Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Way We Was With Jeff Dutton

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

As we head back to the 1970s to hear about Homer and Marge falling in love, we're joined by our third member from the band & podcast The Sloppy Boys, writer/director/musician Jeff Dutton! Jeff joins us for an important chapter in Simpsons history, as the family is left with no choice but to do their first flashback episode after their TV set breaks. Not only do we see true love blossom, but we also see the first McBain, the first Jon Lovitz, and so much more, all in one podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a new podcast miniseries exclusively on patreon right now for five dollar and up subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get talk king of the hill season two part one that's right we're returning to king of the hill once again putting out 11 new episodes covering the first half of the show's second season. Again, that is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Be there or be not right. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where butterflies are free. I'm your host, the creepy one-bedroom apartment liver, Bob Mackie,

and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. I just collect the cans, Daddy. It's Henry Gilbert. Hi. And who do we have on the line? Hi, I'm Jeff Dutton, Mars' date for the prom. Hmm. And this episode is The Way We Was. Everything I know tells me this story doesn't end with us sitting here and you telling it to us. Get off the edge of your seat.

They got married, had kids, and bought a cheap TV, okay? Today's episode aired on January 31st, 1991. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby! Welcome Freshman debuts on Nickelodeon. Home Alone is still number one at the box office, and the first Lemmings video game is released for some British computer systems. Amiga. That always looked more fun

than it was to me every time it was every every version of lemmings i played uh every time i was like i'm good i'm after after the first two rooms or something even the dunk the the mario and donkey kong lemmings ripoff was the most I liked a Lemmings game. I even didn't like that one that much. No, never. What are those? It doesn't ring a bell. Oh.

They're called, like, Mario versus Donkey Kong. Are they the minis? March of the Minis. That's it. Where you're, like, you're moving around miniature toy Marios through a stage. And they made a lot of those. Yeah. Up through the 3DS era, I think.

No way. Man, that must have been, like, while I... When I was in college, it was a bit of those yeah up through the 3ds era i think no way man that must have been like while i when i was in college it was a bit of like a dark ages for me and uh most forms of media except for like halo and grand theft auto so it must have been like in that pocket but i remember uh worms was what i wanted lemmings to be yes when i found worms i was like oh okay this is what i wanted lemmings to be i didn't want to have to like crawl out of a pit or whatever you're doing lemmings uh well you mentioned gta that's the uh fun trivia about lemmings that the guys oh yeah it would go on to create gta it is for real yes yeah the the same bunch of british weirdos yeah and uh you mentioned welcome freshman that was an early uh scripted Nickelodeon show filmed in front of a live audience in Florida.

Henry, could you have been in a Welcome Freshman taping? No, unfortunately not. Because the one time I got to go to the Nickelodeon studios and see stuff was at, they weren't filming anything. We got to look at the closed down set for Legends of the Hidden Temple. That's so cool. Did you watch the Orange Years the orange years documentary no no i haven't seen this no have you heard of this i yeah i've heard about it in passing uh i don't know how in depth it goes though um it's pretty brisk but it just touches on like everything you know what i mean it it starts in like the pre the pre-orange years where it was just like a struggling educational channel

and it had pinwheel and then yuck uh went forward into the kind of the boom of it is the studios is nickelodeon studios and i had no idea that people would go through the tour and like see the dressing rooms and see the where they shoot everything like it was really they let you in there i can't imagine working in that atmosphere like just an endless tour of of tourists coming through it was a real boom for florida it was becoming the union free hollywood for maybe like seven or eight years that's what nick hoped for yeah yeah and mgm too right oh yes yeah well they were the disney in general yeah yeah and when i watch welcome freshmen as a kid i i can i can't even name any more characters from it.

Mr. Lipman was there. Mr. Belding. It was a Saved by the Bell ripoff with a little more edge to it. I recall the first season was like sketches and the second season it became a 30 minute just full story kind of thing. And currently it's lost media. Yes. Yeah. I get it confused with you can't do that on television recall and currently it's lost media yes yeah i i get it confused

with you can't do that on television oh it's uh it's similar yeah it's after oh what you can't do that yeah not not as many weird i remember farts uh unwelcome fresh nobody's getting slimed uh there's no costumes as far as i know kids get shoved in lockers though whenever i saw any show that joked about kids being shoved in lockers, I was like, that's going to happen to me. I just know it. And Home Alone still number one, debuting what, in November, I'm guessing, of 1990? Okay. And still number one.

Well, this is also like, you know, in the early 90s, they didn't put out movies in January. Like, nothing was going to beat the Christmas movie in January. So Home Alone started to be it i mean we we've talked about it a lot by being that jeff did you see home alone in theaters uh i think that i saw two in theaters and um one well we'll get into this early in my life my parents were like oh no you can't watch bart you know. You can't watch The Simpsons. And then that quickly went away. But I think Macaulay Culkin or Home Alone was another bad kid.

At least I had a little sister. My parents were like, oh, we're not watching Home Alone. And then quickly, that was fine. Kevin McAllister was a live action Bart that had a smart mouth on him. He didn't skateboard, but he got into trouble. Right. He sledded down the stairs. Yeah, that's dangerous enough.

Like, too imitatable, as it is. But joining us on the show, you've heard his voice earlier. We have Jeff Dutton from the Sloppy Boys podcast. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Hey, guys. Good to be here. Thanks for having me. And we've had your cohorts on previously,

and now we have completed the Sloppy Boys collection. You sure have. And they know The Simpsons better than i do so you made the right call but while me and bob you know where i am a patron as well i think bob is a patron as well as wow couple patrons all right and uh and yeah i mean also we we loved your your sketch show uh birthday boys i think we've seen you live like two or three times three times in the bay area yeah yeah oh nice well good to meet you for real um yeah we love the san francisco sketch fest which is i assume where you saw us yes yeah i hope it's happening this year hope uh

to see you again perhaps someday january yeah and yeah so i mean uh i guess i was gonna ask like if you recalled watching this episode live in 1991 but it sounds like you weren't allowed to. Yeah, I mean, it was quickly OK. I mean, especially by the time like South Park came out, it was like all restrictions were lifted on what television we could watch. But Simpsons early on had like a bad rap. I mean, I'm sure you guys have discussed this as a ton, but I did see a bunch, though. And I remember my mom wanting me to see the one where uh homer quits drinking okay my mom was like a nurse and like a detox nurse oh okay so you can

imagine how she feels now that i have a booze podcast oh no i mean usually on the show it's people uh that were allowed to watch it or people that weren't and then their parents eventually gave in i think this is the first time we've had a parent who previously said no trying to onboard you into the show with a one episode yeah yeah i was like well i mean that is a it is a good episode about alcoholism i'm sure you guys have covered it like it didn't stick around as like a canonical decision for him the way it did for like barney but in that episode it's it's very uh good but also it's just a like a really funny episode of comedy television so that's what you love i i was curious too like yeah we've heard from folks who when

their parents wouldn't let them watch it that by the time in like 94 95 when the syndicated airing started in the afternoon when your parents were at work or maybe just coming home you could finally watch it were you Were you a viewer at that time? I just remember, I'm from New Hampshire, and I remember it being on Fox 25. Oh, I guess it was always a Fox show. But yeah, it felt like there was a time where it was just sort of always doing reruns

or you would get like back-to-back episodes in syndication. And it's a show that I never really felt like I had seen because I never knew when the new ones were on. So I would just be like, oh, it's a show that I never really felt like I had seen because I never knew when the new ones were on, you know? So I would just be like, oh, it's just something that you see. And then by the time I was in college and people had the DVDs and stuff, I would go in and like, I would be like, oh yeah, let's put in this disc. I haven't seen this one. And I'd seen them all. Like I'd seen like the lion's share of them. And it's just one of those things where I felt, I felt cheated. Like I didn't have the experience of feeling like i was completing something but every time i pop a disc

and i'm like seeing it seeing it seeing it i'd like to be free of the knowledge of like oh this is season four john swartzwater directed it i wrote it mark cucklin directed it i just have all that in my brain now it'd be nice to be surprised at this point i love when i when i do see one i haven't seen but but then it's not a good one. Because all the good ones are the ones that get played all the time. You probably watch those like 500 times at this point. I also was curious, in your college years, that's when you started your comedy career. I've heard from other folks in the comedy world that like the Simpsons DVDs and even like the extras, like the commentaries and stuff kind of influence their career.

Some of it. How much impact did Simpsons have on your your career as a comedy writer, director and actor? Oh, boy. Well, you see, I didn't go to when I was in school. I wasn't like I'm going to be a comedian. I still don't call myself a comedian, really. I liked to make funny student films as opposed to my more serious peers. But only moving to LA and did I say already, I liked surrounding myself with funny people. Oh, sure. Yeah. And so hanging out with like Mike and Tim and all those folks when we interned out here

and then we're like, oh, we're going to move out here. Anybody else want to move out here? And it was only like the six or seven of us. I think I've absorbed The Simpsons as an influence just because it is kind of like one of the best shows. I was always more of like a South Park kid because I felt like I caught it at the beginning and then I grew along with it. Like South Park came out when I was a freshman in high school and it was like the hot ticket item. It was controversial and huge out the gate. And then like it got better as a show as I got older as a human. And so I kind of feel like that's more my show. But even though I think the best Simpsons episodes are better, Simpsons at its best is better than South Park at its best, probably. It does feel special to be at the start of something. That's true. Yeah. Well, I, you know,

also, uh, your sloppy boys podcast is all, is a lot about, uh, drinking. I was curious if you ever thought about making the flaming mo from the show or alternatively, if you drank the fake flaming mo that's at the universal studios. No, I haven't, I haven't had the fake flaming mo that's at the universal studios no i have i haven't had the fake flaming mo uh i did go to the simpsons ride early because mitch was i believe still working at gracie when it came out so we got to go on like the ride really in like succession. We're like, we went once and then went a second time and I was very sick after like, it's something I loved the back to the future ride, but then the, the Simpsons one is a little bit more like nauseating,

especially like there's like, there's like a milk breath burp at the end that is kind of icing on the cake. And so the first time I was like, let's do it again. And then the second time I was like, Oh, I feel fucking gross. Anyway. i haven't had the fake i haven't had the flaming mo drink but like what's the ingredient it's oh it's caught you just it sounds like it's just a long island iced tea or one of those ones of like a lot of different alcohol just a shot a shot a

shot and then codeine laced grape yeah syrup non-narcotic oh you do have to light it on fire first yeah yeah yeah so it's like a flaming shot any thoughts on i would do that any thoughts on just the drinks you light on fire in general you know we just got back from hawaii and we had a ton of flaming drinks no and uh i haven't gone back now all my drinks are flaming you've had that flaming uh. Pepper, right? I remember that one. Yeah. That, which I was, I've never had one before. I thought you mixed Dr. Pepper in it, but it's not. I was shocked to learn that was not the case. Same. I thought so too. But I mean, it's kind of more fun when you, when you realize like, no, no, no, it's, it's this other stuff

that you put together and you light on fire and then it tastes like Dr. Pepper. That's a cool thing. Did you try it? No, I haven't. I just listen. I don't have enough of a liquor cabinet. No problem. Bob, I got a little nod out of you.

Did you try it? No, but I want to. Yeah, you should. I've been building up an unhealthy liquor supply over quarantine. And now that it's over, I need to start drinking it all in higher quantities. I think that's how it works. You know, on the mention of the Simpsons ride, I did want to say I just went to Universal right after they opened back up.

And me and my husband got to ride it, you know, alone because that's how they were safely doing it. So that was part of the treat. But it was the first time where it like really hurt me. Like I. I think you need the ballast of all those other people to keep the thing stable. I think so. Like it did a thing of like a lurch forward and then pull back.

And like it actually like I bashed my back against the hard back of the thing. Like, ow, my back hurts. Like I couldn't believe how much that hurt. That sounds like me on Goofy's Sky School. Oh, I'd never ride that again. Wait, what is that? A Disney ride? That's California Adventure.

It's one of those wild mouse style roller coasters, which means they're made out of wood and very painful. They just shove you around. And for like 30 seconds, you're just shaken, basically. I've never been to California Adventure. I wouldn't want to, especially now that they're doing... That's where Marvel is, right? Yeah yeah you can see spider-man there now i know dude i saw that they have a guy winging around i don't know if it's a dummy or a robot or what it seems like they got a dude doing some serious stuff oh yeah it's it's it's really cool i uh oh yeah so i guess

you mentioned it before but like yeah you did you you had your pals who did work on The Simpsons. So you guys got to enjoy some free Simpsons food on occasion. Or at the opening of the ride. Yeah. You got to be Mitch's plus one to the ride. Truly, honestly, I think that's exactly what it was. I was Mitch's plus one. Well, I mean, we heard about the birthday boy's house and Mitch home uh non-eaten simpsons food for like a free feast oh yes that stuff yes

that was the best what a time you know like back when you're all pas and stuff you do get all like i would call them like fringe benefits but it's just like the runoff from successful people so uh like yeah occasionally you'd be like, hey, we got a bunch of pizzas up at the house. Like who knows where they came from? One of our jobs. But Mitch in particular, because of that writer's room would just have like,

just feasts of like untouched, you know, sushi, a couple hours old, but come on. Matt Selman couldn't figure, finish his foie gras. So it's all yours. Yeah, really? No, I, you you know i have heard through the grapevine i don't think the writers working from home right now on simpsons i don't think they get free food anymore i think they gotta buy their own lunch boohoo the last thing i wanted to

ask jeff about your background is i didn't know this until i i started listening to the sloppy boys podcast that you are an anime fan like like bob and i uh yeah you know i you guys probably trounce me in this regard as well uh i growing up i was a little bit into it but i was like more of a comic book kid like i was into marvel stuff and i would even do like not magic but like the star wars version of magic do you guys remember oh the card game for that yeah i never played it but i do remember yeah yeah and honestly i didn't know how to really play but like i just liked collecting shit and action figures and like comics and stuff but um i had a buddy who early on we would watch uh ranma and like i saw like

maybe ghosts in the shell and like bubblegum Crisis and some like big wars, a bunch of sort of weird stuff that I can barely remember. And then as I got into college, I started to get more into like the Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Miyazaki movies. And then I still don't think that I'm like any anime head really. Like I'm more of a movie guy than a series guy, for example.

