Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Way We Weren't

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

"She was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen... Uh, until I met your mother—who made that girl look like a Godzilla made of garbage!" - Homer Simpson In yet another canon-defying flashback episode, we head to summer camp, where many established characters somehow know each other despite their differing ages and backgrounds. As Homer and Marge weave their different takes on this tale of the past, it's revealed the two actually met as children in a series of convoluted events that mostly check out—unless you're an insane fan obsessed with continuity. But those people certainly wouldn't be listening to THIS podcast. Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talk King of the Hill, the What a Cartoon movie podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoi, ho, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that gets a little WB. I'm one of your host, the Godzilla made of garbage, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Henry Gilbert, and tell us more about the flaps. And this week's episode is The Way We Weren't.

I guess it's Roe versus Wade, and it's my right to choose. Are you looking to cross the lake, which separates these? from she who are you the sailing instructor and on movie night i run the projectar only pg nothing are this week's episode originally aired on may 9th 2004 and as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god the series finale of friends airs e3 2004 happens in los angeles and vizabeth and Van Helsing briefly tops the box office. Now, I just watched Constantine, which came out the year later. I forget what Van Helsing is.

And I know Anthony Hopkins isn't in it. He was Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's Dracula. I guess you could see it as the prequel to that. No, not really. It is a would-be movie franchise starring Hugh Jackman, where it's like, what if Van Helsing was a badass? Like, basically it's Blade. Like, what if Blade was, like, older and less cool?

I see. And everyone was like, get back. in the Wolverine box, you son of a bitch. The only reason it's remembered now is his hair is ridiculous in it. It is like big fluffy draping hair. I just saw him last year when he was promoting Wolverine and Deadpool everywhere. People put up and showed him that old photo and they're like, he was the crusty reaction. Like, God, what was I on?

Apparently it was a hit, this white blade. It did all right, but I see it as a would-be franchise that like it must not have done good enough to get And second, it was not as Van Helsing, too. It's funny because I just watched Constantine a few months ago because I saw some of our friends from We Hate Movies, had Logger, or at least Andrew did, and I thought, you know, I never watched this. This seems like silly fun, and it was. It's a movie that thinks it's very cool but isn't, and there's some charm in that.

And then after we're done watching it, I immediately see news about another Constantine movie with Keanu Reeves in pre-production. Wow, I hadn't heard that. They did, like, a decade of a TV show and prestige-ish stuff with Constantine as a, like, TV guy. Oh, I didn't know this. Okay, yes. I guess they never used Hellblazer, the official title of Constantine. I didn't give it a chance back then because obviously as a comic nerd, I just saw the ways he wasn't like Constantine, the comic character.

Starting with, you know, John, we all love Keanu, but he's not British. Wait, wait, he's not? No. So that's why he talks like that. Okay, he's just a regular guy. So I was mad that he wasn't British, but, you know, I should give it a chance on its own term. Yeah, I had no attachment to the source material. I was just like, all right, stupid movie, entertain me.

And it's pretty good, except for all the times they try to make Shia LeBoof's character a thing. Oh, man, did you see that recent picture of him? He's covered in tats. He's really lost it. Is he doing like a Jonah Hill-style weird makeover? You know, they should be in a buddy movie together of two different canceled guys who can't be in movies anymore. Where you get like really ripped and really tatted up. Shia canceled as well?

I'm not keeping track of the canceled celebrities lately. I think they're really. are too many to keep up with. And also, nobody actually gets canceled. But if I remember correctly, I think he had allegations come out that were even like more, they were stronger abuse allegations than I think Jonah Hill faced as well. Yeah, actually, I'm just Googling this, just so we don't slander anyone. There was a settlement over this not fun to talk about sexual battery lawsuits between Shia LeBuff and FCA Twigs, which is the name of a musician he was dating. Hey, in happier news, remember when Twilight Princess was revealed,

Bob, do you remember this? Oh, I remember the images of all the guys being excited about it, and one of those guys ended up working with later in life. Oh, wow. So is this Jeremy you're talking about? No, it's Peer Schneider. Oh, okay. Because the picture was all IGM people. I think it's like Pierce Schneider,

Matt Casimacena, guy one, guy two. Right. That's right. It's the sad guys, happy guys, because, you know, three, they knew about the Pac-Man E-3 thing ahead of time and were sad. and then they knew about Twilight Princess ahead of time and were happy.

And, yeah, that's right. Twilight Princess, though, I mean, not to be a contrarian. I think most people are on the same page about this game. It's not great. I really like where Zelda is now, and this was Zelda kind of like in a ruts. I feel they were just, let's do Ocarina again. Let's make it a little prettier this time. Let's also throw in a lot of Lord of the Rings influences.

And to anyone out there who thinks I'm saying, blasphemous words, I dare you to play through those first five hours. again. It's rough. It's a long five hours. It's a rough start. But yeah, I really did get excited for it, too, that it's like, here is the serious Zelda that we all wanted. Like, you know, I played Wind Waker to completion. I was not a Wind Waker hater. But I was like, oh, cool. It looks like the Lord of the Rings. For me, I thought, like, oh, I like the Windmaker look. It was not a complete game, and I wish you would keep rolling head with the style for the consoles. And I ended up playing this for the GameCube. I never played the Wii version. Yes. I

I didn't get a Wii until a year later, so I played the GameCube one as well. Yeah. Where Link is correctly left-handed in the GameCube version. In the Wii version, they flip everything because most players are going to be right-handed and waggling that Wii moat with their right hand. Oh, it was also the year they revealed the Nintendo Revolution and that Reggie Fizome came out and said he kicks ass and takes names to get extra video game nerdy here. And now he is like an influencer.

