episodes about Burns' lifestyle. One, all the peacocks on his estate, which you saw in Larry Burns. And then Burns' driving outfit, which he was last seen wearing while riding that same car. I'm a motorist. Oh, no.

I was going to say that when he gets his gas refilled in the show. Oh, right. Petroleum destillates was what he was doing. Yeah, once again, also very, very Matt joke. Old things are funny. They just are. Is Stutz Bearcat a real car? Owned by Jay Leno.

Jay Leno, of course, owns that car. He owns more than one. We know that, right? Of course, yeah. When I did a Google search for videos about Stutz Bearcats, the first one was, Jay Leno shows off his Bearcat. Riding on the l.a high l.a highway probably i'm guessing jay leno probably has released the hounds button oh yeah that's

that's uh i'm repeating myself from a previous episode but it's just still hilarious to me that jay leno puts on all that denim and on the tim allen show current show last man standing he plays like regular guy mechanic is like you have been a a ridiculous rich person for 40 years like you're not normal at all you're not you're not you're not human anymore you're that level of rich you have an estate of cars just cars like this is the funnier smithereen scene in this episode the only really the only time he gets to really be gay in this episode, I think. Pastor Simpson, those check-booted G-men won't be far behind. We'll hide out at my place.

I've got beer. No, we need help. There's only one man who can get us out of a jam like this. You'll be swell. You'll be great. Gonna have the whole world on a plate. Alright, alright. Keep your top on. Gonna have the whole world on a plate. All right, all right.

Keep your top on. Why, sir, what a pleasant... Sounds like Homer's been reading too many hideout books. His plan is the same as his plan with Larry Burns. It worked well with Larry. Hide in the basement and drink beer. Yeah, it did. I love seeing Smithers in his, you you know pink overcoat and then also the

like his malby stacy's everywhere very pink dream house he lives in dream apartment and he's ironing his socks which makes him very different from lenny and all the other guys at moe's like he's he's living the dream and i and he's singing he's literally singing show tunes i'm like that's what we want out of our smithers someone who's very repressed at work, model employee in a closet case in a sycophant. And then at home, he has this secret camp life, which I think is very endearing. As Homer says, he wants his homosexuals flaming. Exactly. I mean, don't we all?

I love how Smithers, for just a moment a moment he's like you've never visited me at home before mr burns how nice and then just gets technically made an accomplice in grand larceny so like his life is oh if there were consequences in this episode and obviously they're not but were there them his life has ended by by yeah yeah uh but uh yes they head off in their studs bear cat which is more of a burgundy than a maroon um which wigum just it doesn't do that's a good joke yeah that's a good i like that a lot they head off to be away from the tyranny of uncle sam the relent free from the tyranny the relentless tyranny of uncle sam i like that line that's good and uh the episode really escalates fast that they are yeah they're gonna run to. Well, they just accidentally end up in Cuba.

They just got to get out of America. They want to find an island. Meanwhile, the kids find out they're apparently crazy rich and it changes them instantly, which I really love in this next clip. Let's blow this fascist popsicle stand. We'll purchase a small island somewhere and start our own country, free from the relentless tyranny of Uncle Sam. But I can't leave the country. What about my wife and kids? That can be shipped. Okay, kids,

I want some answers. Where do you think your father would go with a trillion dollars? My dad has a trillion dollars? Wow! I can buy and sell your sorry ass. I'll give you a billion dollars to empty the cat box for me. No, no, Bart. That money's going towards your college education.