Like it's too much to me to like watch 20 episodes of a thing i watched attack on titan and i was like disappointed because i wanted more answers and i forget that like that show is pulling from just like books and books and books and books and they're just going to draw this motherfucker out you're not gonna get too many yeah yeah but i did watch uh neon genesis evangelion and it's one of my faves. That's what I was going to ask. Did you ever pitch a sketch based on Evangelion ever? No way. How would you? What would Bob Odenkirk say to that sort of pitch?

He'd be like, oh, we don't do Kierkegaard sketches. I don't know. No, it sounds like you had the elder millennial gateway to anime that we did, too. The same pathway, the same style of shows and movies i didn't really do like i mean dragon ball was big for a lot of people i never did dragon ball did you guys uh yeah yes yeah no i yeah i i had a lot of the same gateways as you like evangelion and rama one half and all that but but then i i went a bit more hardcore into it. And then by about 2005, though,

I then stopped watching anime and only mainly through doing this podcast have I gotten more current with Japanese animation again. Have you guys seen Slam Dunk? Oh, yeah, yeah. My wife is a big fan, but I have not seen it. I know it's great. When Hanford was in town, we started it and we just got like i don't know like four or five episodes in we were eating

eating dinners but uh that's really funny to see the sort of dynamic anime style uh put into basketball like normally normally you'd see it in like sword fights or like whatever karate or robots fighting or but to see it to see it in uh american basketball or like western basketball it's just so odd i think most sports even western ones like football they have a good anime to go along with them oh really yeah yeah there's one i haven't watched yet but there's uh there's a american football one called eye shield that i've heard is very, very good. It is weird because American football is not a thing in Japan.

It's more niche than ping pong is in America. I've watched a bit of it, and a lot of it is like, here's what American football is, and here's how it works. Explanation of rules. This has nothing to do with the 1970s, and it's in Springfield. You know, I've told this story before on the podcast, but when I watch this episode live, But this has nothing to do with the 1970s and Springfield. You know, I've told this story before on the podcast, but when I watched this episode live the way we was, it was preceded by the Blowfish episode where Homer thinks he's going to die. And in the commercials between episodes, like before the end of the episode, they have a commercial for this week's's and in my nine-year-old brain in 1991 i thought oh my god homer really does die in this episode and they're restarting the series from

high school oh no like i i had a minor panic about homer was gonna really die but that would be a good spinoff that would be i mean you were creating fan theories before there was an internet i was i i was born to be a nerd right then. Yeah. And we covered this episode five years ago and we did the scary math fan. Let's do it again because this is an episode I aired in 91 about 1974, 17 years prior. If this episode aired today, it would be about 2004 when Marge and Homer were seniors in high school.

So you just have to say it up front because it's, I mean, when we were watching this in 91, or at least Henry and I, I just thought like, wow, this world I never knew, this time period I never existed in. Now it's just like 17 years. I can do that standing on my head. Yeah. Who cares? Yeah.

Do you think of our parents watching the show and going like, oh yeah, I remember that. That was the same as 2004 is to us is is crazy to me to put that though i mean this episode for me as a little kid too dove when lisa says i can't imagine you grown up like i think it was one of the first times i as a little kid thought oh my parents existed before me and they they had lives before i was a kid yes it's such a bummer uh when i think that like oh when you hit that age where let's say like it was when i was like 30 i i realized like oh i knew my parents when they were 30 like i have i have memories of my parents being 30 and me being like six or whatever and it's just a crazy thing when you when you catch up to like when

you're aware of your parents walking the earth yeah my my parents were they they were uh second year of college in 1974 when this episode was set so they they weren't that much older than homer and marger but i guess for this episode if they're either 18 or 17 in it then that means they're 34 or 35 when this episode is set in in present day if homer met marge in high school in 2004 and this is a similar story she'd be an anti-war protester wearing a buck fush t-shirt i could see it and homer would be an m&m fan yeah. I think too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, in the story behind the scenes is like Groening was at first against it being

said in such a specific time period, but they were, you know, they're like the main crux of this entire episode is specific jokes about 1974. If you take that away, we lose most of the jokes in this episode. And they kept it up at least through the teen seasons because arty zip comes back in season 14 i believe when the timeline does not make sense right because it's 10 years later but then oppositely simpsons fans have been very upset at times when they don't, they just fully reject the, the impossibility now that the lead characters who are in their thirties can't have gone to school in 74. But when you make them go to college in the nineties,

then everybody's like, boo, no, don't do that. Yeah. It's a weird line. I have to walk. The Simpsons will be right back. A young Homer Simpson has made his plans for prom night.

I'm going to drink a lot of beer and stay out all night. He'll be pressed to kill. My tux is going to have the widest lapels, the most ruffles, and the highest platform shoes you ever saw. Now all he needs is a date. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter.

Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. Welcome to the break, everybody. It's Dr. TV, a.k.a. Henry Gilbert. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Mr. Jeff Dutton. It was so much fun having Jeff on. We are big fans of his band slash podcast The Sloppy Boys. You should be checking that out. Thank you, Jeff Dutton

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patreon.com slash talking simpsons well also the behind the scenes too on this is like they had never had these answers for how the simpsons got together like they wanted to do this flashback thing and they thought well what do we what do you go back to what shows did this kind of thing and what they look back to was the dick van dyke show that which did so many episodes i think it was on the dick van dyke show they decided they didn't want episodes with the kids and they're like well how do we do that like oh dick van dyke will tell a story about before you were born we did this and that would be the framing device for the whole episode dang and they they looked to original dick van dyke show writer jerry belson uh to help them with this and same with uh uh dave davis both of

whom you know comedy writing legends who were old mary tyler moore production buddies with james l brooks and uh and yeah this this episode really sets like a template for one of their most recurring episodes since i think now they're like yeah like the last season on the show they did at least two flashback episodes with uh with specifics hey i think uh for most of the classic years they do it every year or sometimes every other year and usually written by jeff martin that's also why this episode sets the tone but i really think jeff martin like uh perfects it with the season three i married marge which the the birth of bart one which that does follow well for that timeline to work bart's born in 1980 because they see empire strikes back so after this episode homer and marge date for six years yeah and then

get married there's a lot of margin homer the dating years we don't see that i think should be expanded upon well there's the brief flashback in here to where uh before we get into the the real flashback they're like tell us how you guys got married and it's them getting the news that she's pregnant with bart yes does that uh jive with the later episode you're talking about? Yes. Yeah. But they actually redo that entire scene in that episode, but they redraw Homer because the version of Homer that appears in that episode is not the same comb over Homer they draw in this scene.

Got you. But they make it work. Yeah. And then in the episode where maggie is born the story of that we find it's all retconned in that how did homer lose his hair well he tears out more upon finding out about each child being born right and on the couch and that episode is very specifically set in 1993 yes yeah but i think you know my al jean mike reese with sam simon they wrote a good episode but i i also really think that david silverman the director like hit this one out of the park yeah he said

that he graduated in 73 so he just brought his yearbook in and a lot of the people including arty ziff are based on people he knew in high school at the time the best that really that really helps the authenticity of it like there's so there's so many jokes in here, especially about specifics of like, Homer puts a hot comb in his hair. And it's like, well, if you don't, especially when they're doing this before really the internet in 1990, then you just have to remember what a hot comb looked like and have lived through it. Or remember the chain steering wheels that guys had back then. Yeah, it's very specific to 1974 outside of one thing that's 75 but they figured out everything like when songs came out when products were

released when certain laws were being passed it's all tied to one year the specificity of all is really nice oh i never considered the law thing that's i mean like you know it's so easy to throw in like yeah goodbye yellow brick road or whatever but uh when you get into like what laws were being passed that's interesting they really did the work and then and then they did all this while staying pretty much hands off on like any watergate or nixon or ford jokes like there's no no presidential specifics which in all flashbacks that's the one the easiest ones to go to because like everybody remembers who was president in a year they lived through yeah i well then re-watching this one this is their thing for the critic like they the gina reese wouldn't create the critic for two more years but this has so many not just that it's the first appearance of john lovett yeah but it starts with

like a critic gag yeah it starts with a movie parody and then a discussion about it but with two characters instead of one they smash this together for the critic yes right but yeah this has a lot of first appearances this is a major episode for like well you got wise guy and mcbain in the same episode like that's a pretty big one and uh and also uh before we will get into it right now but i do want to credit the twitter account that guy 3002 the professional simpsons collector who has uh been very helpful in this podcast because uh he buys original table read scripts of simpsons collects them and then does full twitter threads of here's the original script and here's how it was changed in the episode so i'll be citing a few of those

when it's a big interesting change but i want to credit that guy 3002 if you don't follow if you listen to this podcast you probably follow him i would hope but if not uh but yeah so this episode begins with a joke about sitting too close to the tv i don't think i did it that much as a kid only uh if the nes controllers cords were so short that would be the only reason i sat that close to the tv i did like the two like how they put like a weird blue glow on their faces like it's subtle but at least in in my uh streaming i could see like oh they are kind of putting like this sort of sticky neon thing on their on their the whites of their eyes that's uh it is burning their eyes now you know the kids kids and their screens they got them right up to their eyeballs

every day but didn't do nothing to us i do i also uh was shocked at homer directly threatening to injure their eyes like Like this is physical violence. Classic Homer. He's going to punch those children in the eyes. But yes, this episode begins with the debut of one of the Simpsons, most famous characters. And I don't mean the two critics.

Wait, that's the, that's the, this is the first appearance of McBain. It is the first McBain. Oh my God. I got him in this first clip here. Our next movie is McBain? It is. The first McBain. Oh, my God. He got him in his first clip here. Our next movie is McBain. Another shoot him up, push him through the plate glass window,

splatter fest from the Hollywood cookie cutter. Here's a typically brainless scene. Senator Mendoza is one of the most respected citizens in the state, McBain. And yet you ran his limo off a cliff, broke the necks of three of his bodyguards, and drove a bus to his front door? Captain, I have proof that he's head of an international drug cartel. I don't want to hear it, McBain.

You're out of here. That makes two of us. All right, McBain. That makes two of us. I love it. You know, I can't believe we're talking about the same movie. I thought McBain was a nonstop rollercoaster of chills, thrills, spills, and kills. And that chase at the end, my friend?

Are you nuts? That movie stinks like your creepy one-bedroom apartment. Your mother didn't think it was so creepy. My mother, real mature. I'm sick of your great school. I love watching a bald guy argue with a fat tub of lard. I forgot, you know, until having it isolated, I missed the bald one just grumbling through the entire time the fat one talks.

Which, that's how they're credited in the script, is the fat one and the bald one. But, I mean, we all know who they are. R.I.P.p to both of them man and i've uh yeah i've watched that show all the time as a kid and they really captured how many times did you hear ebert say back to siskel i can't believe we're talking about the same movie like that's such a perfect perfect encapsulation their relationship. And when they go on Letterman or whatever, they would get personal. Oh, yes. Yeah.

I think they actually did like each other half of the time. So more about McBain. So alarmingly, so this episode comes out in January of 1991. In September of 1991, there is an action movie called McBain, spelled the exact same way, starring Christopher Walken and michael ironside and because of that they are iffy on the use of the term mcbain so that's when they resort to using rainier wolf castle the actor's name uh but then they eventually go back to using mcbain but yeah the same year it's lateral thinking there's an action movie called mcbain released

nine months later after this parody it's so the voice of the chief that sounds like hey kazaria yeah it sounds like hank to me man what a great performance it's i don't want to hear it mcbain it's so squeaky and we covered this uh when we did this episode earlier uh in the past but these mcbain clips there's what like three or four of them in the entire series this whole story with mendoza if you're, you can stitch it into an entire movie or like portions of an entire movie. Yeah, it's great. You can see the like,

you can know what scenes are before or after they kill his partner, Scoey. It's an old money where you see the end of the movie where he kills Senator Mendoza. I mean, in the most famous scene of him just screaming to the sky like, Mendoza! i mean in the most famous scene of him just screaming to the sky like mendoza uh that's right god every every bit of mcbain is so good i mean once they yeah unfortunately a christopher walken movie forced them to just have rainier wolf castle just show up in as a

person and so you couldn't just see endless scenes from the film mcbain but he's still a very funny character even then i mean he is just a schwarzenegger parody that's what i love what they're making about a schwarzenegger here is too is that like just his 80s action films where he is such a ridiculous person who's like i am you know i'm john smith the cop i think you're thinking of john matrix john matrix from commando yes and he's not even he's about to be in terminator 2 that may or june i believe of this year so right right well and so uh here's one of the biggest things i learned from that table uh table read script in the original script his name is mick quade okay not mcbane so like in total recall he's quade right uh so yes that's what al gene was

asked about that and he was like i think it's a mash-up between quade the total recall character and mclean from die hard so well they should have stuck with it and they wouldn't have had this whole snafu with the chris walken movie you're right man and whoever i like i only heard of that movie years later walking down the aisles of the video store and then seeing mcmaine what the i i saw riff tracks did it like uh maybe like in 2015 or something so you can watch it like a rift version of it it's not worth watching on its own i also think silverman his team really figured out like what a great comedy it is of just seeing this like gigantic Austrian man just fill every shot and just like, what the cop did? I like that.