I forget where he went, but he left Nintendo within the past like three or four years. Yeah, I think he's just. like a retired guy who like consults and wrote his autobiography and all that he seems to be like lightly retired i think yeah good for him and then friends ends now i'm someone who watched friends in the first few seasons i'm not a friends hater but quickly other interests captured my mind i was no longer watching sitcoms as much at least traditional sitcoms and i kind of lost track of friends and in the early 2000s i'd up dating a woman who was like weighing to friends and my thought was people are still watching Friends

and then I realize it is still the biggest show on TV even in the early odds but it's funny that I still see Friends nostalgia but there are no real iconic moments in the series like you would see in The Simpsons or even Seinfeld like my wife and I were at a Hallmark store within the past six months and there was like a little friend section and it feels like well character likenesses are out

because they don't want to pay the actors so they're trying to find things from Friends to put on merchandise So it's always just like quotes, like, we were on a break. Or it'll be like the giant turkey that Matthew Perry stuck on his head in that one episode. There are very few known friends things to draw from, I feel. Very few iconic moments. Well, you can have like a giant central perk mug. There's that.

That's it. Yeah. I watch friends pretty regularly in the first like six years. And then I also like fell off to a degree. I did pop in to watch the finale. And Ross and Rachel did get back together at the very, very, very. very end of the whole thing. Yeah, I think I tune out of Friends

in most regular sitcoms, but I was still watching Seinfeld up through 98. Well, that's how long they kept around Friends until it finally ended, that they pulled a must-see TV up to 2004, and they really hope they could continue it with Joey. Like, hey, Joey

will be like the next season of Friends, and no, it was not Joey was a failure. Joey was not the Frazier to Friends Cheers. Yeah, wouldn't it be funny if Joey actually, like, ran as long as friends, like into the year, like, 2017 or 18, we're watching the Joey finale. And I'm just happy for all the Friends fans out there, they got to do their reunion special. It wasn't another episode.

It was during COVID. They all got to sit down and talk about the show. And that's before the passing of Matthew Perry, the unfortunate passing of him. So it feels like there's not going to be anything else after this, but at least they got to do that. And the Friends fandom is wild. like I went on the Warner Brothers studio tour last year. Me and my husband and also Drew Mackey, we were like, you know, let's check it out.

Oh, and Drew's friend Tony. So we did it. And we were like, why is there so much friends on this? Friends was like not even fully filmed here. And when we had a moment as an aside with the tour guide, she's like, we get so many foreign tourists who want to see there. And they really love friends more than any movie. In Japan it's known as Tomodachi

It's like Europeans love it Asians love it It is sadly what probably a lot of people think America is Is friend Yes America One coffee shop, no black people Yeah why would you see black people in New York City Well Ayesha Tyler is in there somewhere

You gotta look for her They guiltily got her in like I feel like the last two seasons or something And Lauren Tom She makes an appearance It's like the one time I remember seeing Lauren Tom In something that wasn't animated that's right yeah she's the girlfriend who ruins everything with ross and rachel or something right i just remembered ross was dating her i have no other memories oh and also i wanted to mention that marge was the cover girl of maxim when this episode aired oh gross let's not do that she was in playboy later though right yeah i was looking this up so the maxim one it's a cover of marge is scrubbing the floors and you can see the outline of her like lower half of her body through her

rest to be good. Wow. Yes. Yeah, Marge is in Playboy in 2009. Yes. So they do this one in the Ladd's Magm, which I hope is gone now. But the actual picture that's in the book or in the magazine is kind of funny because Marge is like on the bed in a sexy pose. But then Homer is in the shower in the background and you see Homer's butt. So the only naked person is Homer. Interesting. Well, no, I never actually looked up these Playboy pictures of March Simpson. I did now and you can look them up for yourself it's been 16 years i'm sure everyone has seen these by now but i didn't know this definitively says what color the simpson's character's nipples are yes if you want to see through it's where they're like well we'll draw her nipples but through like a see-through negligee we won't

just fully give you the nipples i looked it up to because it made the maximum look tame five years later the playboy once yeah not to be approved but let's not do this well hey it was the last time playboy's dead now well actually it's not dead it's like a brand somebody else bought, but the magazine is long dead and so's Hugh Hefner. So Hooray. At least we're safe there. And on that positive note. So that's what happened

the week, this episode of the Simpsons aired. And this week's guest is no one. And folks, if you love to hear just me and Henry complaining about an episode will strap the fuck in because you're trapped here for the next two hours. We maybe don't hate this as much

as, well, catch him if he can. I really didn't like that one either. Yeah. Actually, This is more like a C plus B minus. I remember not liking this episode when it first aired, and now I'm pretty okay with it. I actually like the storytelling methods they're employing here. I don't like the last two minutes of the episode. In fact, I really detest them.

But we've done some much worse ones towards the end of season 15. You can really feel everyone getting very tired and saying, Pucci okay with everybody? Yeah, Pucci. That's good. It's impressive they pulled off Simple Simpson in like the best episode of the season this laid into it when they're also whiffing with most of their other scripts. That is the magic.

of Jonathan Vitti, fantastic writer. In this episode, lost an Emmy. Can you believe the Simpsons lost an Emmy in this category? Well, it wasn't happening a lot around this time. But, yes, they nominated this one or submitted it. It was nominated. It lost. Surprisingly, the winner was Samurai Jack for the episode The Birth of Evil. On the commentary, they assume at South Park.

And Al Jean points out, yes, he's being petty. Yes, they've won a lot of Emmys, but every Emmy he doesn't win bothers him. And I think, what was the episode that they wanted to submit but didn't? They said tis the 15th season, the Christmas episode, which also sucked. It's better than this, I think. But I don't think it would have win because this is the Academy giving Samurai Jack what it is earned for being a largely unwatched dislike show, just achieving a lot of artistic excellence. I looked at like the next year, I believe it wins, or at the very least is nominated, the Clone Wars Star Wars show that Gendi Tartikovsky did too. Like the Emmys were into Gendi at that time.