Who needs college, Mom? We're trillionaires. Let's buy dune buggies. The money destroys Lisa's principles. That's good, yeah. I like that. And that's when you like Lisa, when she succumbs to her libidinal urges, when she drinks the water at

duff world and goes insane or just just you know goes wild from becoming popular for the first time or something like that's when you really like lisa when she just like kind of loses her mind because she's like this really intense type a overachiever and to see her like be let's buy dune buggies it's like oh yeah she's a person yeah lots of people don't like that joke but i do because it shows lisa is human yeah she's also tempted and also you can steal from the government it's fine yeah we already a few episodes about a dozen episodes ago we already kind of judged her for not taking mr burns's money for the little lisa yeah plan yeah no i mean she should have taken the money like you get older and you're just like fucking lisa

sabotaging their shit like they could have a decent life and she just with her stupid principles that mean nothing we all have to model this horrible version of like austere morality for the purity of a child who frankly is a little smug and judgmental all the time. The older I get, the more the sicker I get of Lisa. Well, that 10, we said, we said this, this is repeating stuff for our listeners, but she could have given that $10 million away to somewhere else. At the very least, if you hate that money that much, at least give it away. So it's not owned by Burns, the very least if you hate that money that much at least give it away so it's not owned by burns the very evil rich guy like there's nothing wrong with taking money away from rich people there's no such thing as dirty money there's no clean hands in a dirty world take the money all money is dirty yes it's filthy both literally and figuratively we need more coins

that's what i'll say we need more coins in amer what I'll say. We need more coins in America. I just also love Yardley's delivery of like, let's buy dune buggies. Like, it's so exciting. Yeah, yeah, it's cute. And the way her arms move, too. Like, she's excited. Well, also, she's correct. Like, you know, this recent stuff with Felicity Huffman and those kids.

Yeah, yeah. They were doing this for their shitty, dumb kids who just want to be Instagram models. It's like, yeah, just buy dune buggies. Why are you going to college? Don't buy them. Yeah, yeah. They were doing this for their shitty, dumb kids who just want to be Instagram models. It's like, yeah, just buy do-buggies. Why are you going to college? Don't buy them. Yeah, there's no reason. You don't need society. Leave those spaces for people who need them.

That seat in class could be so much better used. Yeah. Enjoy your privilege. Like, literally, don't try and live a normal life like the rest of us because there's only so much to go around. They're trying to escape with their trillion dollar bill. We get to see Burns flying skills come up a second time. It's a real Howard Hughes move. Yeah.

I like that. And I love when they can get a nice observational gag along with plot stuff. So Homer trying to get the soda machine to accept the trillion dollar bill is very funny. I like that a lot. That's a great gag. And also that there's soda on the plane anyway, which is, that's another great gag. They're flying away and they escape into international waters, which I love the, in this next clip, Homer was just immediately waiting to gamble the second they reached there. Get his dice ready.

Attention fugitives. You are leaving U.S. jurisdiction. Turn back immediately or we will be unable to prosecute you We better do what he says Wait, we're now over international waters We can gamble Yes I'm not

They'll be back They'll miss American TV Any of these islands would make a fine new country. I call President. Vice President. There's a big one. And it has freedom written all over it. Sir, that's Cuba.

Cuba, eh? Take her down, Smithies. You're flying the plane, sir. Excellent. This was the era before prestige tv where it wasn't cool to watch tv and american tv was infamously bad now it's totally good there's too much i mean we're in game of thrones mania right now and i can't take it i can't take it twitter becomes game of thrones town after a certain hour i like the uh sorry you're flying the plane

excellent like i like that that's also reminiscent i i hate to say it though like there's a better version of this joke on the critic which is penguins can't fly it's true yeah i do like penguins can't fly that's always funny i've learned from people who have moved uh immigrated away emigrated from america expats whatever that uh this isn't true anymore because the internet means you can never miss American television. And it's just apparently on in every country anyway, so you can't really skip it. You just need a VPN. I don't have it in Cuba.

I will say that. Well, all right. Great telenovelas. Well, let's talk about that, actually. That's another reason we wanted you on this episode, because you have recently in the last few months visited Cuba yourself. Yeah, I went to Cuba. I'm writing a book about sort of contemporary socialism or whatever. And I thought, you know, there's this. When you really care about someone, you shout 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? One kind of remaining Marxist-Leninist country that is 90 miles off the coast of Florida that I can now go to. So I went. How easy is it to get, you know, permission as a journalist to go there these days? It's actually easier as a journalist. The thing is, you still have to, like, give a reason to the U.S. for why you're going.