It's just so funny how it's also posed. I love that. But yes, Siskel and Ebert are getting very personal. Your mother didn't think it was so creepy. That's such a great great line uh and i thought of one actual zinger that siskel uh did for ebert that i was watching some clips of them on letterman and siskel said that they called ebert's uh wedding reception operation desert storm like eating desserts yes i get it i didn't sell it but he did that's good gene siskel sold it oh that's funny and uh i also were you watching those now

i'm like oh this is like just a podcast now it's just like guys arguing about movies it's except they are they're only restricted to 22 minutes they can't just go for three hours or whatever but uh i i really you know man what ebert could do with the podcast medium now if he were here, it's too bad. But yes, so Homer mocks both of those guys for qualities that are his of being bald and fat. But then the TV breaks. David Silverman credits the test pattern shakeup thing to it was all designed by Wes Archer in his episodes on one, the Tracy Ullman short. So they're just copying from that but that's cool i love seeing like just like the weird geometric confetti kind of like squirking around

oh it's such fun drawings yeah one as a little kid i really did love doing what bart did when you could needle a parent of like um dad you haven't fixed the car yet or just just you can see it looks like you're losing your pace and talk like that you you only have so much power as a kid and when you know you can needle your your parent that they're they're not uh succeeding at something feels good and like the uh something about that opening scene too when it's like the family part after the after the mcbain clip where uh bart says looks like you locked looks like you lost the patient and uh homer's like shut up boy and it's kind of like muttering behind the tv it all felt so like nicely decompressed for for like a family animated comedy like you're just used to everything being

kind of like fakey and punchy and quippy that's just kind of like hear somebody mutter and fumpher was just like i feel like this is like nicely relaxed they let a lot of scenes breathe it's not heightened and full of gags homer is not electrocuting himself or setting things on fire it's just him like trying to fix a cheap tv and failing and then weeping over it yeah and it's it's funny and it's offhand it's not it's not pushed yeah i you know i could i could see in a in a writer's room you know somebody would say he just says shut up boy we can be funnier than that but there's just something natural just like shut up boy like just yeah just a a tired father saying that to his smart ass son

that's just fine it is just nice and comfortable and natural right and you can do it i mean there's so many simpsons is such a joke a minute thing yeah i say several jokes a minute right and you can do it i mean there's so many simpsons is such a joke a minute thing yeah i say several jokes a minute that like you can get away with like a relaxed moment and it just feels like oh this is nice uh though that i mean season two is where they kind of they slowly move out of that kind of pace but they're they're still in it here and and homer insults his cheap chinese tv which you know my chinese tv in the living room right here is still pretty good for 10 years on. I kind of think all TVs are Chinese. Well, yeah, it's impossible to buy a TV not made in China if you if you wanted to, which I I'm not one of those buy American types anyway.

But even if you were, you could you literally can't buy a TV that's made in America. It's impossible. No one makes it. But yeah. So then the bit two of Homer hitting the TV and trying to fix it and the kids just screaming. That also is like straight out of one of the Allman shorts, like just the kids saying, no, it's not work like that. And there I love when they're screaming worm tongues in the crazy like Dutch camera angle on them screaming. I love that shot. It's so good. And that scream reminds me of the simpsons arcade game like the uh like the um the attract mode that

it would go in you know oh yeah the rotation that arcade machines make when nobody's playing them and then you'd hear the like i remember you'd hear throughout the arcade that like oh that's right the bart and l Lisa scream. Anytime you get hit, like, yeah, me and Bob just replayed that recently, and I forgot just how very loud it is, because if you just have four characters on screen. They're all talking.

They're all screaming. They're all getting hit and going, ah, ah, all the time. The best. And so, but the TV breaks. They're just left with a dot again i dan's delivery of just like god she's right just like he's he just falls apart instantly like great great acting on dan and the posing though when he's the shot of him going like dear god just

give me one channel and the the camera's like down and up at him like that's such a great shot i feel like i saw that in a million ads for the simpsons like the simpsons on every night dear god give me one channel like uh homer immediately just brought to tears upon one minor setback i guess like at this point in time i remember being like just completely distraught when the cable went out and now with if the internet goes out i can rely on my phone you know just like the phone can still connect thank god but uh things were different back then i just had an internet outage and had to be like well time to tether to the old phone like yeah it had my my husband had to do the same thing of like he he has a full like you know regular hours job and so when the internet went out at 10 a.m he's like i just am gonna have

to use up all my plan here to be in the zoo meetings I have to be in all day. Yeah. One time when I was moving into this place, I didn't pay the power bill, I guess. Like I moved in and everything was working and I was like, hey, I guess we're all OK. And then, you know, like 15 days later or whatever, everything went off in my place and I ran outside and I caught the guy and I was like, Hey, uh, I'm here. Can I pay you? And he was like, no, you got to take it up with the company or whatever. And so worse than having no internet, just know anything. Uh, I had like the remaining battery on my phone and that was my internet. And then, uh, I would have to like run to the plug down the hall and just like leave my phone in the hallway or sit next to it. And

this was just went on for about a, you know, a day, but it was hell. It was a living hell. run to the plug down the hall and just like leave my phone in the hallway or sit next to it and this was just went on for about a you know a day but that sounds heroin hell it was a living hell uh and so uh marge says you know hey we can we can uh we used to do everything back when we uh before we had kids we used to have all this fun and uh this is when lisa asks you know the obvious question that a child would ask about like well how did dad propose to you and that is when lisa asks you know the obvious question that a child would ask about like well how did dad propose to you and that's when we cut to a joke that uh child me did not get i did not get that it is a joke about the idea that the sitcom parents had premarital sex was a kind of transgressive yeah racy for 91. It's so great how the tell is

when Hibbert congratulates her in her maiden name. That's the tell that they are not married and that they're about to have a child out of wedlock, which her maiden name is Bouvier, a reference to Jackie Kennedy's maiden name. Is that the first reference to Bouvier? It is the first use of the word Bouvier. Yep. But yes,

this is when Marge, she wants to tell a different story in this next clip. How did Dad propose to you? Well, Miss Bouvier, I think we found the reason why you've been throwing up in the morning. Congratulations.

No! I'd rather tell you a different story. How your father and I first met and fell in love. We were seniors in high school, but we had never even met. Why do birds... Hey, groan. mad some people call me a space cowboy some call me the gangster of love some people call me maurice oh man that's good that's uh miller band or a cover of both steve miller and the carpenters hey you know they got enough money for the song rights they can't they can't pay for all these

masters this has like five different songs it's true yeah elton john's in here ray stevens yeah oh yeah they got that too i and the hustle as well they got they they have so much uh what they were just throwing around song uh money licensing i i like that they bring the carpenters back later too am i am i wrong or no they do no you're right yeah i love the carpenters i know the joke is here that they are lame and corny and they they are lame and corny they're as corny as a 70s band can be but i i love their corniness and this like weird songs about love by a brother and sister like that's just such an odd thing about it too uh i i didn't know like any of these songs were real songs when i was a kid so

when that steve miller band came on the radio and a friend's dad was driving us around with classic rock on i was like oh this song is great and he was like how do you know about this eight-year-old like explain yourself no i i never had heard that song before even though as a little uh nerd child i listened to the oldie station all the time but the oldie station didn't play 70s stuff so i didn't know this song old enough not in 90 1990 but it would be man that's so funny when like an old song becomes a hit again because it's in like a movie i mean it used to happen a lot uh but like i remember um in high school build me up buttercup what had like was like back on the charts because of

something about mary right right no for for me as a kid i don't think i ever heard queen before i saw wayne's world huge yeah that's the perfect ref and what a butter what a bummer though as a kid to find out about like oh this is queen you love this and they're done like he's the lead singer's dad so you got to learn about them and the lead singer's dad. Bad timing to get into Queen in 1992. But no, yeah, that was, it doesn't happen as much. I guess the, you know, it sort of happened with Guardians of the Galaxy. That popularized some old 70s songs.

Yeah. Yeah. I liked Guardians, okay. I didn't like it as much as a lot of other people i don't like that um it's was it guardians should guardians be to blame for every fucking superhero movie now having like an old pop song in it you know like like in the trailer you know like they like all of them now are just like oh it's a superhero movie and it's like we don't need like fuck off that shit how many of them were painted black oh god no i well i i think guardians

they had some deep cuts but i in guardians my biggest complaint was that i feel like after reservoir dogs popularized the you know who good chuck like once they they made it their own and so famous in a movie you can't put it in your movie anymore like that's just no friends what was the uh the air force uh commercial movie superheroes captain marvel yeah wasn't that just like a spotify playlist they put on during the movie uh like the 90s hits it did do that yeah yeah they're just a girl at least well that when i just watched cruella and that is like literally in a five minute span they play four songs from the 60s and 70s it's like and i and i'm like well i'd like these songs i like giggy pops you know uh be your dog but i don't oh i get it yeah i get it you get it yes i do feel

like uh right um guardians because it was just like oh there's a whole mixtape it was just like oh you're gonna go like hog wild with this shit um i think they are kind of to blame because because uh guardians came up before deadpool am i right yes yeah deadpool a lot of sort of like winky pop stuff and then like suicide squad was like re-edited to be more like deadpool and like have more pop songs in it and uh i don't know i feel like if you're boogie nights yeah you get to like do like the mixtape from the era but if you're i don't know if you get to if you're a marvel movie already and you already have everybody in the world showing up to your thing well what's still impressive with me with tarantino movies is that

like in once upon a time in hollywood you know he did have songs that i've heard before but he also like gets i mean i'm not like a super music expert but he uses this uh out of time song by rolling stones and the mono version of it too i'd never heard that song before it was not it's not like a well-known rolling stone song and here he is able to like make it his own because it's like well no one else has used this in a movie before that at least anybody remembers so i uh but it's it's hard to dig deep and find like a song nobody's heard before and then license it and and like his and like i like i loved once upon a time and uh i like that they're

sort of doing like the am radio shtick where it's like you're always sort of in the car you're always sort of hearing songs passing by and so he uses mrs robinson and then like cuts off before the chorus like yeah anyway on the next scene that was yeah i well hearing these songs this that's definitely taught me about 70s music and as as a little kid and i i mean i'm, we're all still confused by pompatous and that fake word. Did you look into what it sort of is or what it kind of is? No.

So pompatous is, well, this is what I read on Wikipedia, but it is that Steve Miller had actually used it in a song before this so this was him referencing himself of saying like when he says some some call they call me the pompatist of love he's referring to another song where he said that but he was referencing a 50s doo-wop song that used the word puppetists of love but which is also a made-up word and then he didn't know what that word was which is and so he said pompatists so it's it's just uh a nothing word but but that's

where it comes from honestly i think that's allowed i that's where like you know jellicle cat and yeah susu studio come from if i mean those those might mean things but like i think to most people it's just like oh yeah you can just sing some nonsense if it's if it's musical uh it was also the name of a 1996 john crier film i learned really really the pompatis of love okay the movie i didn't know this stephen miller band had uh the song had footnotes yeah i uh i've always been confused by that pompatous bit. And I love young Homer. He is a doppelganger for Philip J. Fry from Futurama.

They look very similar. Yep. Though I also think that's because Silverman says he did this intentionally, not that it was like Matt Groening told him, draw Homer to look like me. But David Silverman drew Homer to have Matt Groening's hair. At the time. Yeah.

In 1991, right? Yes. Yeah. Which I love. I mean, I love that mop top of hair. It's what I still try to maintain to this day. But yes, Homer is the type of guy, if you're a dude senior in high school back in 74, if you heard the Carpenters come on the radio you'll probably be

like lick and change the channel to some some rockin tunes but i do i i love the carpenters quite a lot i i also think of this bit here with we have our friends who work on the show the uh the cartoon network show craig of the creek and and there's a bit in craig of the creek where uh several times they have to write the parents on the show like well if the parents are our age then they grew up in the 90s and so they write these scenes of like the kids not knowing 90s music and the parents go like no this was cool and now it just i'm like oh this is what my parents felt watching this scene of me being mystified by this world i'd never heard of of the 1970s uh that to experiencing

it to experience it on the other side through watching our friend show craig of the creek uh it's uh it's sobering well we don't have children to explain things to that's true we just get to that's one of the main reasons i don't want to explain shit to these kids no uh homer parks his car meets his friend barney i really like the vibes of high school barney and homer they're fun they're a fun couple of buddies i like that though when i saw it i was like oh man i was the barney in my friendship uh in high school with my friends i wasn't homer i was barney because i i didn't have a car i was the guy who was friends with people who had cars. I didn't learn how to drive until after my senior year of high school.