And the other nominees were Futurama, the episode The Sting. That is what I would have voted for. That I think is the clear winner here. South Park, it's Christmas in Canada, and Spongebox Wear Our Pants, the episode Ugh, which I believe is a caveman-style adventure, and you'll see a lot of memes coming out of that episode in particular. I would say all four of the cartoons in there are better than this episode of Simpsons, for sure.

I think they also nominated the wrong one. I would have nominated Simple Simpson. I think Daljean is man. I think he thought, oh, if we. go with like a heartfelt one with a sweet love story they'll go for that one the emmy voters will go for it there's some treakly emmy bait hidden in this episode well it's actually pretty much on the surface and it's interesting because the way this episode is titled they're clearly setting themselves up for something because this is a prequel to the way we was the season two episode and going into

this i forgot but they do not violate canon in that marge and homer they always met in that detention in his senior year, their senior year, whatever years they were in. But this is not violate that canon. I don't know if they go on to violate that in the future at all. Well, this is super crazy no-way school storytelling here of Venture Brothers style. Yes, I wrote down super crazy no-way camp. But, I mean, there have been 500 episodes after this.

It's possible they could have retcon. Well, actually, Homer and Marge met here as kids or, you know, and knowing each other's names, knowing who each other were. But as far as I know in the timeline of where we are now, it has been laid out that they met in high school in detention in 1974 and there was never a meeting before that although homer does meet patty and selma and has several interactions with them at this camp and does not remember them later in life well he also doesn't count that it's a second kiss either like this feels like al jean in a storytelling lore building sense that he found a way to tell a story of margin homer fell in love when they were little kids that has to like it does jump through the hoops needed to have it not be undoing the way we was, which was an episode he co-wrote, so I can see why he probably felt like, oh, I can't undo a story that of an episode I wrote, and probably one of his favorite episodes he wrote. And on the commentary, they do bring up the story that

they brought up before where they're planning the way we was. Brad Burr is on the staff. He writes them a very long memo saying, do not do this. You do not want to fix this show in time. You don't know how long it's going to go on. Nothing will make sense in the future if you say they graduated from high school in 1974 and he was proven correctly but hey they had a lot of fun with the characters telling these kinds of stories although even in season 15 there are jokes about the floating timeline which i appreciate yeah al jean he knows that the floating timeline is funny and that homer they just had a good joke in the last season of homer talking about watching a movie from the 80s and going like oh that was a great time when i saw that as an adult or was i a child

Yeah, this one has a similar, like, it was the 50s or maybe the 60s or possibly the early 70s. Well, what, this last season, the Body Heat Parity episode, like, that did make Homer a child in, like, 1987 or something. Yeah, and I guess, again, Homer is, if he's 39 now, he would have been born in what, like 19806? Yeah. Yeah. It also feels like a sequel as well to the blunder years. Like, oh, we really got something here with Homer. with kid, Lenny, and Carl, and Moe.

Yeah, thanks for saying that, because I wrote that down. I don't recall if they do anything else, but it feels like they're establishing a canon of this time period with these established designs. Yeah, it's like it could have been its own spinoff series in the Homer series that they had talked about. On and off, they spin off that's just the Homer over the years, but it's just so funny they remember this as like,

oh, we lost a South Park one because they were always, like, thinking they were chasing after South Park, when they can't even remember a non-adult cartoon that was their competitor in Samurai Jack. You know, that SpongeBob Ugg episode, I remember that it was in the late season three where it got so much bigger than Nickelodeon thought. So they just took half episodes and then filmed Tom Kenney stuff to stretch it out to a whole episode. Yeah, because they basically shut production down as the show was exploding as it was getting very popular. And they were like, oh, crap, we need to restart production.

And this will take like a year before we see any new stuff. So they had to, like, adulterate everything, just water it all down, add a lot of Tom Kenny to the mix. Oh, and on the commentary to market for time, he mentions that, oh, boy, we were so excited about our John Kaye's couch gag that's going to air this weekend. Yeah, yeah. This puts it in time because it's like September of 2011 that they're recording this. And one of the last few times you could be excited about John Kaye, although if you saw that couch gag, there was nothing to be excited about. We'll cover it at some point in the future, but it sucks. Truly hideous.

It shows what a packy is. Yeah, it's terrible. But I remember arguing with people in that air, like, oh, isn't it great? No, if you look at what he did in the past, even though he was awful in the past, still, he at least had artistic ability or the staff to whip to make his drawings come to life, which is more the case. At the time, it was a fun, like, marker of, oh, we know that they hated each other and now they've made up.

Isn't that interesting? But obviously, we all know that the public knows many more things now that didn't know that. You know what? I'll connect it. That fits with this episode of people learning things different about the past and changing things. There, see? It connects. It works. So the episode begins, though, with the kids acting like adults where Bart is an exploitative boss and forcing it on Millhouse and Ralph, and Ralph becomes an informant. I like that. He's pulling a real Tom Sawyer here. Yeah, especially like whoever finishes first gets lemonade for me. Yeah, there's a lot of what we have usually called Rugrats humor in this episode where it's like, Like, there are kids stand-ins for adult things.

Yeah, I was really hoping their opening gag is going to be this with Bart and Millhouse and Ralph. It's like, but we're going to be in Kid Town the entire episode, maybe have an adult storyline for the little joke at the start. And another throwback to the past is the appearance of Sherry and Terry. Yeah, isn't that so weird? Sherry and Terry just appear and have their first speaking lines probably in 30 episodes here. Yeah, a joke that's not about them being twins. And they have an unnamed cousin, which, again, that very much is fitting in the Alginn style of, why name women? Women don't need names.