I went with friends. So I got a press visa. They had to put, and I actually kind of envy them for this, because you can't just say you're going there on vacation. Even though people go there on vacation from every other fucking country in the world. But they got to put that they're going on on their official travel documents to support the cuban people which is cool i almost wish i could have put that but like basically we brought things that aren't necessarily like mass produced there or they're harder to come by there like pepto bismol is is like hard to come by there like little over-the-counter things aren't just in every store or whatever so like you know that

they were they had to like basically go on a humanitarian kind of visit providing nice little consumer goods but like nothing it's i mean cubans are fine they're not fucking starving to death they're not dying at the street, but you have to put that on the paper. So it makes it seem like you're a benevolent American going to this, going to this horrible third world country to support the poor Cuban people suffering under communism. You arrive and you say,

basically we gave our friends, cousins, um, some Pepto Bismol. You arrive, you arrive in Cuba and and you say i come bearing buffering for the people and then like the whole time we were there in havana too we were walking by like open clinics and like we were we were in like the the poor area of havana but there

were still all these open like clinics that people just walking into hospitals and like signing in because it was really nice weather so the doors were just open or whatever and it's just like well i mean i guess i would also miss tums every once in a while but like the actual health care is really excellent the way this it's obviously they made this show 20 years ago but like how accurate is the look of cuba in this episode compared to what you experienced? Well, we're in old Havana, which is like the most kind of like crumbly part. And it's still like very beautiful.

You can tell like, you know, it's a city has beautiful bones. It has a bunch of Spanish architecture. When you go into like the former kind of pre-revolution tourism parts, it's still like insanely gorgeous and luxurious and if you again are coming from some other country you can stay in a luxury hotel and but yeah there's you know people pulling carts of sunflowers on the street and you know little restaurants with cafes and people playing music and it's um like a beautiful Latin American country I don't know what else to say like we stayed in the bad part

and it's still like the safest, one of the safest cities in the world. And it just basically meant that they were doing a little more building construction and it was just gorgeous. They sort of have a sort of a light Mad Magazine touch

with Cuba on this one. Oh, it is, yeah. Like I feel like they would have had a joke about Homer eating something much more disgusting than donkey meat, but they didn't want to dehumanize the Cuban people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Homer eating something much more disgusting than donkey meat, but they didn't want to dehumanize the Cuban people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Homer would be on board with eating donkey meat. I thought they were pretty respectful about it. And it had less to do with maybe they don't have food to eat, more to do with the fact that people eat different things in different places. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I was going to ask how much donkey meat is offered freely on the streets. There's not a lot of donkey meat. They're very big on pork.

But I do love this. It's just a tiny clip here, but I do love this scene, just Homer. One, why this works great as a bilingual joke for dumb Americans is that it uses only words that you'd learn in high school Spanish class. So you can get it yourself. And it makes it even funnier

that Homer does not get it as well he's not insulted though he's being very like nice to this little boy i like that too but yes oh you're gonna love it in cuba march there's shredded pork everywhere it's carnal de burro nice to meet you i just love that nice Nice to meet you. So friendly. And how many paintings of Che are around as well? Literally everywhere. Okay, they got that right.

No, literally everywhere. And you know the college student wearing Che? The people in Cuba are wearing Che shirts everywhere. It is not like a corny American leftist thing. They love Che. They wear the shirts. They love the murals. Very still big into Che. I remember once someone telling me that actually St. Patrick's Day isn't a big deal in Ireland. And then I ended up in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day. I'm like, you're full of shit. It really is like that. It really do be like that sometimes. and they love che che is everywhere his face is everywhere along with other like revolutionaries they're very they

have that great kind of communist tradition of murals everywhere and historic like there's like cool historic poster shops and political bookshops and you see people wearing the che shirt and adult men not like college students like guys like you know selling bananas out of a cart one vintage car is still pretty big there as well they're there everywhere it's gorgeous they i can't believe they still keep them running they are so resourceful i mean there's no industrialization the island isn't that big and the soviet union is no longer providing them aid because they don't exist anymore so there isn't that big and the soviet union is no longer providing them aid because they don't exist anymore so there was after the fall of the soviet union there was