Me too. Only a year after, but. That's good. It's funny that Homer's the cooler of just two loser dudes. Yes. I guess we don't see more of what a loser Homer was in high school until further flashbacks. Like Homer Simpson, I think you're cute. Yes. And then the girl walks away sarah that was mean yes uh or just homer and barney like on the outside of being cool in high school and trying to get into the cool guy's van like yeah the second base mobile right

but yeah homer passes marge in the hallway and this is when marge is talking to the friend she lost what do you think the script calls her kim what do you guys think happened to kim did marge and her just grow apart because marge never left springfield so i my guess is that kim left to to be a professional somewhere other than springfield and they just grew apart i didn't know she had a name well they don't call her by name in the episode but thanks to the the script pages i read i know her name's kim this is the girl who gives her a copy of mrs magazine or miss magazine yes yeah yeah uh ms magazine was fairly new uh founded in 71 and uh this is this is something upon revisiting at this time knowing more about

the production of the show it's just like this was a famously a writer's room like many at the time where there were no women in fact women were actively put kept away because of certain people on the staff and i feel like this view of feminism uh of the time feels rather skewed to me because the the magazine has articles like 25 reasons not to shave your armpits which is seemingly implying like feminism makes women ugly and then harry and hate man marge is like immediately radicalized into this you know ism she doesn't understand and it it ruins her life in some ways so uh i think we needed a woman to like just be in the room with these guys kim is a bit of a complainer.

In the script, she has even more angry things to say. Oh, really? Other articles in this magazine. Special PMS issue, by the way. Whoa. Why all men are bad. Well, I agree with them. All right.

We are. We are lame. So in the script, it's her telling Marge about like, hey, you know, women can't. It's actually, this bit's a little nicer. She says like, you know, women aren't hired to be police officers or firefighters or there's never been a woman on the Supreme Court. And then Marge says, oh, well, you know, she naively replies, well, if we just ask men about changing that, I'm sure they would. That's a Marge answer. Yeah.

Yeah, I like to think that Kim, you know, she realized she couldn't stand being in Springfield anymore. She's got to get out of here. She went away. Unlike Marge, she went away to college. That conversation also kind of sets up Marge being a police officer. Oh, right. Yeah. That conversation also kind of sets up Marge being a police officer. Oh, hey, you're right. If they had kept it in, we'd be looking back on that.

I'm like, oh, Marge learned she'd be a cop then. Yeah, I think there's an argument to be made in this episode that Marge's life is ruined by Homer or upset by it. That she was on a certain path and Homer knocked her off of it. It's really a pity-based relationship, ultimately. I the show uh this episode is that self-aware of it in the future the show will be like marge just feels sorry for homer and that's why they're together that's true yeah i want to see the series where she's married to arty zith yeah but yeah so marge and they then walk by the room where uh the bathroom where homer and barney are smoking i would guess it is supposed to be red as tobacco but like this had to be a joke about smoking pot at school right like yeah

only because they say uh uh springfield's answer to cheech and chong yes yeah i think it's a little runner for don de linger where he doesn't know what marijuana is but suspects it everywhere because we get one more joke they're like is that a bong is that a bong it's like oh you have asthma okay go ahead so i think he's just very paranoid about what he thinks is marijuana but they're smoking cigarettes and yes like i think when my stepdad went to high school there was like an area of the grounds you could smoke in like hey children smoke your cigarettes here. It's the 70s. Also, yeah, you're right, because, you know, you're smoking weed. You have one joint.

You pass it around. You don't each have a joint. Yeah, it's true. It looks like they both took it out of a pack. That's true. Oh, they had a pack, too. No, I mean, it looks like they both just came out of a pack. But I think, like, up until the 80s, smoking on high school campuses was normalized to the point where

there was little areas because they're like well children are gonna smoke yeah we gotta give them a space for it i'm smoking yeah i feel like freaks and geeks had a smoking area didn't it oh yeah i think so yeah but by the 90s uh you could at least not smoke on campus on my high school campus you could not smoke same here yeah same you you you would get worse than detention you'd get like work detail in my in my school but and uh well that's the debut of principal don de linger yeah i love that name seldom seen don de linger would come back once for the front and i'm sure he's like in crowds here and there but that was his only other major appearance teaching that adult education class when homer found finds out he didn't graduate and that episode is sort of a callback to this one oh yeah it's like a sequel yeah though i i looked up on the wiki he would make like speaking line appearances in season 20

season 32 wow so this year yes yes don de linger hasn't fully gone away which it's funny that they now write stuff like homer didn't go to high school in the 70s but he still has a 70s high school principal who is very much like the tough principal of the 70s like that i don de linger is a funny he's funnier the front has the best joke with him just like saying that uh that he's he's trying to do this because his wife just passed away and that homer said is this going to be on the test he's like no the homer just strikes through dead wife on his notes that is a good joke who's the t who's the principal in back to the future when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops

so on behalf of desjardins insurance i 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? Oh, a Strickland.

Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of Strickland. Me too. I was thinking that. You're right. You know, a lot of this has the feel of it. It also ends at a dance and the parents getting together. This has some feel of Back to the Future to it, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the girl's going with the wrong guy and the right guy's gotta step up yeah like part of me in this episode i'm watching i'm like well this is when homer beats up arty or saves march from arty but no homer walks home crying yeah and it's it's just more of just why i like incidents happen without homer's involvement yeah no a don de linger such a strong character like if they wanted to just do a bunch of high school episodes homer in high school homer margin high school don de linger would be a good like recurring character for those but it's pretty rare they do it now i i mean too they can't set

it in the 70s but uh this though also this is before you know it was by season 10, I think it was when they decided, you know who else went to high school with Homer? Lenny, Carl, Moe. Does it say everybody? Waylon Smithers. Like anyone in Homer's age group also went to high school with Homer and Marge. I mean, that's not wrong. I know a lot of, you know, my parents are kind of like Southern New Hampshire people and never really left. They're still friends with all their, they actually do go to school with all their high school buddies, or go to work with all their high school buddies.

You stay within a couple miles of everybody you knew in high school. But Marge, meanwhile, has been fully radicalized and she gets sent to detention. Well, well, well. If it isn't Homer Simpson and Barney sent to detention. Well, well, well. If it isn't Homer Simpson and Barney Gumbel. Springfield's answer to Cheech and Chong. Allow me, gentlemen. You just bought yourselves three days of detention. You know where and when.

Three o'clock, old Billy. Room 106. And in another article, I found out that the higher professionals to do all the jobs of a housewife who incidentally is not married to a house would cost 48 000 a year right on sisters the first step to liberation is to free ourselves from these male imposed shackles i didn't think it would burn so fast i guess it's a tissue paper inside

miss bouvier i am surprised you just bought yourself one day of detention you know where and when well no i don't actually i've never three o'clock old building room 106 i wondered i do wonder what the show feels about this episode feels about feminism because well margaret's statistics she's saying are true things about you know an inequality that women were facing then and still do about you know homemakers and housewives but they also do write her or her scene is performed of like you're now a very shrill angry person and you complain based on one magazine yes because she's like in this article it says they like it's all based on one magazine she was given she's very excited about one article she one magazine she read and so like she got in trouble because she burned her

bra i guess she caused a disturbance i i think that's it yeah it's it's funny that they added the whole like like it burned really fast and people went ooh and they made a joke about it yeah it felt like they needed to like punch up that moment so that it read as something so that a guy could come in and be like you're going to detention i guess they got to make it a joke they're doing a bra burning joke already and then they also have to make a joke about stuffing your bra she stuffed it with flash paper it seems like i the burning the bra was a big thing if they're gonna if you're doing a checklist of things that happened in 1974 bra burning must have happened somewhere that feels like one of those things that like happened on one campus once and every uh every person in the 70s was like it happened on the

streets everywhere i i do like too though that you see they give you little flashes of like oh lisa gets this for marge like marge marge feeling this passionately about it and then later her you know good student qualities which they really just get rid of for marge in the future uh but you you get a little flash of like okay she's she's lisa's mom uh but yes we head to detention and uh i have to ask myself how did the nerdy girl estelle get sent to detention what did she do all right well this this joke about i wouldn't go to prom with you if you're elliot gould it's much more funny to me now because uh there's been a recent uh within the past year this twitter

meme that's exposed the hunkiest photo of elliot gould ever where he's on the cover of tv guide with grover and it's like dripping with sexuality inexplicably and I don't get it but it's there and it exists so I'm like I didn't know Elliot Gould was hot yes also like if I watched this as a kid I would still laugh at that joke because it reads so much like a joke like the cadence of it like I wouldn't go to the prom with you if you were Elliot Gould I would I would cackle with laughter just like not even knowing who that was the same way that when you're a kid you laugh at like lawyer jokes not having any sort of context for why we make fun of lawyers uh yeah your parents would be like you know who elliot gould is i'm like

don't worry about it let me laugh you find out a lot about what she's into yeah i like well so this was another big change in the script yeah i think you can see it in her mouth movement so i think it was a late age adr she at in the original line it was i wouldn't go out with you if you were elton john okay which i guess it's a joke about elton john sexuality yes yeah you know it works more as one of those jokes of like oh this joke sounds different in modern day when we all know he's gay. That's funny. But I think Elliot Gould's a better specific than just the easier joke of like, oh, she doesn't know he's gay.

Ha ha ha. It's the 70s. And also all the bits of him being turned down, asking people out to the prom. Al Jean says that was based on his life that he said he asked out five women before he finally got to go to the prom al gene says that was based on his life uh that he said he asked out five women before he finally got to go to the prom i think one said yes and then reneged on that oh yes yeah he said he said he uh one girl he had been told would say yes to to a wall and she turned him down and uh but you know he was he admits he was a very nerdy young man so went to harvard at 16 that's so crazy gene went yeah he's a very very smart man uh but yes martin sent to detention that's when she meets homer for

the very first time if she hadn't been sent to detention she never would have met homer i really uh love that the music comes back in and this is when homer is like oh now i understand this stupid carpenter song because i'm in love right and the slow-mo entrance though that's not in the script that's all silverman so it's a really great like just the flowers flying around and her slow walk and she looks like farrah faucet i guess that's what her hairstyle is supposed to be right yeah and i do like she's kind of moving in like these still frames but homer's bobbing his head in real time to the music that's a cute little touch hopefully saved a little bit of money with those still frames i'm sure it was artistic and uh affordable saving measure

on you know birthday boys you did animation once with the the swervels oh hell yeah i love those swervels but that uh how how tough was that to to be to have cartoons in your show um we had andy maxwell one of our editors who was like good with um you know he's good with like after effects and any sort of artsy animation stuff we had him do the actual animation but you better believe i designed those characters and storyboard those scenes oh oh man that's great the this the swervels is i don't want to say it's my absolute favorite birthday boy sketch they're all great but that one every step of the swervel sketch is the funniest thing ever thanks man i mean that was like uh that's kind of mitch's whole thing like you know his whole he he was like the angry internet nerd before before they were every before it was everyone you know like oh they ruined the

muppets like that that was his thing and so we we were like let's do a sketch where you know we kind of make fun of that but we'll say all the things you really say but in jest uh the joke is on his character in the sketch but i uh yeah i even tell it comes from a real place yes are you identifying too much with this character henry no no no hey i i learned from that sketch to be like oh wait that character's wrong he shouldn't he shouldn't want dave seville to come back and do the chipmunks without one thing one joke i wish read better in that was when kyle gas appears in the closet as the creator of the shwarbles uh i forget his name john allison's john allison yes

and then he says something like go make your shwarbles and i just wanted to be i wish that was a little clearer that was like you know when you tell somebody like don't get so upset about star wars like go make your star wars oh no i got it as as sim telling him to be creative yeah i i caught that but and then him misinterpreting it and being like me make my own anyway uh i love that that by the birthday boys dvds watch them yes please i also because your commentaries are great but oh thank hey i can't believe you watch those. They're great. I, I mean, you guys are also just so, so funny.