Why even see this woman? We don't see her, right? Oh, no, we do see her. She's there with them. She comes out from behind them or something? Yeah, yeah. She only says one word, ew, later. Yeah.

But again, it's more, this can work sometimes. I've honestly seen it too much. But the little kid stand in for the adult thing is part saying, I wouldn't mind pushing that in the mud. I also just don't find, like, kid love that kid. cute or adorable like oh bart doesn't know if he wants to kiss a girl or toss her in the mud and all this stuff i'm like i don't find it cute and what did you rate moonrise kingdom henry it actually is my lowest ranked west anderson one you know what no french dispatch i dislike more than moonrise kingdom i think because at least moonrise kingdom is a complete story instead of just like a series of cutesy vignettes

yeah if they made this episode i don't know a decade later it could have been a moonrise kingdom parody Wow, actually, yeah, and I'm just feeling like Wes Anderson ripped off Moonrise Kingdom. I look forward to eventually I'm going to chart the connection of Wes Anderson to the Simpsons. And it's a fairly clear one to do. They do spin the bottle. A thing I never did as a kid. I didn't know the rules are. I would assume that the unspoken rule is that if it hits a same-sex person, you don't do it because that's gross, right?

Yeah, that's more of a truth or dare style gag. Yeah, we did truth or dare as kids, but we never spun a bottle. There was never any mention of cooties either. Cooties were not in in the late 80s, early 90s. I feel, I think, what, the circle, circle, dot, dot, coot shot thing, I think I've heard that once or twice as a kid. I feel like I'm hearing it for the first time now. Oh. We had the cootie catcher, which was the fortune-telling paper device you would open and fold in different ways.

As you would unfold it, you would learn more about your future. I didn't know why it was called a cootie catcher. Oh, yeah, I forgot those were called cootie catchers. I just thought of them as they like the predicting thing. Homer gets drunk. But how, as they pour the beer into his mouth? And that's why it bugs me later when he goes like, oh, wait a minute. I didn't get to turn you into urine.

I'm like, but you did. Beer running out. I guess he didn't put the pieces together. And there's a lost joke here where Millhouse has a full bottle of duff. And briefly, you think, oh, are they going to drink a beer together or whatever? But then it's immediately dismissed and it dumped out, which I think is funny gag. But we don't spend enough time with the idea that will they drink this beer? Are they trying to sneak a beer out of the house?

Yeah, Homer only is slightly mad about the beer, just in that he lost it. It's not even a tease of a very special episode. And this is where Millhouse gets lucky, but kisses the wrong face. Ew, I kissed that sad, weird kid. My beer! You never had a chance to become my urine. You little... My first kiss.

Stop it, Homer. There's only one way to settle this, in Simpson Family Court. What the hell's that? I got the idea from a now-discredited book on raising children. Now up, the case of Simpson v. Simpson. Mr. Simpson, do you think it's appropriate for a 10-year-old boy to steal a beer with intent to kill? Do you think it was appropriate to bet against your son's little league team?

Permission to treat this witness as hostile. So Homer's going to beat Bart with a bat. Yeah. I've seen a lot of these jokes in other things before because they're very easy jokes to make. We have one that another show basically did the exact same take on later in this episode. But the whole permission to treat the witness is hostile and then pulling out a weapon. I think I've seen that a dozen times before this. This episode is full of kind of like street joke style jokes that are.

are like you usually count on the Simpsons to know that you know they're going there and then top it in some way but like at least I don't know this doesn't have the feel of I'll makes you good like that kind of topper of violence and while they're respecting the canon of the way we was they're not respecting the canon of Bart's friend falls in love because Milhouse's first kiss was with Samantha Stanky in the tree house yes in that very place he's kissed her so many times but now Milhouse is currently in love with an adult man man yes yes that's also troublesome too like he's the kissing of homer and homer just like you i kiss that weird sad kid that's all he knows millhouse says homer hating millhouse is a good

continuation of the history there i did like the animation of like they're like okay bart is being strangled in the typical strangling pose but homer has to walk down the tree the oh yeah well walk down the treehouse ladder while still strangling him yes they execute it well but it's Mike B. Anderson, right? I believe so, yeah. He does a good work. I always like when Marge appears and isn't that upset

that Homer is strangling Bart. You know what? I do love Marge's delivery of like, I got the idea from a now discredited book on raising children, but she's still reading it. It's better than spanking. I think it's called 101 spank turnatives.

And Lisa is rightly the one in charge of the court, but this now turns into, in more ways than one, a sequel to the way we was because it is like Al Jean is remembering frame this as the family at the couch and telling a story on the couch together. Yeah, the benefit of the way we was is the fact that they end the story almost as soon as the

flashbacks are over. In this episode, again, the worst part is the last two minutes because the storytelling is over and you're sitting with the resolution and thinking, well, why is March still angry? This really should have wrapped up immediately after we stopped telling stories by the past, just like every other flashback episode does. Not get ahead, but I do feel like it's almost taken too seriously this season that Algin is like, everything must be settled in bed. We don't have, this final scene must be in bed. Like, that's what Simple Simpson just was too.

Oh, you're right, yes. Trademark of their seasons that we go back to bed to settle things or to figure out the story or to remind the audience of plot points. And not to dunk on the animation changing over time, but I pulled up some of the way we was just to like, fact check and things in this and you just compare the storytelling on the couch scenes to this one and you see they've gotten like too formal and stayed by comparison like there are really just many like here's the shot of the family like they're not cutting as much to funny more funny framing of different characters yeah we also don't have brad bird anymore and while i don't think he's the greatest traditional storyteller i think he's a great visual storyteller and he was adding

so much to those story birds in the story boards in the early years they should be called story birds when he fixes on their story birds but as you said bob they do not break canon that homer like marge says yeah his first kissed was in high school with me that was also i pulled up the way we was i was like okay wait where is their first kissed it actually is not on screen in the way we was homer ends it by saying you know i got a problem i'm going to hug you and kiss you and never let you go and he puts his hand on her hand and then it fades to current day So you don't actually see the first kiss on screen in that one. Okay.