they i think they call it like the lean years or whatever and there were there were shortages and it was both soviet union hurt more than just people who were in uh you know former soviet countries and uh it took them a long time to sort of like re-budget their country and it took them a long time to sort of like rebudget their country and it required some, you know, sort of liberalization measures that would have been considered counter-revolutionary prior, but they just like had to

because they're a tiny little country. It is amazing what they can do with these cars. It's interesting to think that in the previous episode, the Soviet Union reunited. Oh, yes. In Simpsons time. That's what we wanted you to think.

Yeah, the Lenin must crush capitalism by the Frankenstein. So Cuba should be flourishing in this episode. Cuba, right, yeah. Oh, yeah, it was Mark Irving is the artist they credit for all the great car stuff. He also did the...

The car accident? Yeah, and also the classic one of the boot on the car from the New York episode. That was him, too. So he's very good at car art. Very economically combined their cigar joke with their boxing joke. If they got both in there.

If they could have just got baseball in there, it would have been all the stereotypes. They only have one act for all of these stereotypes. You got to speed it up. They have like three minutes left in the episode. Yeah. No, you can tell too that they're trying to sort of cram it in there which is like it's almost like this should have been two different developed episodes with different trajectories but you know what you write the jokes first and then see how you can fit them together and there's also i didn't know this until the commentary there is a very obscure 70s comedy

reference in here too uh so when the taxi driver picks them up he is very specifically designed of being this kind of like slightly heavier guy with a bushy mustache and a hat on driving a taxi now i only know this because mike scully brought up that he worked for these guys on the commentary and this was an intentional tribute to them right there was a comedy duo in the 70s called burns and schreiber burns this uh kind of skinny irish catholic type and then avery schreiber the uh kind of new yorkie jewish uh heavier guy and they would do this consistent bit multiple times on their uh show the burns and schreiber hour of a taxi driver who is talking to a man named burns okay so uh it's this really dense gag of like they create a cuban avery

schreiber who is driving around burns and burns is asking him questions you described his appearance as a jewish version of lou albano playing super mario yes yeah i like that description a lot if you swap out italian for jewish that's basically i mean for our generation who didn't have that on tv i know avery schreiber as a the doritos salesman of the 80s before jay leno yeah the pre-leno though jack burns you'll know his voice is the other crash test dummy the crash test dummy commercials of the 90s with lorenzo music oh yeah so uh that's anyway that explains a very like just silent gag in this one scene. I never knew. A joke for no one, but it's on TV.

I like it. And it makes sense that Burns would have been friends with Batista or that he would have. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I also I liked the joke of like Homer doing the thing where he's pretending that he has the same naivety and not just ignorance as Burns. He's like, I did not. That was a really good Homer. Homer has no clue Batista left because he is just that ignorant of Cuban history.

I mean, he had no clue that there was a Cuban revolution. He probably didn't know who was in charge of Cuba prior to the revolution. Like, Homer couldn't find Cuba on a map. That's the thing is I like the fact that he's sort of pretending. Burns is old and Homer's just stupid. It's very sweet. Burns hasn't learned anything about Cuba in the last 50 years, but Homer just never learned anything about it.

Exactly. Yeah. And so then we get our appearance of fidel castro here played as they say on the commentary basically like ricky ricardo yeah it's a it's a fairly good castro i these castro scenes are very funny which could you believe he'd live like another 18 years wow he he outlived them all like he's the joke in here is that he's finally giving up and to america but in reality he he lived to see all of his enemies die and like that was the i mean that was that was the thing like they were they were the holdout and the soviet union had dissolved and cuba was going through a huge crisis and they didn't know what they were going to do

and there was all this talk they were going to do. And there was all this talk that they were completely capitalist. So like it was, whether intentional or not, a very like germane and politically relevant kind of reference there. Yeah. Well, let's hear it. So you say Batista's gone. Did you know that? I had no idea. Then that case just take us to whoever's in charge.