Uh, I, I don't know if I'd be that funny on a commentary after my show got canceled. I don't know if we, did we know we might've known season two. I think we knew when, when we went into do commentary that we were done. Yeah. Yeah. But it was very uh you guys were great we are commentary appreciators on this show oh yeah i mean with the detail you're going into simpsons i guess i'm not surprised that you watched this commentary uh but ws homer

and marge meet for the first time in this uh quick clip so uh what are you in for i'm a political prisoner last time i ever take a stand well i'm I'm here for being me. Every day I show up, act like me, and they slap me in here. Simpson, be quiet. I haven't seen you in school before. Okay, Simpson? What? You just bought yourself another day of detention. Maybe we should get together sometime. Two days. I'm sorry, I don't even know your name. I'm Homer. Three days. Four days. Five days. It was worth it. worth it six days okay simpson to the back of the room uh what a fun first meeting with and homer has the right idea you know if you're just a dirtbag sell yourself as a rebel be like no i'm a rebel they can't understand me i'm not just

she's too real for them i'm a little too real for these people now that you got caught smoking while skipping class it's like no you're just a rebel i love also like just that that real clear thing where he's causing himself harm there's real stakes in talking to her he's not supposed to talk to her he's costing himself days in detention and he still goes through with it and then they have the added joke of he includes his middle initial j yeah uh the cost tax on an extra day one day just to say that yeah i i also love march saying like i'm a political prisoner last time i ever take a stand which explains why she's so unobjectionable now though then again she just did take a stand previous to this episode in the itchy and scratchy in march so she goes back on that it's also really great posing like

homer acting so nervous like he's kind of looking at his fingers as he talks to her. Like it's very accurate, like, you know, teen boy nervousness at talking to somebody. I like that. Also liked how they go to commercial right after this where Barney asks her out and Homer claps his mouth shut and is just like, she's mine. And then it just cuts to her and the music swells and it goes to black and uh it just made me miss you know the art of how you go to commercial yeah yeah i think uh a lot of streaming shows i do miss the act breaks like the clear delineation of an act break because it's fun to get a reset when you come back from there and instead it's

just like one long strip of content these days and uh i find it distracting yeah i need a nice reset every seven minutes yeah i i also really like how the song the song goes away for barney and then comes back once he shut up barney and then close to you it just comes back in uh and you know this would stay uh as their song and a lot of times you know when when they buy the new doorbell from senior ding dong it's close to you uh when they in the simpsons movie marge leaves homer and it then cuts to though their wedding and close to you is playing and close to you is playing over the the fake to be continued in the middle of the movie like i always like when they bring that back and keep that in there you know and then the carpenter's estate has made a lot of

money off of that that choice since then yeah really uh but then whenever i hear the song yeah i just think like oh it's the homer and march song yeah but yeah the as they cut back to the kids they realize it's a ball of jailhouse romance, man. But Homer then takes over the story, which that's when it hits me like, oh, yeah, the next flashback episode when Homer does tell the story that embarrassed Marge. That's how the kids are able to hear the story of his proposal to her after getting her pregnant. Because Marge isn't there to say, please don't tell that story. It's just homer telling the whole story i think she's leaving to see if she's pregnant in that episode yeah oh man that's so funny the attention to detail like i never would have i never would think that you'd even have to do that but it's like a nice little easter egg

it fits it fits that homer would tell a story like yeah i don't care if you kids know this is how i conceived you we me and your mom had sex all right we got drunk in a on a golf course and had sex uh we and then we do see the depressing home life of homer and his father and now like they didn't know this at the time but now that we know like oh yeah his wife left him yes yeah well definitely the unspoken thing here is like nobody says your mother like there's no references to homer's mother but i feel like in the design it is to look like a home that does not have a mother in it yeah like the grease dripping from the walls yes yeah it's a big indication of that i love i love the detail that like they are eating the chicken out of the bucket they do not have a plate when when abe puts his um drumstick back he just puts it

back inside the bucket because he doesn't have a plate like it's really it's not a father and son it's two bachelors living together is what it is it's true man so at this point in season two how much have we seen homer's dad uh in the normal timeline you know he's appeared in a few episodes like for christmas and uh his big episode his big first episode is old money that's when he gets the elderly girlfriend that's the first big one with him as like the main character oh okay and since this is the first flashback we've never seen like we've only seen abe as the doddering old man we haven't seen him as just this like angry asshole who's just like at his kid oh i i love well i got the whole clip here i just love how mean but also loving in a

weird way abe is to homer yes what's the matter boy nothing you haven't said poo all night and usually i have to wrestle a bucket out of your greasy mitts. Dad, I'm in love. Uh-oh. Why don't you grab yourself a beer, boy? But, Dad, I don't drink. Cut the crap. I just collect the cans, Daddy. Now, grab yourself a beer and get me one, too.

Now, this girlfriend of yours, is she a real looker? Uh-huh. Lot on the ball? Oh, yeah. Oh, son, don't over overreach go for the dented card the dead end job the less attractive girl oh i blame myself i should have had this talk a long time ago thanks this is his version of the sex talk i take it the lower your standards talk it's sad enough how he just yells at him of like

you he's telling him you're not good enough to have a good looking girlfriend who has a potential in her life and the way he goes like i should have taught you this sooner and homer thanks him for it like that's the extra darkness of that joke yeah they do it again with the uh guidance counselor which i'm sure we'll get to but uh man it just makes you want better for homer huh it just makes you want him to to lock down barge we see the circumstances that formed him yeah really in this episode that homer lives in this like just like shithole with his dad who just yells at him and they're like hey i got here's dinner i bought a bucket of fried chicken yeah well and also like the this is the first appearance of shakespeare's fried chicken the

recurring uh fried chicken restaurant that didn't appear all that much no i think we heard the jingle before maybe but we didn't see a bucket that's true yeah but it didn't catch on like crusty burger i think once they landed on crusty burger it's like oh yeah crusty can just show up here whenever he wants to so it's like a great place to be no need for other other fast food places yeah it's funny when you i'm trying to think of other examples where where there's been like the the early attempts at finding like a oh we need an in-world version of this brand you know they'd go to like oh the singing sirloin we're gonna go to that restaurant they go there like twice and like yeah what more can we do with the singing restaurant we yeah let's just go to a

place that's mcdonald's and crusty the clown can show up there boom that's yeah i mean it's a perfect setting for scenes the crusty burger yeah but yeah also the bit of homer he's breaking the wishbone and he's holding both ends but the middle just just flies off. So Homer is a, he's a born loser. I didn't notice that. That's great. So yes, Homer got, uh, he's given no confidence by Abe. He then goes to his guidance counselor. He asks, uh, as a little kid, I love, cause I knew the alphabet as a little kid.

So I actually really love the joke of Homer counting off the letters of like, wait, where's that? The guidance counselor. kid so i actually really love the joke of homer counting off the letters of like wait where's s the guidance counselor i also really like the little specific of homer going like this with his hair just like pushing his hair out of his eyes as he's talking it's extra bushy in this scene just to give him some nervous acting i love the line uh oh simpson you should have come to see me a long time ago yes yeah he's got a pretty thick uh guy you know that's a guidance counselor's fault really and homer interprets guidance as dating advice in this case yeah uh i would think now guidance counselors would be like it is illegal for me to tell you how to date a a t

a fellow teen i will i cannot tell you you're on your own kid and what is his advice he's like well find common interests and spend spend spend yeah so insane uh it's uh one that he knows marge is like famous is like oh she's a really good student she's on the forensic team and is really good at it she's i mean there was debate club in my school i never heard of a forensics team it's just another word for debate okay oh really i thought that was weird too also when he asked over what he's gonna do it's one of my favorite like dan deliveries and posing like i'm gonna drink a lot of beer and stay out all night so so good it's very loud he just screams that there's you can feel them like shaking the walls of the recording booth in so many of these

old ones i love that you know burns looks exactly the same when he's given that brochure for uh for the nuclear power plant not wearing his toupee yeah that we saw once they you know they have a lot of jokes back then uh so many jokes this episode of like oh homer you never gain weight oh you've got plenty more hair where this came from uh you'll never work in the nuclear power plant they're easy jokes but they are good i i laugh at him every time oh that's your other main thing besides doing 70s jokes is like well we're then we're doing simpsons jokes jokes we're joking on what we know the simpsons what the simpsons becomes it reminds me too of being a comic book nerd as a kid of just reading those origin comics that are written backwards of just like wolverine saying i'd never join a team i'm not a team player big old wink at some point they realized they were doing

this too much and i think at one point maybe in the teens they had an episode like here's the origin of homer's blue pants like where do they come from uh well no it's the next one that al gene really regrets because they're like we we're going to do them getting married, Bart's birth, and Homer gets a job at the power plant. We're going to do all three of those in the same episode. And even on the commentary in 2003, he's like, I can't believe we wasted. This is three separate episodes right here. We shouldn't have used them all in one. Yeah.

That's how I felt about the movie Solo. You see the movie Solo? Oh, yes. Yeah. I don't think in one. Yeah, that's how I felt about the movie Solo. You see the movie Solo? Oh, yes. Yeah, I don't think Bob has. No, no. But like, it was like, hey, you know Han Solo? He's this guy who we're suggesting a whole world, a whole life of adventures. And it's like, now that happened in a long weekend in one movie.

Met Chewie, got the Falcon, he met Landoando he had an adventure and got his last name handed his famous gun all these things and then the announcement strip him of all mystique yes and then the announcement there will be no more Star Wars spinoff movies yes this is the last one now a Star Wars story well those are TV shows now right they are yep yeah no I think people are 10 times more excited to watch the Obi-Wan TV show than if they had announced an Obi-Wan movie, even though they're the same. It's probably the same amount of work and budget and everything, but for some reason it feels different to have a TV. I mean, I'd rather they do an episodic TV show than just try to cram in

all that stuff like they did in Solo. Solo is also like 30 minutes too long too oh everything's 30 minutes too long i agree oh cruel i i just mentioned i saw cruel at the the well i kept waiting for like cruel is over right and i was like no it's it has to be slightly over two hours that's just how it goes superhero movies i think are especially they all sort of have that like extra loop de loop towards the middle back where i'm like oh now we gotta stop and go get the thing so that we can continue on or or whatever and uh i heard that they do that for uh because movies of that length perform

better internationally that sounds right but it's like mandated from the powers that be if it's not over two hours it won't make as much money or whatever yeah and so that's why character has to be like oh no i dropped the key back at that place gotta go there in china movies are sold in bulk but yes we see homer join the forensics team which is when we get the first appearance the two a little before this we got our first episode with phil hartman now it's our first with another SNL regular. Really quick, may I comment on Butterflies Are Free? Oh, yes.

Just in case anyone is confused. I was confused too. This Butterflies Are Free joke is another example of Marge not understanding feminism. And you have to know what the content of that book, or sorry, the play in the movie is to know why Marge is getting it wrong. The movie is about a mother concerned that her blind son is falling in love and he can't be independent. And this woman is wrong for him. And she wants to be in his life. She wants to be controlling of her blind son and be his caretaker.

Marge's take is she shouldn't have to be. So Marge misread this, this movie based on what she thinks about feminism where she's like this woman should not have to take care of this son but in the movie the movie's saying no she shouldn't have to this man should be independent and find love with Goldie Hawn who wouldn't

so there you have it you know I saw the butterflies aren't free on the blackboard they are free Henry when I saw that words on the background, I thought, well, that's a weird set of words. I guess it's just like some hippie statement or whatever. I never even thought that it was the name of a movie.

Yes, 1972. So it's right in that era. So if it confused you, I had to find Wikipedia to help me out. So butterflies are free. There you have it. But please, John Lovitz, I'm sorry. Yes, yeah.

Well, no, thank you, Bob. I miss but uh but yes homer joins the forensics team and we had the first appearance of john lovitz but bringing up a son even a blind one isn't a lifetime occupation now the more you help him the more you hurt him. Well, under Shelbyville, should they underestimate our strength in dramatic interpretation? Thank you, Artie. My name's Homer Simpson. I'd like to sign up for something. Well, we have an opening on the debate team.

Debate? Like arguing? Yes. I'll take that, you stinkpot! Just warming up, Mrs. Blumenstein. This year's topic is Resolved. The national speed limit should be lowered to 55 miles per hour. 55? That's ridiculous!

Sure, they'll save a few lives, but millions will be late! Why don't you take Khan? So, John Lovitz, I want to point out one thing in his career, because he is only known for SNL at this point in his life. Right after he recorded this, probably, he was probably fired from SNL, because if you work at snl the story is you get summer off but you have to be back to start the season if you're not back even by a week you get fired john lovitz gets cast in this movie no one remembers called mom and dad

save the world he he is the villain in that movie it won't come out until 1992 and it's a massive failure giant flop but because he's filming it in the summer of 1990 and it goes over he is fired from snl so he is off snl at this point and he would not really make a splash for most non-snl viewers until 92 with a league of their own that is when the john lovitz heat started turning up and then the critic would follow and then things like high school high. So, yes, John Lovitz still just a TV SNL guy like Phil Hartman. Wow. Well, don't forget he was the radio in Brave Little Toaster. That's right.

And Phil Hartman's in that movie, too, right? Yeah. It's a bunch of the groundlings are just the voice cast today. Yeah. No, Lovitz. He was. I didn't i think it's probably the first time i heard him because maybe by 91 i was watching some snls on comedy central maybe but

i was more into like you know the the mike myers and dana carvey stuff yeah but that's totally that's so funny that this moment for love it's came right as like a bad very bad time in his career he's probably thinking like oh I'll never be in anything again I got fired from SNL but yeah I mean Gene and Reese when they heard him in in the booth for this they just fell in love with him like they let they let him just steamroll their script and be like no just be as big and ridiculous as possible the way he goes just like uh woe be to Shelbyville. Like just,

they're like, ah, good night. I like, yeah, it's, it's so funny too, because like his character is just such a great foil for Homer.

Yes. You, you, you just have this like anti Homer. And so like, yeah, go fucking nuts, man.

Uh, he really does. Well, and then again, this episode starts with them watching on TV. Critics present a fake movie, and then it's a sketch of the movie. And then you meet Artie Ziff, who just is the critic. A smug buffoon.

Yes. Who is humiliated. Who's also very smart, just like Jay Sherman is, too. And that smartness does not help. And the only thing Artie Ziff isn't is a food monster. That's the only thing he already ziff isn't is a food monster that's the only thing uh but yeah the uh i also like just homer yelling in the teacher's face and then realizing like oh sorry this is blue it's time but yeah you see that marge is like really good at this she actually is there's that i really like the shot of paying across the room when marge is speaking you see

the teacher like kind of looking at her like oh like uh everybody expects big things for marge i i do feel like there's an intention here of showing marge had a lot going for her and then she met home yeah so sad uh and and in 1974 that was when the maximum speed limit on highways was introduced uh It was supposed to be fully national, that it would all be 55. We all heard the Sammy Hagar song about it in the 80s. But it did become like a wedge issue, you know, and a very reactionary American thing to be like, you can't tell me how fast I can drive. Homer comes to the conclusion, no way.