This is the story of their first kiss in more ways than one that you actually do see it. This is where Homer begins the story. Homer, I'll bet when you were ten, you were stealing beers, kissing girls, and tipping dinosaurs. Your father's first kiss was in high school with me. Actually, March, there was someone before you. It was you. years ago when I was 10, back in the 60s or 50s or maybe it was the early 70s. Underprivileged. You pretended we were poor just to give me in the camp?

Yeah, pretended. Hey, you must be Homer. I'm Lenny and this is Carl. Wow, a Negro. We prefer to turn black. So cool. Hey, fellas. I'm Mo. I'm your junior kids. I'm a junior counselor? Mo's not really a counselor. His parents dropped him off here like two years ago

and then never came back for him. I sleep on their upside down canoes. Good old Mungo Jerry, bringing us one of the most obvious songs to use in a summer montage. I wonder if that's really why Al Jean wanted to do this. He's like, man, I have so many obvious song choices for montage. Yeah, what about happy together?

Sure, throw that in. It's cheap to license. And yeah, Homer says it was the 60s or the 50s Or maybe it was the early 70s Well, if you want to do the actual math here If Homer is 39 in 2004 He was born in 65 So this is likely early 70s

1975 at the latest, I'm guessing Which would make him a year out of high school In the original timeline So it's already sliding I think the music they pick Like Mungo Jerry's from 1970 I think Happy Together is from around the same Like late 60 early 70s time

and Marge's favorite musicians are all like mostly early 70s dudes. Yeah, and the way we was, I mean, this is, this sucks. I hate talking about this, but they're talking about graduating from high school 17 years ago. So if you want to do the math today, Homer and Marge graduating in 2008, of course, the show ages them up after season two, but that's the kind of timeline they were dealing with in the early 90s. Yeah, well, Marge turns 34 in the first season. Yeah. I mean, also thanks to the sliding timeline, this seems like the last time Homer could,

could innocently not know the term black, I think. Yes. It feels like they're trying to put it around the civil rights era, too. Not necessarily 675, but the song choices are like mid to late 60s, really. And also the gasp and the dog reacting, like, that's a real like, hoot. Like the dog actually, like, almost talks. Sanzlal Helper nearly talks there. I love that Julie Kavanaugh gas because only she can do it.

Only her vocal cords are fit for that kind of a noise. You know, I like her acting throughout this one, like her cute little Marge voice, I think is really good in this one. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's some cutesy stuff in here I like, and I think the performances are nice. Comparing it with the blunder years, I did note that Moe's design seems slightly changed,

not just that he has more zits, but I feel like in the blunder years, Mo was written to be the same age as Lenny Carl and Homer, and here he is clearly two years-ish older than them. Yeah, I think their clothing also changes a bit from that season 13 episode. That one, Homer has to be dressed exactly, like Jerry O'Connell's character, I think.

Oh, right, because it's a stand-by-mey parody. Yeah. But this is where a new background for Mo, he wasn't one of the original Little Rascals. Now he lived at the camp for most of his teen years. Only moderately older than Homer. Yeah, we get this little, you know, it feels like this montage also had, there's only one deleted scene on the DVD. It's a hidden one.

But it feels like they cut something here. There should be three things that happen in this montage. Yeah, when there's not a third joke in a montage, I'm like, hey, Goober, where's that third joke? Because we have Homer knocking Lenny and Carl into the water with the canoe by accident. And then I believe Lenny smashes him in the face with an oar. And it seemingly kills him because his body just floats away. And then they find a perfect picnic spot.

It ends up being on an active runway and they're running away from a plane as it's landing. I at least like that shot, I think it's a fun angle that they have to make it like the horizon hides that they're clearly walking on a runway until the plane shows up. bikes, it's executed well. This Mother's Day, it's the mother of all one-hour Simpson shockers that'll have everyone puckering up. Did Homer love another woman before Marge?

How could you, dad? Because he's the kind who kisses and leaves you. The Simpsons, all new, part of a full hour at 8.7 Central next Sunday on Fox. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, welcoming you to the break while wearing a mysterious eye patch. And a big thank you to our listeners this week for tuning in to our discussion of the way we weren't. It's another interesting one in the Simpsons timeline as we're wrapping up season 15 here. And, you know, we're only able to explore this era of the Simpsons.

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And after those two jokes in a three-joke act, we then end the music as they are being taken to the girls' camp from their very poor camp, which I did like the gag that Homer doesn't know they're poor, too. Yeah, and that this is the only way he would be able to go to camp because I've told the story before, but, you know, when you're a kid, at least in the late 80s, early 90s, you see all this camp media. Ernest goes to camp, camp candy, salute your shorts, and you're thinking, when will I go to camp? And then you ask your mom this, and she says, camp is expensive. You're not going to camp.

And little do I know I dodged a bullet. I was not upset. I was just like, huh, okay. Well, I guess I'll just play Nintendo again. You got to build up for your career of a video game and a TV watcher. Yeah, I was doing research ahead of time in my childhood. I did day camps, which were basically just, you know, my mom worked days. And until she trusted us to stay at home by ourselves, we just went to the YMCA or different day camp,

which I'm sure was not free for sure. But here we see that they aren't going to get to hang out with the girls. They instead have a job here. And I was kind of hoping you'd note, it's all nondescript girls when they drive by the girls, too. it. Like I was sure, okay, you're not going to see Marge, but none of the name girls are there. Yeah, who do we get here? Is it just, is it Helen Lovejoy and Cookie Kwan for the most part? And Patty and Salma? And Luanne Van Houghton is there, but she doesn't say anything. Right. Okay, that's probably why I forgot her.