Comrades, our nation is completely bankrupt. We have no choice but to abandon communism. I know, I know, I know. But we all knew from day one this mumbo-jumbo wouldn't fly. I'll call Washington and tell them they won.

But Presidente, America tried to kill you. Ah, they're not so bad. They even named a street after me in San Francisco. That's what I was going to hear about it. It's full of what? Presidente, three men are here to see you. They claim to have a trillion dollar bill.

Ay caramba! We both have been to the Castro plenty of times. I didn't know what Castro Street was when I heard this joke as a 15-year-old. I did. You were lucky. I lived in the suburban South, so I was not aware of it. I think in 2019 now it's like the home of the 100 most wealthiest gay men in America. Yeah.

It's impossible. But it used to actually be like, you know know it was a historic gay neighborhood and it was a you know a hotbed of political activity and it's a funny joke oh i love the joke yeah i i just love his reaction full of what i think of that joke sadly every time i'm there to go to the movies no i uh yeah as as a gay person i once I finally visited the, the Castro street in like 2006, it was very, no, 2004 was the first time I went there. It was very special to me because like, I think, you know, not to say that America isn't an insanely homophobic place, but it's different enough now there.

Maybe I'm just used to it. That like Castro is not the Castro street is nice, but it doesn't seem as special as it used to then. Or maybe i'm just getting old and everything seems less special now no no i think i mean you're right things have changed like for the better or or whatever um in terms kind of liberal attitudes towards just inclusivity and kind of acceptance and all those happy little like sesame street kind of uh attitude towards people that that we want in

society but it's like oh the castro used to be cool and now it's just a bunch of rich assholes yeah that's uh yeah it used to be the place gays live there because it was cheap and they could afford it or now it's just the richest i mean that's silicon valley too i mean the it's the peter teals and the other uh blood-sucking gay rich men literally yeah they're the ones who are fucking it up and that's why like all my lesbian friends i knew they don't live in the castro they live in the east bay because that's where they can afford like yeah it's still fun to go to castro i one of the things that make me well actually my husband proposed to me in front of castro theater even oh that. Yeah, it was very nice.

And so, yeah, I have lots of warm feelings about it. But, too, when I walk around there, there are times I'm like, this is like Disney Main Street for gays. It just doesn't feel real anymore. It's like the Mr. Show version of San Francisco. It's getting close. It's getting close. But still, if you've never visited it and you're a small town gay, I still think it has magical properties to it. Everyone should go.

It's like a major piece of gay civil rights history. Also, just go to San Francisco. It's gorgeous. Before Silicon Valley completely destroys it. Yes. See it before it's gone. We're here in Berkeley. It's still safe.

I love Berkeley. And it's also not not in case this joke confused listeners it is not named after fidel castro it is no it is named after jose castro the mexican leader of opposition to the u.s taking california in the 1800s so there you go there's there's your history lesson but i just says this is an educational i just love how mean they are to like the castro behind closed doors he's, we all know communism is mumbo jumbo. Like, just like Lisa,

they're selling out their principles immediately. Yeah. But they, they've got a new lifeline of a rich American here, which burns meaning Castro is such a clever concept for a final. Yeah. This episode, but I like how artless his trick is.

Yes. It's like a bigger brother tricking a little sister or something like that yeah i i love it and i also in this scene here it's another of my favorite lines the episode of burns saying let's move to your socialist place i do want to be treated better because i'm rich though yeah so clever yeah i'll just i'll just play the scene oh so the island's not for sale eh well will you at least permit us to live in your socialist paradise you're talking about cuba exactly all we ask is preferential treatment because of my fabulous wealth may i see see with your eyes not with your hands please we are all amigos here. Mr. Burns,

I think we can trust the president of Cuba. Now give it back. Give what back? That just did. That's okay. Where was Smithers? He could have been his enforcer.