Oh, right. Going through all of his resources. fast i can drive of course homer homer comes to the conclusion no way yeah oh right going through all of his resources i also like you know very smart and economical of them to just sort of introduce homer driving like a rundown shitty sports car i don't know what that what that is but it's not like a nice sports car but you can tell what kind of guy he is when he's uh you know slapping on the chain link steering wheel with that i rock z or whatever it is when he's uh you know slapping on the chain link steering wheel with that i rock z or whatever it is yeah he's he probably was thinking like oh i'm going to work my way up to a firebird but this is my first car and it's it's rocking yeah the maximum speed limit it would stay that way until 1995 though lots of states fought it anyway. It became one of those through the eighties,

like those states rights issues of like, well, we're going to repeal it. And it's 75 here or whatever. And then in 95, at the end of 1995, under the GOP controlled full Congress, they're like, nope, get rid of it. First thing they did was just get rid of that 55, which I mean, it was pretty much dead by that point anyway because most states were just like no we we want people to go faster i've i do think uh i i was looking into it a little bit some articles about it some say that it did it definitely decreased uh deaths but it didn't seem to decrease them as much as you think like it was like slim percentages but you know save lives or save lives uh and i've

seen other articles that argue that like actually making people go slow causes slower at 55 causes more accidents on the highway and was that written by the speed council i know uh it was it was not a more trusted source but it does it does sound like one of those bullshit things like oh i i read the fruit punch advisory board website about how good fruit punch is you know well i mean if i guess this has always been just the grind between saving lives and personal freedoms but man if if we knew then what we know now uh but uh i i also really love the design of homer's messy teen bedroom like all the posters he has on the wall are perfect like his giant like wooden peace sign is so good all these all these great specifics and and speaking of great acting uh voice acting you know for the longest time you get the feel that nobody acts in the same room anymore and does the

voice acting you know economically on television animation it's much easier to record everybody separately and then animate that way it makes much more sense but like this moment here of this is dan castellanette and john lovitz who are funny people acting off of each other and improvising in the scene and there's so much energy in this clip here our current speed limit is an anachronism the fatuity will you shut up wait a minute that word you keep calling me ignoramus ignoramus it means i'm stupid doesn't it there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity not to me there isn't you homer ignoramus you're the ignorant no you are homer would you like to present your rebuttal? With pleasure.

My caramba! Homer drops his pants, and what an angle on that butt of Homer. It feels, I don't like imagining what they're seeing on the other side of that camera. Yeah, it's sort of a butt-eye view. Yes, yeah. I think they're seeing more than just the cheeks, I guess, is what I'm saying. That's a full moon. I mean, he's pulling the pantser down. It's not even like an ass window to display.

That's true, yeah. Pants are all the way down. I'm hoping he's tucking it, that he's not also making Marge see it. Oh, if he's tucking it, people, I mean, just think about the logistics. Sure, yes. Well, I would hope Marge didn't also see Homer's ass and his balls on that day. That's all and what a what a great great comeback that there's a difference between ignorance and stupidity not to me there isn't

oh fucking good uh and the way they just go like you ignoramus like you're like that and also i love jelovitz's delivery of like ignoramus like he's just like like asking is like ignoramus yeah uh that uh there there should have been i think that's the only scene of ziff and homer interacting they should have had more of that there's so much like energy to it ziff is not in it enough yeah yeah agreed uh and then and when he gets his big scene in the end he's a creep and you're just like, yuck. Oh, yeah. We'll get there.

But, yes, Marge, then I love, too, that Homer just shocks her jumping out of the bushes. He's like, you may not remember me. She's like, I saw your ass. Like, I know who you are. He mooned for rebuttal. Mooned for rebuttal is a very funny line, too. I like that. I mean, Homer then gives a suggestion of like, well, just ask around, you know?

And I like the framing of the three guys in a row that his gym coach is like, if he worked really, really hard, he could get one more foot on his junior varsity. He shot put. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care?

And then we get this, the shop teacher with the missing finger. Made a lamp last year. See, I'm always so distracted by Lovitz's voice there. It's really Lovitz. I almost never notice he has a missing ring finger. Or that it's a partially gone finger. It's just so distracting. Lovitz doing such a weird voice, too.

This thing that Barney says is so weirdly poetic. It's like, did Homer put these words in his brain? I feel like Homer gave him those lines to say, yes. It's the only glowing recommendation comes from barney

like the only guy worse than homer uh well so this is another big change in the script though uh so barney's script speech is not all florid it's him just saying i've been friends with homer since i was a kid we had our first beer together at 13 he's a great guy but i i much prefer him having this very practiced speech about what a great guy homer is uh and also this was another improvement in the law but from this this is another improvement from the script when he asks marge's friend to the prom in the script she says it's an outdated and sexist institution the prom more of the you know feminist stuff but in of her being like cast as the angry feminist it's so much funnier for just going like good god no well put i just love

that of like why no what it's like oh it's she's like outraged at the even even the idea was put on the table. Oh, how dare you even think you could ask me to the prom? Poor Barney. I love that. Yeah. Poor, poor, poor Barney. And then Homer learns the magic trick to getting a date with Marge. Lying. He needed to lie.

But yes, he asked Marge for some French lessons in this next clip which also had some really great like just listen to the interplay between dan and julie here this is again just very natural like voice acting here he's all thanks to all men and maybe to one lucky gal wanna go to the prom with me good god no well put well what's the good word? I'm sorry. What? Well, you seem like a nice enough guy, but I really don't have the time. Yeah. And the city forensics championship is coming up.

Yeah, so? Oh, and I tutor part-time. You tutor? Yes. And anyone can be tutored? Just those who need help with French. French? What a coincidence.

Just the subject I'm having trouble with. Why you cagey old dog. Great story. Positively spellbinding. Work, damn you, work. Bart! Pay attention. You may be telling this to your own son one day if something breaks. That's a good line, too. Great line. I mean, I enjoyed this as a kid, but I'm sure many kids were like many kids were like bart like show more bart stop showing these two people in love i was promised the bart show you know i

at this point in the episode when i was a little kid i was still into it but by the end of the episode i think i probably did have bart's reaction but i i think this was really like them nervous they're like we know where the Bart showed all these kid viewers and, and here we're showing the parents, like what kid wants to watch a show about their mom and dad falling in love, you know? And it's funny even hearing him say like work, damn you.

Yes. Like, first of all, it doesn't feel like how kids swear, but also I felt like I was transported back to 1990. What was this? Two, one,

one, one where it's just like, I had this, I had a 1991 reaction to 1990. What was this? Two? One. One. Where it's just like, I had a 1991 reaction to it. Like you hear, you know, characters on shows swear all the time and it's nothing because they feel like modern shows.

But when it's on this show and you know that Bart is like the kid who says, damn you. I was sort of like, ooh, that was a little edgy. We talked to one of the writers

from this era and he said that they loved making Bart swear at first because, that was a little edgy. We talked to one of the writers from this era, and he said that they loved making Bart swear at first because, you know, it's funny, a little kid swearing. But then they found out, you know, they're friends with children. Like, hey, our kids imitate Bart, and they're swearing all the time. So after a few years, Bart stopped swearing. He's so casual in his swearing here. I had that same feeling as a little

kid i i'm sure jeff you're familiar with the original ninja turtles movie oh hell yeah and when rafael in the movie says damn damn i was like oh oh no swear yeah it's my mom signing off on this it's mom okay with this am i gonna get in trouble because raf sweared yeah i love how they cut to the city too like it's just echoing throughout the entire borough you can only say that when you lose your sigh young henry now is that i think there's a second dam on top of the farmhouse when splinter gets captured am i wrong you know i think his first dam is when they're walking back after he loses like damn right there's that damn i swear like when april's drawing all the turtles oh yeah yeah he's kind of wistful like damn and it's like but but there's a there's a shot of one of the turtles on the top of the barn and what i pieced together from the commentary is that that

is actually michelangelo not raff and it's and it's dark because michelangelo is the one character that april doesn't draw and they don't really get into him and i guess originally in the script that that michelangelo was dealing with splinter's disappearance the worst and that when he comes in and he interrupts casey and april and he's like looking for the turtle wax the reason that they have like this really relieved weird reaction is because they were like really worried about michelangelo oh i can see why they'd cut that of like oh we can't have kids see this angry like oh fun fun party dude michelangelo is gonna be the most angry yeah i kind of would have

liked that but i mean it's smarter than to be like okay nobody knows what a fucking ninja turtle is let's just focus on the moody one being the moody one get on with it that's a problem with all those tm and t movies though they always make raf the main guy it's like it's not equal time for all the turtles they're like well who's the most interesting turtle well it's raf because he's like angry raf underappreciated in the video games but i like how he got time in the movies because i was a raf stan growing up i see i always liked michelangelo in theory like especially as a kid i was like yeah he's the funny one and then like you know he just gets irritating i would love it if somebody would give michelangelo a little bit of an angle of something like they're just so

archetypal and so stay in their lane that i'm like hey if i was gonna do a new turtles thing i would shake it up a little bit i i was the boring older brother who loved leonardo like i know i know uh but uh but yeah getting back to simpsons though yeah i like that trivia i didn't know this yeah no me neither whenever bart would say damn i would feel like oh i well i i certainly could never say that like i i don't think i got comfortable swearing in front of my parents until like my 20s i mean like i i sort of do but like i tend not to i well i wouldn't like say in front of my mom and this fucking guy at work i would say that but i think i might go like damn that's a good sandwich or whatever. Yeah, sure.

Damn, you can get away with it. But yes, Bart is getting sick of the story, but they go back to it. It's date night. Homer has a hot comb in his hair, which again, a very real thing. Are they implying the hot comb hastened his hair falling out, do you think?

I think the hair was just falling out. I see. Ronco had nothing to do with it. I still in the mornings when I go in the mirror, I go like, there's plenty more where that came from. I just tell myself over and over again, plenty more where that came from. That zit is so gross. It's made me grossed out since childhood.

I hate seeing that zit. He's got some good cover-up on that thing, though. Quality cover-up yeah what man owns concealer like that back then that's a lucky man lucky yeah that was such a funny little one-off thing like they didn't go down the road the route of like oh he's gonna squeeze it and make it worse and we're gonna see it animated for the rest of the episode it's just like he puts a little pink on there and it's like haha and then yeah it's just he had his it and he dealt with it the end yeah no it just feels very natural of just like what well when you were a teenager what did you do to prepare for a date why did these things yeah true true dad uh

and this is one song they couldn't get in this episode in the original script it called for homer to put on barry white's can't get enough of your love this this fakie song is very funny though it's funny yeah oh and they one day would get can't get enough of your love and they'd get barry white to sing it live in the studio for him wait was that whacking day that was yeah hey you see i'm not such a slouch when it comes to this stuff uh and also in the script just to get one more 70s uh aesthetic added in there homer puts on high karate as well for his dates that's that's in the script i think i can't tell if the bottle is clearly high karate i didn't recognize it on the screen but but yeah i i like that marge doesn't marge is so innocent in here

they definitely write her as a girl who had never dated, really, before Homer. Well, you hear Patty and Selma. That's what you get when you don't put out. That's true. They're aware of her virginal ways. Well, in here, Marge is just like, oh, why is there makeup music on? Turn it off. We got to study.

And he's like, oh, sure. Also in the script, the French lessons are about twice as long. I can see why they cut it. It goes on long enough. It's French. The fade to the watch is appreciated. The best joke they have in there is that Homer admitting, he's like, well, I guess my first problem is that I don't have the book for French class because he's not actually a student

in class. So that's why he doesn't have a book. And we've had many notes to us on how to pronounce the word uh well okay jeff actually we should say it before we say it okay what are the coloring instruments that crayola makes how would you pronounce that crayon there we go see we're crayon boys over here crayon but in french crayon is a pencil that's how they get you man that's a trick i think it was calvin and hobbes uh refers to them as crayons i see i i never uh it was just said uh in my area growing up like i just said crayon instead of crayon yeah instead like you you know you see

it written out as crayon but uh you know it over time you just say it so fast it's a lot of work yeah uh but yes homer and marge like uh he tries to make the moves on her and make it a date but i i think it's really sweet that once she strips that away and it's just them hanging out they just start to like each other like they they are naturally interested in each other and homer appreciates marge for more than just her looks like he's like oh you're really smart and helpful to me yeah it's sweet and she does in a small way make him a better man yes yeah you do see that like oh she is a positive influence on it this

is like one of the last times homer listens to her and it does it well also like there's another great posing when she's like well i gotta go homer runs all the way around the coffee table to stop her it's another just like great like composition more natural voice acting too yeah yeah and they they dance to do the hustle another just like needle drop from the 70s uh on on the commentary mike reese is a little defensive about like look i know we do a lot of 70s specifics and that's the joke and everybody knows there's the tv show that 70s show so this seems pretty played out but mike re Reese goes like, I promise you this was novel to do in 1991. It was. It was not tired.

Well, then Homer and Marge connect so much that he asks her out to the prom. You know, Homer, you're like no one I've ever met before. You're dear and honest and open without a trace of pretension. I'll take that as a compliment. So will you go out with me? Please say oui. Oui! Whoa, whoa!

Whoa, Marge! This will be the greatest night of your life. I've been saving up for a new engine for my car, but I'm going to spend it all on us. I'm renting the biggest limo. I'm going to buy you the biggest corsage. My tux is going to have the widest lapels, the most ruffles, and the highest platform shoes you ever saw.

Maybe I'll wear my hair up. Wait, wait, wait, Marge. If honest and open is what you like, get a load of this. I'm not really in any French class. This was just a brilliant scheme to get to know you better. Ow. You knew the city forensics finals are tomorrow, and you kept me here until 1 a.m. pretending to be stupid.