Yeah. Which is weird because they're paying Maggie Roswell for this episode for Helen's lines. You would think Luan standing there is for a joke, which I do like on the commentary, like, they mock that, Oh, yeah, all the Simpsons writers went to school together, too. We all knew each other when we were kids, too. Yeah, super crazy no-way school was also called Harvard. Oh, yes. We hear that the reason they need to earn money for the camp, too, is because 12 kids died, which that's a lot of kids.

They've got to pay off all those lawsuits. And Moe was already slapping Homer even back then. This is where young Homer meets a mysterious little girl. Oh, no, my retainer. I got it. Oh, la, la, a girl with teeth, me like. Oh, thank you. You sound so sweet. That's because I've eaten 16 pieces of pie.

You know, doing dishes has been the best part of camp. Really? Why? Because I talk to you. I couldn't see her through the flaps, but she's my kind of girl. Tell us more about the flaps! To me, they were the rubbery gates of heaven, because behind them was the girl of my dreams. Oh, man, someday love will come sliding down my chute.

Well, I can ask if she has any friends, because she wants to meet me tonight. Way to go! Out of sight! Now, Homer, if you're gonna go, you better take some protection. Woo, a switchblade! I see the switchblade. I need a switch, but where's the blade? Ow!

Very happy that happened off screen. Yes. It's funny, too, that this is Lenny causing eye injury to Homer. Oh, okay. Maybe all the future eye injuries are just revenge. Homer didn't forget, or it's all like subconscious attacks on Lenny's eyes. This is all a way to set up some way to disguise Marge and Homer from each other, where Homer has the eye patch, and Marge has the ironed hair, the dyed hair,

because she burned her hair while ironing it. I definitely watched this when this was new, but I had forgotten the setup. When you first hear Marge's voice, if you know the episode, then you definitely know it's Marge. But even if on first watch, I do think most people go like,

well, that's Marge. Like, even if she's doing little Marge's voice slightly different than she normally does. I think you even see her when they're being road past the camp, right? No, no. It's only nondescript girls there. Oh, okay, interesting.

I freeze framed it. I was like, is Marge in there? And I was like, it's none of the name characters. But Marge, like, her, oh, no, my retainer, like she's breathier than she normally is. I think it's good. They didn't wait too long for Marge to go. That was me when you hear a Julie Kavanaugh voice little girl, you probably can guess it's her at that point. Yeah, nobody else sounds like Julie Kavanaugh. I also like that they cut to the bunks because we're going to see this scene again from Marge's account of things. So it's nice they just cut to the bunks and then Homer's going like, oh yeah, I've got a date she wants to meet up yeah i like the storytelling device here i think that's the best part of this episode where we see homer's side of events and then we see marge's side of events yeah it's a good plotting technique up until the very end of the episode the last two minutes when they have nowhere to go this is where when homer gets his eye patch from mo they say on the commentary they set up the eye patch because they were building to a bit of like sea captain and homer connecting and they seemingly

forgot j stewart burns or somebody else forgot sea captain doesn't have an eye patch if you ask the average person on the street, I wonder what they would say. But I think at some point in the series he reveals he has two glass eyes. So maybe they were thinking of that joke. Yeah, that's right. When he can't run the lighthouse, I think, right? Like, sorry, two glass eyes. So, yeah, from the old man and the sea student. And this is where we get the opening bit of Homer choosing between rowing or waiting. It felt new to me. I would bet there's other jokes out there like this, but it was funny. I think this is a very clever joke, a very clever pun. And on the commentary, Al Jean says, I never thought we do a joke about abortion, but here we are.

And it's probably the more tasteful jokes about abortion in The Simpsons, or just on television in general. It's my right to choose, says Bowmer. Oh, and then they even do very funny 2011 jokes about repealing the joke. It's not funny. Yes, so in season 8, Triocet, 4, or 7, there is abortions for all, abortions for none, abortions for some. So it's not an abortion joke. It's a joke about politics, but I guess there was previous abortion. statements happening here you know that's true and they actually they said abortion for that joke as

opposed to just referring to roe v wade they hit all the r jokes they can with sea captain i like the design of 20 years younger sea captain or 30 years younger sea captain i guess he's rather handsome yeah i guess this was 30 years ago again if we take it as accepted that homer is 39 and this is them when they're 10 yeah this is then him basically 30 years ago and And the mystery girl does not look like Marge when Homer arrives and he found her attractive, which I think Al Jean likes the cuteness of that like, well, Homer always loves Marge no matter how she looks. So even if he thinks he saw another girl, it actually was Marge and he loves her that much. They are destined to be together in this world. And Jay Stewart Burns, he said he came up with it just because like he had like summer camp love or whatever too.

Like that's what influenced it for him. But this is where Marge makes a shocking revelation. I couldn't believe my eye. She was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. Uh, until I met your mother, who made that girl look like a Godzilla made of garbage. Homer, that girl was me. How romantic.

You and dad were drawn to each other as kids, and you didn't even realize it. Yes. And then your father broke my heart. And if I'd known he was you, I never would have married you. Oh, this is so confusing. I'd like a brief recess. Granted.