They didn't invite him into the room. I do like the Smithers. Smithers is the only competent. This is also the other joke is that Smithers is He could have been his enforcer. They didn't invite him into the room. I do like the... Smithers is the only... This is also the other joke is that Smithers is like the only competent person. Yeah. And like he just never gets

any respect or reward for it. One of the funniest cuts is the smash cut to them on a raft. Yes, yeah. They have to wrap things up immediately. Just instantly. Yeah. It's kind of a rushed ending yeah

very rushed yeah it actually it does remind me of the lord of the flies ending of let's call mo yeah let's say mo but uh they credited to dan grady again on this as he's the one who came up with this quick ending but i do like knowing again in this world of the simpsons that now cuba has a trillion dollars and it's like the one of the richest countries on earth i love that i do like the burns line coming up this whole speech is great but i love oppression and harassment are a small price to pay to live in the land of the free yeah it reminds me of all of those like totally pro-fascist pundits who are like people care about freedom and liberty like as there's the principles we should all believe in yes yeah who cares what the

government does to you outside of that right well and they don't really have they don't really make value judgments about communism in this at all they just kind of skip it you know they make a joke like we all knew this wasn't gonna work or whatever but there was no like you know massive repressive repression jokes in this episode america is the coercive repressive bureauc... Bureaucratic monster. Yeah, the monster, yeah. Which sometimes what it enforces is good, like taxation, and sometimes it coerces some dumb rube like Homer Simpson into ratting people out. Even solid progressive Democrats in the 90s

tended to be pretty anti-communist. So I was kind of surprised how they just didn't really have much of a... There was no kind pretty anti-communist so i was kind of surprised so they just like didn't really have much of a there's no kind of anti-communism there was no kind of there was no ideology president it was just jokes yeah i i'm wondering if that's just how that's a real crystallization of 1998 feeling of just like communism has been so defeated socialism so defeated that it's not worth our time to say we don't think it would work like it's like right right it's over like there's no it's self-evident yeah it's out of history yeah yep yeah but yes this ending here is uh it's a very patriotic and very quick getting out of

their cul-de-sac i but i i do love the speech by burns it's hard to believe there's a place worse than America, but we found it. Yes, I too feel renewed appreciation for the good old U.S. of A. Oppression and harassment are a small price to pay to live in the land of the free. But sir, aren't you facing some serious jail time? Well, if it's a crime to love one's country, then I'm guilty. And if it's a crime to steal a trillion dollars from our government and hand it over to communist Cuba, then I'm guilty of that too. And if it's a crime to bribe a jury, then so help me, I'll soon be guilty of that. God bless America. Yeah, and then there's Homer, just just impressionable as always just getting excited it is it is a just say moaning but it's also it's a commentary like of course he's rich he'll get

out of it using all his money there'll be no problem it's just accepted truth like yeah it's uh that's another of my favorite gags similar to this in previous episodes where they finally they get him for putting toxic waste in kids playgrounds like that's a million dollars like okay here you go yeah all right i'm gonna buy the statue of lady justice too goodbye yeah yeah i mean the simpsons it wasn't usually it was basically never explicitly political in the way we think of political comedy being but it was always class conscious which is something that like right now we have everything is political at all media all comedy it's all political but very little of it

is class conscious it's less interesting art it's less funny and and i think it you look back at that time period and even things like roseanne and even married with children like there's no sense of like the struggling family that was like the center of the entertainment, at least like television entertainment. She's not really around anymore. Yeah. I mean, what we have now are just eight different versions of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