Homer J. Simpson, I hate you. Hey, Barney. Guess who's got a date for the prom? What a great way to cash in on that pretending to be be stupid yeah yeah hang time is like beat beat hey guess who's got a date for the prom oh so good she didn't say she wasn't going to go yeah i love i love how it comes back later he's like well you said you have the problem i i also said i hate you oh god just is i i remember my mom laughing so hard when homer says guess who's got a date to the prom like she she loved that line i i like how homer so a regular i think a more predictable plot in a sitcom would be homer lies to mars she agrees to it and then like at

the prom she learns homer doesn't really have a a french class and he lied to her and that caused the problem here the problem is that homer does the better thing like the more moral thing of saying like you know what i'll just tell you now i was lying i just wanted to get to know you better and that then they have a whole other thing to deal with in the third act like i i like uh that's uh a more not unconventional uh story beat yeah like resolving the lie immediately yes yeah it's refreshing when things go that way uh also i do kind of think that joke of uh guess who's got a date to the prom it kind of works as an act ender better than if like you couldn't i don't know i

guess you could get away with a joke like that or sort of modulate it to make it work if it was just in the middle of a flow of a bunch of scenes but it feels like you're sort of over promising like homer's confusion where that's not really the point like it does it does come up again but it does kind of feel like okay that was like a big a big kicker ender and so that we can come back and uh it doesn't feel too disruptive because it makes them very very dumb in in the script act two actually ends with the cut back to the family that starts the next scene and i think they made the really smart choice of like no you end end on homer saying excitedly guess who's gonna do the pro it's a big laugh uh and and also i

really love the delivery of like pretending to be stupid like the the that's how mad marge is that her voice goes that high though also i i don't want to be armchair psychologist to marge but when she decides she's like falling in love then she's gonna put her hair up just like her mom does what's this mean yeah then cuts to the opening scene of bart and lisa i think they also are the imagined kid viewer there who are just critiquing the show like there's no tension here we know they end up together they're the they're a married couple on the show uh but uh but yes they then cut to marge failing at her uh forensics. She, I think like you said, Bob, that wasn't a winner topic anyway.

Probably was going to lose to Ziff as it was. But that, yeah, it does seem to imply that Homer cost her it and that. Oh, for sure. She's so sleepy. And that by Ziff winning, he then followed that. That was like a stepping stone tovard and then the presidency and all these things and marge marge was robbed of it because some idiot some dumb idiot wasted her whole night i love how like tired and resigned she is too like when it all just peters out and they're

like oh terrible huh and she's like yeah and just kind of like shuffles away yeah she's like yeah that's so good uh and and also great design on all the judges they do look like old people in the 70s that's good uh and then in this quick clip here yeah i just have the beginning this is when ziff asks out asks out marge which definitely you get the feel that marge saw him it's like oh my friend is asking to take me to the prom i she does not view ziff as a potential love interest but uh this is a real first for john lovitz in a cartoon large this may not be the most appropriate form for what i'm about to put forth but would you there yes uh heard a lot more on the critic of course but uh that is a john lovitz noise apparently it's good for clearing out your throat yeah it's the uh i prefer akum to hachimachi i prefer that but uh i like that ziff is like this

freaking nerd who just is like oh well if i'm gonna ask out this girl i need to have multiple points here and even wallflowers can look forward to one day to year he's like citing his source like uh he names the issue yeah america's love affair with the prom uh yeah i well i mean i also do think the the writers of the simpson show who were you know harvard educated in most cases like harvard educated guys they probably were more like the people on the forensics team than they were like Homer in high school. So I don't want to say they were like Artie Ziff because Ziff's a creep at the end of the episode. So they're not creeps like him.

But I'm saying they probably were bookish guys who used cards to ask girls out on dates. Qualifying their prom proposals with articles. Yes. Now, I did not go to the prom i did was like it seemed like too much work honestly i went home and play video just to go with someone i didn't like and it wasn't fun but now you can say on a podcast you went to the prom it's true yeah yeah i went to the prom but uh i knew my date didn't like me like me. Actually, we had a junior prom and a senior prom.

Oh, wow. You know, they went okay. It wasn't a Hollywood prom. It wasn't like in a movie. Nothing dramatic happened there. No one got pushed in the pool. But yeah, Marge accepts the date because she's known him for most of her life,

it sounds like. And then here's another bit I didn't know the name of before, but when it cuts to Marge looking in the mirror, this is called out specifically in the script. It is a reference to the Norman Rockwell Saturday evening post cover called Girl at Mirror. at mirror it's a young girl who's feeling inadequate to like the beautiful movie stars and she's looking at herself in the mirror like oh i'm not as pretty as the girl in the magazine that's why marge is posed with like a magazine on her uh on her lap while she's looking in the mirror interesting yes yeah i'm looking at it this was an era in which you could reference saturday evening post covers we all know know this Norman Rockwell cover. Yeah, I think the only one I know now is just by reference.

It's like, oh, that Thanksgiving dinner one. That's the only one I think of. Man, a friend of mine worked at Amblin as a PA years and years ago and was editing a short film that he did in one of the bays. And he was like, hey, you want to check out the one of the bays and he was like hey you want to check out the cut of my film and i was like do i get to go to amblin and he said yes and so i went and um and we went in on a sunday and uh it looks like jurassic park and he said hey you want to see steven's office and so we go in and we we check it out we just like peek our heads in the first

thing you see is fucking rosebud right in like a display case on the wall and then like uh and then like put prepped on the floor like below where they would be hung a bunch of original norman rockwells wow man then my buddy was like we gotta get out of here wait steven spielberg likes americana this is the first i'm hearing of this oh i can't i forgot he owns the real rose that rules and you got to see it man that's amazing uh uh well yeah and here marge we also get a little insight into what her upbringing was like of just her cruel mother telling her that you can't put on makeup because that's what whores do you have to just pinch your cheeks ladies pinch whores use rouge like yeah and also uh a rare appearance of marge's dad clancy uh we'd see him again in fear of flying

and flashbacks that reveal he was a flight attendant which was traumatic for marge and that was revealed in the season 27 episode puff list that he died of lung cancer so that is the entire history of clancy bouvier uh i i definitely think the way they pose him in his first shot of pulling up like what looks to be like an unfiltered cigarette like the most unhealthy cigarette you can have i think you're supposed to assume he probably died of cigarette related fatality yeah man the first seeing selma in patty's first meeting with homer and they just instantly hate him even though he's being like a nice guy it's funny it's really funny when they instantly are in love with arty ziff oh yes yeah they love him that you know that extended to their love of jay sherman when they that's true

yeah but man what what is that exchange they have with Artie where it's just like, well, don't we look spiffy tonight? He's like, yes, we do. Yes, indeed we do. Yes, indeed we do. That's so good. I also love, yeah, Selma's put out line, which is not in the script, but it's one of those details that like, yeah, Marge did not sleep with anyone before homer uh though it seems to apply that selma and patty are like we do put out because we get good we get better guys when you really care about someone you shouted from the mountaintops so on behalf of deja

d'un 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? Clancy here, you know, they never got much out of him i think they also kept talking they say it on the commentary they they had jokes that they would cut about him like dying on a roller coaster or whatever but they they never stuck with it uh but but homer enters the room

they're taking the photographs of them together and homer finds out that he was he had made an assumption for an entire like three weeks and his and also he says he was he had made an assumption for an entire like three weeks and his and also he says he hopes he will be able to graduate in the summer as that episode the front reveals homer does not graduate he did not no homer never graduated like he he is able to get a ged equivalent but that's it uh but yeah and the photograph bit of it jokes revealing over photographs silverman uh had done that in the family portrait shorts in the almond days as well so this was when the shorts were still so recent that they could be like well let's reference shorts everybody remembers those instead of completely forgotten and literally no one

remembers them sure another cost-saving measure all also yeah yeah and stylish uh but yes this is when homer finds out he's a spare and walks away so sad uh but i mean yeah marge marge says like i told you i hated you and i also love the exit of like now that that unpleasantness is behind us forever and of course uh right after this the debut of a guy with several names although so in this run of talking simpsons we're doing season two and season 12 back to back uh alternating rather uh this guy is named in season 12 a rafael rafael yeah it's funny we were just talking about a Raphael known in the script as sarcastic clerk or wise guy but it's Hank Azaria doing a Charles Bronson impression

and it's always very funny yes here's the first appearance of the Bronson voiced wise guy hey buddy where's your date she's with him ouch so I guess you want me to take you home huh hey i paid for this car i paid for this tuxedo and i paid for the two dinners we're going to the prom prom it is always funny uh one of the best just incidental voices not attached to any real character uh the apparently the the second appearance he would do is an old money as another driver because at first first he's just like, oh, it's the chauffeur sounds like this.

So if we have a driver, he'll sound like this. I think it was intended to be the same character but aged up, right? Because Silverman directed both, so he aged him up for that shot. I think that's too why Wiseguy can show up as multiple ages. Because sometimes they're like, well, this is the character model for old Wiseguy. And here's the character model for middle age wise guy. And so he just, he changes from shot scene to scene. But yeah, that wise guy voice,

it's just everything he says is funny. Every, I can see why they just counted on it of like, oh, you know what? This clerk should just be the wise guy. It's funny if they say that. This line would be funnier in that voice. That is one of the voices i think about when you know like south park has some too where it's just like oh it's like an extra voice

but when it pops up it's like unmistakably simpsons yes yeah when it's a specific extra and you just hear like oh that's the this is the one guy this episode who has this voice yeah yeah like it pops up all over the place uh but i mean we then cut to the prom uh homer you know he's insisting he's gonna do the whole prom thing uh we get to hear the larry davis experience a younger version of them than we've seen before were they in the some enchanted evening episode yes that's when we first saw them and uh and here they're singing goodbye yellow brick road an album released in 1973 so uh period accurate uh and uh and i mean also uh it would be a callback to elton john if they kept it in there i actually jeff you know i we haven't even asked you uh you're a professional

musician as well what uh what do you think of all the 70s music in here i mean it's great i'm not like the biggest 70s guy, to be honest. I knew all these songs because they're all bangers. Even The Streak? Yeah. Actually, wait, which one? Oh, Ray Stevens' The Streak? Oh, no.

I didn't know The Streak. I'll look it up. You know, I know that they were saying, oh, it's maybe not the coolest to do this i still like this i know i was talking shit about deadpool and suicide squad simpsons gets a pass i'll watch all this stuff but i never really listened to uh 70s music i was like a 90s kid i was in the 90s music give me green day baby uh you aren't uh but uh you you weren't pulling up the oldies the as much uh no don't give me fleetwood mac or i don't know who else damn early arrowsman you know they're missing fleetwood mac

in this uh it's true that's a major 70s one and well i mean they only have so much money they can't like oh let's play just abba here i i remember hearing on a community commentary where harman decided dan harman the creator decided for one episode they'd have like seven abba songs and once he finished that episode he's like oh we can't have any more songs this season that was every song for that yeah well uh i do want to talk about the streak because it was hot off the presses the streak came out in february of 1974 so now they're like in may or june and i was like what was streak like streaking had a weird uh brief like was a weird brief fad it started in 1973 no one can pin uh where it began it was on college campuses but everyone was blaming los angeles it's like this

los angeles fad is corrupting our youths. So I think the best sketch about it, Mr. Show, they did that like streakers in the future. Oh, yes. I love that streakers in the future sketch. But yeah, streaking was such a minor fad that Ray Stevens wrote a novelty song about a man streaking, which is a sex crime. Don't do it. Yes. Don't show your genitals to every person you can. I almost did in college.

I'm glad I didn't. It was a more innocent time. It's now that we know better. But yeah, back then, I recall in Michael Showalter's book, he has a bit about why streaking is funny. But one of the bits is that you have to be kind of out of shape.

And it's about having an unimpressive body and just seeing a penis flapping around yeah unspectacularly it's got to be a little cold out yes yeah uh but i mean barney is just the right body type to streak that's uh but i mean too it's a reference to the 74 oscar streaker as well oh really okay well i this one i know especially because but that was like the peak of streaking like if on the 1974 oscars that david niven hosted a streaker just runs by on live tv but the camera makes sure it's all above the waist nothing aired on tv uh and then david niven says uh i'm shocked someone would show the world his shortcomings basically hey he had that in his pocket and it feels like he had something ready there right

but and so in the original script arty ziff just says that line he's like to quote david niven so uh it was it was very specific in the script they make it more specific about the oscar streaker but streaking was was all the rage in the 70s i feel like i associate it with like old soccer games or something like oh yeah i feel like vintage sporting events you'd see people streaking yeah you know i i associate it with european things yeah exactly they tend to have the drunkest fans oh yeah true and and also you know less uh less inhibited about their bodies too unlike unlike a shame-filled american how european uh this speech by ardia i've always loved it especially good for you when he's like congratulating the crowd for voting for him

uh because it doesn't seem like they would be prom king and queen and they don't give much explanation of why like why are they the most popular people to be that marge is prom queen like that's something you can forget about her yeah it seemed curious to me um but you know it makes a better story for homer and marge in this very moment so it makes things sadder for homer because the angle of this is homer is so sad you have to feel so bad that you marry him eventually. You poor man. I think it's very sweet that Homer's on the outside, like, yelling. And, like, he's not even depressed then. He's like, all hail Queen Marge.