Wee, recess! You know, Dan's voice acting really sells what's essentially a popsicle stick joke. This would be on a Bazooka Joe comic strip when Al Jean was a kid. Yeah, and it turns out another show did the exact same thing about a decade. later like 15 no sorry 18 years later they did that joke yeah so almost two decades later so yeah when i saw this joke i was like boy this feels like homer is being peter griffin like this is not that this is any more stupid than most homer stuff but this kind of like childlike nearly say mentally handicapped style of acting feels more like the peter griffin like we

we and jumping on the swings immediately so i was like okay the family guy do this joke I figured maybe it even happened in the first three seasons but actually it was in the 2022 episode lawyer guy here I have the clip here just so you know like it is the exact joke I don't need a lawyer I'm gonna beat Brick Baker all on my own but I don't got an opening statement

oh I move for a five minute recess I'm worried for Peter so yeah they did it again this is a very Rugrats joke I think I saw it on Rugrats a decade before I saw it on the Simpsons. Oh, absolutely. Like, Simpsons did not invent it. I could not believe, like, he even goes like, we on the swings.

It's framed the same. So I'm tempted to post this on social media just to be like, guys, are we still doing family guy ripped off Simpsons jokes now? Here's ones nobody cares about. We're uncovering new ones. And we come back from the commercial break. And Bart is a fickle child who can't decide if his dad is lame or cool. and this was where I don't know if you were driven

to overly research this spot but when they said number of kisses this made me look up stuff yeah I mean I know this is my job but I thought that's a lot of work for this thrown off line that clearly not a lot of work went into

I'm guessing it was more than three right yes this is just up to now in the show but of girls I am counting kisses on the cheek here by the way so so when Bart was kissed by a girl he was the not the actor in the kissing exchange oh okay well then jessica lovejoy i guess doesn't count because she kissed him on the cheek and then he goes oh i think i can do it now no no i'm saying that counts oh it does so i'm asking if you're counting those okay where bart is the receiver of a kiss so those

those are counted i'm counting those then yes personally i count those in my own life so then jessica lovejoy sherry and terry like in the second episode of the show or third episode of the show oh yeah Homer's Odyssey. That's when they don't have bodies. Their heads are floating on the field trip. That episode, it's unbelievable that air. Like, it's so many mistakes. I feel like we should cover that episode once a year with the new person every time.

Just to be like, wow, this actually aired. This is unbelievable. Then also Gina Vendetti this season, she kisses him. And then I believe also Laura Powers gives him the kiss on the cheek, too, after the Jimbo scare scene. That's five girls. my count. If I'm forgetting any, please let me know, listeners. But Homer, only one. So, wait, Homer. That's right. He kisses Mindy, right? He kisses Mindy and means it. He is kissing her

in the motel as well. Lurlin kisses him a lot in that episode. Remember when he says, like, have you kissed her? No. She kissed you a couple of times. Yes, yes. So Homer, have you done the Homer tally? I'm not asking that, I'm not saying this is your responsibility, but if you did the bar tally, you might have done the Homer tally. I am trying to think of any others I miss, but so you got Marge obviously then in the learning episode she kisses him but he then is like remembering all the other times he's been kissed

but the other girls one girl refuses to kiss him and has been the bottle another doesn't kiss him after a date and drives away another he pays at a kissing booth and she won't kiss him or give him his money back so Marge was the only woman he kissed in that flashback

of kisses then there's Mindy and the only other one I could say up to this point is quite possibly Amber his Vegas wife but that would have only happened off screen I don't believe they kissed Oh you know what no

When they're pronounced man and wife I do think they kiss actually I think that's actually what happens Boy okay I'm going to Frankie Act real quick here Okay yes When they are pronounced husband and wives They are kissed so Amber does kiss him on screen So clearly more than one

Now was Homer drunk for some of those Sure fine But a court would still count that also in his own story he's kissed by Patty so he is kissed by another girl so there you go guys my closest to counting i can of how many people up to this moment in the series bart and homer have kissed well i guess women they've kissed they did say girls obviously i'm not counting when ned and homer like made out to celebrate the isotopes winning sorry not the isotopes it was the adams the atoms the adams there you go so this is when marge lets him know that he's not going to be kissing anybody from now on because she's so mad at him to learn that he was this guy and this is where Marge sets up her side of things. Let me get this straight. When you were my age, you had the hots for a mom and didn't even know it? Oh, that's cool. Or is it lame? I guess I'll go with lame. You're lame. Why? Because I only kissed one girl in my whole life? That's still

one more than you. I've kissed three girls. I'm so lame. You're not going to be kissing anybody for a Well, that stinks, but I still get to kiss you, right? Mom, why are you so mad? I'll start from the beginning. The girls' camp was focused on teaching etiquette and deportment. Now that I've captured your interest, let me continue. Marge is not coming out of this episode smelling real great, I've got to say. And on the commentary, they're like, Marge is a real pill.

And that's my main issue with this episode. Marge should not be mad about something Homer did at age nine, and is just clearly remembering for the first time now when the subject is brought up. And also, when she finds out he kissed her and fell in love with her, that should be the end of the matter. Like, isn't this sweet?

Like, no, I'm still mad for two more minutes. Yes. I also don't like that they say on the commentary that like, man, Marge's being bad here. I was like, you wrote this. Like, you didn't have to make Marge bad. Marge is not an independently acting figure. She needs instructions.

I mean, this is more of like the people in bad marriages, it feels like, Or a couple's counseling was needed for writers on this. Yeah, we're getting more of the anti-wife, anti-marriage comedy here where it's like, It doesn't matter what you do. Your wife's always mad at you. Even when you apologize, it's never enough. Exactly, yeah, it's like, but I apologize.

Forgive me. Like, yes, it sounded like they did take this stuff from Carolyn Amine. They say that Carolyn Amine went to the Sears Charm School for Girls growing up. Yeah, somebody else on the staff did as well. And that's back when you go to Sears, get your oil change, get your teeth. clean, get a haircut, and also learn how to walk with books on your head. And keep your legs as closed as possible as Marge displays, too. That's a really great bit of animation with Marge, like, walking with her knees locked together.