Yes. I know. That's basically it. All political, no class conscious. It's like a very sort of shallow politics. And I think it makes for less impressive art and less funny comedy. Well,

so many, you know, sitcoms now they, they want to take away the idea that they, they want to show a happy, well-off family, or at least like economically comfortable family. If they were in distress,

then they'd worry, well, the audience will be stressed seeing these people stressed about money. So yeah, it's better as wish fulfillment to just show that instead i think the last sitcom really about class or that a lot of class issues was malcolm in the middle it was about like the family is poor all the eater leftovers they're almost destroyed at every turn by financial problems one bill would kill all of them and i know friends that wouldn't

watch it like that show is depressing yeah yeah yeah yeah i loved it and i you know had one of those families. And it wasn't like, oh, I want to see myself. It wasn't even a representation thing. Although I do think there's something to that argument. You want to see a lot of different types of people on television or whatever. I think it's just like those kind of conflicts make for better entertainment than like, dad doesn't like my new boyfriend. Yeah, I mean, it's why Roseanne and The Simpsons were number one shows when they started because it was like how about these families

don't you want to see these families now yeah no and the simpsons were constantly in crisis there was always there was always some i mean like that was the undertone of everything yeah they kind of lost that over time too they definitely did but the frank grimes stuff, I think he even was like, you actually do live in a really nice house. But they were always precarious. They're always one emergency away. Lisa needs braces or something like that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, to think now on shows, I can't stop talking about Last Man Standing, but that's what the popular sitcoms now, or the reboot of roseanne they weren't about class consciousness they were about complaining about snowflakes yeah pc culture and like that they were about culture not class and even in trying to it's it's it's putting the cart before the horse i think but anyway this episode really funny i do like this ending uh it's it's funny there's it It's definitely not their tightest plot they've done.

Yeah. I consider it similar to another episode I like, The PTA Disbands, where the story is stupid and doesn't make any sense, but there's so many great jokes and gags all throughout and good lines from this episode too. That's a good pro-union episode too. Oh, that too?

Yeah. Yeah. God knows some of the episodes got real bad. And I'm not even a Simpsons completist at this point i don't know anyone who is but i definitely watched like well into this season and passed it and this one i mean it has it has some really good jokes and it had some it still had some of that like you know like simpson's irreverence and uh you know had like the kind of weird vaudeville gags and acerbic criticism of government and the wealthy and, you know,

funny, endearing characters. So Amber, thanks for being on the show. You are on Chapo Trap House, which we love. Is there anything else we can find that you've done lately? You can read my writing at the Baffler where I have a column called All Tomorrow's Parties.

Excellent. Thanks so much for coming on, Amber. Thanks for having me on. This was really fun. So thanks again to Amber Ali Frost. We love Chap chapo trap house and her writing is so good too so check out that stuff and we really appreciate her being on the show and hopefully we can get the rest of the chapo crew on at some point too uh two left we have at this point so we're eyeing you guys but yes thanks so much amber it was awesome to have her on uh but this podcast yes if you want

to help our podcast and get all kinds of great stuff please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and for the low low incredibly low cost of five dollars a month you can get this podcast and our sister podcast what a cartoon a week ahead of time and ad free and along with that five dollars a month you'll get lots of bonus things including limited series that will only be on patreon our newest one we're doing right now is talking of the hill, a first season exploration of King of the Hill. You can get that and also things like Talking Futurama and Talking Critic at the $5 level and everything else that we do that will be exclusive to Patreon. And Henry, what is our new $10 tier? What is the newest thing we're offering at that $10 tier? Well, we have a ton of stuff there that you'll get access to, but right now the newest

thing you'll get at $10 a month is What a Cartoon Movie, our monthly animated film podcast. Back in April, we did Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, and that was a really great podcast, I'm sure. And our next one will be just as great, which will be chosen by our patrons. And you can only hear that if you are at the $10 and up level at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. It is 1000% worth it. So as for me, I have been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts.

That's a classic gaming podcast every Monday and occasionally on Friday. Go to retronauts.com or look for Retronauts in your podcast machine. Henry, how about you? You can follow me, Henry Gilbert, on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. If you follow me, you'll learn whenever new episodes or other content goes live, both on the free feed and on the Patreon. Plus, I have lots of political opinions that if you like this podcast, you'll want to read more of them.

H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next time for Girly Edition. We'll see you then. Oh, Edna, you're certainly looking lovely tonight. Is that a new green sweater? Until you're willing to file jointly. Back of the line, Seymour.