Like, he's trying to get her attention and be positive. But then when he sees Marge and Artie dancing to their song, he can't take it. Why do birds suddenly appear? Every time you're near. Get out of here. Mama? What? Why are you doing this?

Why can't you accept that I'm here with someone else? Because I'm sure we were meant to be together. Usually when I have a thought, there's a lot of other thoughts in there. Something says yes, something says no. But this time, there's only yes. How could the only thing I've ever been sure about in my life be wrong? I don't know, but it is. Well, where to now, Romeo?

Inspiration point. Okay, but I'm only paid to drive. I feel bad for the Carpenters because whenever I hear that song, I do think of John Lovitz. Oh, yes. Him every time. you're near. Just his fun spoken word version of it. Man, The Simpsons is so good at being heart wrenching in those brief moments.

You put your guard down for an entire episode and then they fucking get you. Like Homer is so raw and real with her and the music even seems to cue like, oh, she's going to say, you know what, Homer, I was wrong. And it's like, well, it is, and walks away just like, nope, you're wrong. Oh, God. And, yeah, I mean, Dan and Julie just so good and real there together. And, yeah, that moment is where Gene and Reese realize like, oh, John Lovett sings a bunch. We can do a whole lot with that just

have him sing everything we're into have what if we wrote a whole show where john lovett sings and coughs up things it'll be a hit uh but yes homer homer has given up uh they head up to inspiration point which is apparently designed to look like the famous scenic overlook in the mall Holland drive area of Los Angeles. You, you recognize it, Jeff. I sure do. The view shelf.

You taking stuff up, folks up to an inspiration point. I wish man. It's gotta be crowded. It's perfect. It looks great. I used to work on Gene Simmons' reality show on A&E. Wow.

And I would have to drive on Mulholland to get to his house. Was that the Family Jewels? Was that what it was called? It sure was. Wow. Okay. You put in your time, Jeff. Yeah.

You earned it, Jeff. That was my first job in LA, if it dates me. But yeah, Homer just giving up. But also, why does he care about going to Inspiration Point? Instead of going home, I guess he's sticking to his plan. And his plan was to end with taking Marge to Inspiration Point as well. He paid for all this time, even if there's no make-out partner. So yes, then we get an uncomfortable scene of just Artie not taking no for an answer. And, you know, once Marge shoves him away and slaps him like that, he stops there.

It's an uncomfortable scene. I wasn't going to play the clip of it, but I mean, they don't play it for laughs either. Yeah, but it is funny how he tries to be diplomatic about it. You know, he tries to like talk his way out of it. It would damage the town oh yes yes that it is i hate to say it about a scene about a creep saying could you not tell people that i'm an awful person i was like but just his defense of it would damage the town to hear it yeah he's a master of forensics yes yeah you thought i was gonna say master to me i like that she stops at that and i like that um you know i think it's better for marge better for marge's character that

homer doesn't intervene and that marge slaps him and like already snaps the strap of her dress and that's that's sort of like the tipping point where marge takes control back says take me home yeah you know way to go marge there are so many even in 91 there were so many like damsel in distress stories this is just marge standing up for herself of like no like stop like yeah and then she kind of rescues homer from walking home alone yeah it's sweet how she just sees him there at the end so so this was the other giant change from the script. And in the commentary, Silverman mentions this too. Silverman in general mentions that he feared that he ruined the episode or when it first came back, he thought, oh, this looks like crap.

I did a terrible job, which is crazy that he would think that. But one of the things that got changed big time was the end of this episode. Brooks, we've talked about this a lot, actually, in the last couple episodes. James L. Brooks kind of sweetened up the ending here, just like he did at the end of Bart Gets Hit by a Car or Dancing Homer. But I think it really works here. Yeah, yeah. It's a way to just get out of the story as soon as possible, as soon as the story is

done being told, as soon as the flashback is over, because we get Bart gagging and then to just get out of the story as soon as possible, as soon as the story is done being told, as soon as the flashback is over, because we get Bart gagging, and then it's the end of the story. So in the original script, Marge goes home quietly. She gets out of her car, and then just has a moment to herself, and wordlessly just thinks,

oh, and she goes to get Homer. Then she picks up Homer and just says to him, well, I guess you were right after all and homer says so this is what it feels like to be right and that's the end of it like that that's the end of the flashback and this is so much like is it almost too sweet maybe but it's just very sweet of like homer marge getting to the door and hearing her family badmouth homer i i much prefer that if that's her realization of like oh i didn't go with the right guy right exactly and it's quick yeah and i do like the symbolism of uh fixing her dress with the corsage he meant to give her

earlier it's nice visual symbolism catch that that's great yeah it's like he by giving her the corsage he was going to give to her he fixes things and makes it right yeah no and i mean also just him saying like poor vu like he brings back his french lessons as well and and it's it's just very it is too it is very sweet i i think the line so on the commentary reese thinks they almost went too far. He's like, this is the farthest we went with one of these things of Homer saying, I'm going to hug you and I'm going to kiss you.

Never let you go. And I never did. And Reese is like, yeah, this is too far. That's why they have Bart gagging. I think it was also going to end with a conversation about what happened already ziff and the original idea was them saying oh no already ziff got arrested in like a savings and loan scandal and homer's joke is haha he can't even vote now and then lisa says

dad you never vote he said i don't want to so and that was the joke they went out on originally which is a less sweet note homer saying but i don't want to that's the last line in that original script page and when arty comes back in season 14 the ziff who came to dinner i think it was it's called uh we find out yeah he is like a destroyed.com millionaire like his money has all been taken from him he's a disgraced millionaire i do like that i do yeah then well then later he'll make an indecent proposal to marge as well but i i much prefer just ending on the sweetness i think it's earned because it is like this is the love story of the show like this is the core love story of the show you can get away with a little like syrupyness in it and if you're gonna do it do it and I

also like the the ending is abrupt like it's funny to have Bart just sort of shit on everything you've seen because that's what Bart's there to do yes but it also makes me feel like they use their runtime better like everything leading up to that really really abrupt ending gives you those moments where it's like oh we're gonna have Homer go

all the way up to make out point and not have an interaction with Marge so you're still, you're still a little bit on your back foot. We've seen a million of these episodes where the characters have complications, but they find little unique ways of having, having Marge say, you know, leaving him when Homer's crying and says like, yeah, I guess you're wrong. Not, not interacting at make out point and getting all the way home before she picks him up it's like they found cool little interesting ways of like milking it out doing different things so that when you get to the end you gotta get out of there the next show's gotta start baby if this

had been in season five they would have i think they would have gone even farther with that and just had the joke of like she never saw him again that night in high school like oh and then after you know like a few years later we like met in college and then we just bumped into each other at the mall or something but yeah like after that much uh sincere emotion it's good to just end the episode and bart's gagging and it still lets you know like bart thinks this is dumb and like well here i'll just play I'll play the finale clip here. Shut up. I'm over as far as I can go. All right.

All right. I'll walk in the mud. Homer? What? Yeah. You want a ride? Sure. You know, Homer, when I got home, I realized who I should have gone to the prom with.

Who? High prom day. March, poor fool. Why so glum? I got a problem. Once you stop this car, I'm gonna hug you and kiss you, and then I'll never be able to let you go and i never have the bark gagging lets you know they know it's like yeah it's very cute but uh again that's

another of my all-time favorite just like dan castlem at the deliveries just the almost like sing-songy way goes like all right all right i'll walk in the mud yeah that is etched into my brain for some reason yeah i really don't know why just the way he says it is just i don't know it's just so memorable like all right all right yeah i and again not in the original script i wonder how much was retakes there because they're and because definitely marge's exchange with homer no lip sync in that like it's all off but uh it's it's uh yeah that it's a very sweet ending and i also you know i like the scope of it too it's just really about like three weeks in their lives you know and only one thing happened it's when homer and Marge went to the prom. Yeah. I, there, there's better flashback episodes.

Like I, I love the B sharps one. I love Lisa's first word. Yeah. But this, uh, uh, this one is extra sweet.

Yeah. To establish the format. And, uh, it explained enough to give you, you know, more questions afterwards. Like,

where did this come from? Where did that come from? They have a lot of ground to cover after this. after this so they said this could be a kind of episode and it really worked well i hope we see more of marge's dad i mean like we can still use him right we got years left of the simpsons they can do another flashback to marge's dad more stories with him there's probably like five comics about him that we just haven't read oh for sure yeah simpsons comics they like like. They see where. There's unused stuff.

They're like. Well we only have to ask. Matt Groening for permission. For this. They could have a grand plan. You know like. They know how to. Keep an ace up the sleeve.

Like hey. We're going to need this. Marge's dad. We're going to save him. For season 40. Simpsons movie 2. The secret of Marge's dad. That's the rise of Clancy.

The rise of Clancy uh any other final thoughts for this one oh i mean yeah i think it's just a really it's a really great foundational episode of the show like it's it's not as it's uh future ones would be a lot peppier with jokes and and faster and all that but uh that you do lose some emotion in that and uh it's nice to get and just how much space there is for like acting in this and just like naturalism i really like a whole lot it is a true classic but yes thank you so much to jeff dutton for being with us for two and a half hours of your free time thank you so much for being on the show please talk about the sloppy boys where we can find you and

support you and listen to your stuff oh awesome well awesome. Well, The Sloppy Boys is my band-turned-booze podcast. We've got our albums are up on Spotify. The podcast is everywhere you get podcasts. And we basically, it's myself and Tim Galpakis and Mike Hanford from the sketch group, The Birthday Boys. And we make a cocktail every week and we talk about its origins and we make it live and we drink it live and we crack wise you can find me on

twitter and all sorts of uh social media at jefferson dutton and you follow uh you can follow at the sloppy boys now i uh i was a fan of your guys's music uh like so i was so sad i hadn't gotten to see you guys live yet but soon soon i hope to it'll happen we we want to recently at the time of this recording uh your hawaii trip episode was a whole lot of fun like just just the story i i just the you i really loved your story about surfing that was a very funny story can we tell them i puked i puked on a surfboard. I got seasick. Wow. You know, you're having too much fun in Hawaii. It happens to the best of us. Yeah. And, you know, I'd been surfing before, so I don't want to seem like too much of a noob. But, yeah, it was a bad time.

But I'd never been to Hawaii before, and it was great. And, hey, cheers to Hanford for organizing it and setting it all up. Oh, that's nice. It was so, I mean, just feeling the energy of you guys all in the same place again, after, after all of this, uh, it was really great.

Yeah. Yep. But thank you so much for coming on Jeff. We got, we'd love to have you back. Oh, for sure. Thanks guys.

So thanks again so much to Jeff Dutton for being on the show. Please check out the sloppy boys, both the music and the podcast, but ask for us. We want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up for five bucks a month to get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes 100 plus podcasts we've been making for the past four plus years which includes all of our limited miniseries the most recent one

was talking of the hill season two part one that was 11 new episodes of our king of the hill retrospective podcast and there's another minseries coming up in the fall of 2021 for patrons only so you want to be on that patreon at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is a 10 level as well when you sign up for that you get all of the five dollar stuff plus also access to one make a long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that, Henry? Bob is talking about the What a Cartoon movie podcast. Now, we have a sister podcast to Talking Simpsons called What a Cartoon. Twice a month, we talk about an animated series, super in-depth, just like we do The Simpsons.

And once a month, we do the What a Cartoon movie podcast only for our ten dollar and up patreon supporters they get to hear us talk often for over four hours about the history and scene by scene deconstruction of an animated feature film we have so much fun recently talking about films like the hunchback of notre dame disney's hercules the awful cool world and the 20th anniversary of shrek and there's a giant back catalog i would say there's over 140 hours of exclusive what a cartoon movie podcast about so many classic films we have so much fun talking about them you can hear that in addition to all of the five dollar stuff if you go up to that premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast is retronauts

a classic gaming podcast about old video games find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month henry what about you why you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g anytime you want to know what's going on with henry gilbert that's where you'll find out also if you're on twitter following the both of us you definitely should be following the official twitter account of this podcast at talk simpsons pod at talk simpsons pod keeps you up to date when new podcasts come out when there's new stuff on the Patreon, when there's news to analyze. Follow at TalkSimpsonsPod, please

on Twitter to stay up to date. Thanks so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next time for Season 12's Tennis the Menace and we will see you then. Ah. Some people call me a space cowboy. Yeah. Some people

be the gangster. Oh. Some people call me the gangster of love Some people call me Maurice Woo! Woo! Cause I speak of the puppet host of love People talk about me, baby Yeah

Say I'm doing you wrong, doing you wrong, doing you wrong, doing you wrong People talk about me, baby. Say I'm doing you wrong, doing you wrong, doing you wrong, doing you wrong. But don't you worry, baby, don't worry. Because I'm right here, right here, right here, right here, right here. Good Lord, Simpson, you should have come to see me a long time ago. Yeah, maybe, but I just met this girl, Marge Bouvier, and I want to force her to like me. That's not exactly the type of guidance I give. Oh.

Well, I like to think I do something helpful for every student, N through Z. The only advice I can give you is try to share common interests and spend, spend, spend. Well, what interest does she have that I could make common? Oh, I believe she's very active on the forensics team. They meet in the new building, room 219. Far out. Homer, do you have any plans for after graduation? Me? I'm going to drink a lot of beer and stay out all night.

Oh, no, I meant career-wise. You know, that nuclear power plant will be opening soon. It's one of the few outfits around that won't require a college education. Me in a nuclear power plant. Kaboom!