Oh, man, it's really, like, seeing it in her child self and her adult self, like it's so, I'm glad that Mike B. Anderson on the commentary credits, the animator for it. Like he said, it was Ralph Sosa, who he's been on Layout since Mountain of Madness, and he'll go on to be a co-director with, Anderson and then a full-on director in season 20 and mostly he's been boarding the last decade on the show though not much directing since then well it's a nice little bit of animation i really appreciated it also i like that marge had the horrible injury of both her tendon snapping while walking that way so loud shelbyville heard it and when marge recalls that homer and bar just look at each other and nod like yes we were there we all remember it was terrible and this is tress mcneal

doing her katherine heppard voice again that which It is the woman who teaches Lisa to ride to her pony, right? Yeah, the unnamed woman from the Grateful Gelding. I don't think the design is the same, but it's basically 80% of the way there. They mock on the commentary, too, that they're like, boy, we always ask Truss to do the Hepburn voice. She was doing it. My favorite joke in, maybe my favorite joke can catch him if you can, is what Abe goes like, I'll be happy when you Hepburn types are all dead.

Oh, right. Yes, she just did that recently. And in case you don't get what she's going for, she even says, really later on in the episode. Maybe it's coming up very soon. I just watched the Philadelphia story for the first time. And her accent is crazier than the jokes about it. That transatlantic accent, I wish it would come back, although you would be stoned to death in the street if you talk like that within normal communities.

But just watch Sunset Boulevard again in theaters. And the Norman Desmond character, I forget the actor's name, but she's got that voice, too. So many actors had that speaking style back then. I'm thinking of this because I just watched it last night, the Fantastic Four movie. and Pedro Pascal, I believe in interviews, said he was trying to do an accent like that to fit his character in the time frame of the movie. And the director kept telling him to tone it down and not go too hard on it.

Again, that's one of the problems in the movie that they're like, oh, let's make it set in time. But don't do that accent too much. Listen here, Ben. But also in that movie, they can't decide how autistic coded they want Reed Richards to be or not. They're not sure. I didn't know that was a thing for him. Okay. Originally, he's just Fred McMurray.

Like, when they first made him, he is the absent-minded professor. He's got the pipe and everything, and the gray in his hair, Grand Temples. It's exactly what they were going for. But this is where we see that Marge has actually known Cookie Kwan her entire life and not just started working with her at the realty business. Yeah, she's not. They go back a long way.

You think Marge would be like, oh, hey, Cookie, you remember camp? Yeah. Don't you remember when you were the only Asian girl in the whole camp? Like, that's why Marge would definitely remember Cookie, I think. Yeah, I mean, they were doing these kind of cheats way back in the early golden years because when we have things like Homer's Barbershop Quartet, we've said this before, but you have to forget that Homer, Skinner, and Apu and Barney were all in a Beatles-style phenomenon together. Yes.

They all toured America and sold a bunch of albums. They know each other very well that all the previous times Homer seemed kind of awkward around Skinner and barely knew him. he actually had been on a year-long tour with him and this bit with Cookie her jokes about not fitting in or feeling like the outsider I feel like they at least

come from like a good angle they're not making fun of her I don't know yeah she's reading a book called How to Lose Your Accent in 30 years Yes Do you think these jokes are coming a little from Dana Gould having recently adopted his daughters from China

Oh yeah maybe I mean we're going to get in a whole episode about that I think fairly soon within the next few years of Our timeline here? Yeah, yeah, which I love that story he told us when we got to interview him that one time. His daughter did not care that she was on the show. No, because Simpsons not available on TV until a few years later. I say not available streaming until a few years later unless you had the cable and the FXX app and all that crap.

That daughter has to be like 24 now, right? Yeah, I mean, we interviewed him. Was it eight years ago? Probably close to eight years ago. Well, this is where Marge then flashes to her side of the dinner where she is learning which fork to use and I gotta think this is why Helen Lovejoy is so messed up these stabs to the hand she's gotten yeah I love the jokes about this ancient etiquette that nobody really understands or follows anymore like which side does this cutlery go on and which fork do you start with and

you know all of these things that are now they used to be markers of class now only a total freaks believe in them that was one of my favorite funny bits in the philadelphia story having seen it of just like that jimmy stewart's character doesn't fit in there at all and he's constantly being like that's not where you go or don't pick like just the so many funny shots of like a butler glaring at him of like put that back I mean it makes me feel uncomfortable when I'm in situations like that and now now I've got to the point where occasionally we'll get a bottle of wine with our dinner at a restaurant and I always remember like oh right the waiter has to pour it for you for you they just they constantly are walking by pouring you more wine it's not like up time for more wine for me it's like no no no the trained man has to do this don't touch the thing you ordered I didn't even think of that I'd be stabbed in a half hand for touching my wine. In fact, we were meeting a new person in Montreal, a friend of my wife's, and we bring a bottle of wine to dinner because you're allowed to bring it into the restaurant. It's one of those. And she opens it up and we pour our wine ourselves. And I put

the cap back on. She's like, what are you doing? That has to air raid. I'm like, all right, sure. I don't know the rules. My mind is on the wine could spill. We have to protect the wine, but her mind was clearly on the wine has to air it. And guess what? She grew up in Montreal. She knows wine. I trust her. Absolutely. I would trust any French Canadian with wine knowledge over mine for sure. I should have said, I don't want the wine to airate. How about that? I've actually heard it's bad. Wine debates happening. No, I fully put my trust in her, and the wine was delicious. Did it pair well with your meal? It did, yes.

Oh, that's it. I know that's a thing that you're supposed to say about wine, but... Honestly, I don't care about that because I only like dry red wine, so I drink that with all my wine-based meals. If I'm having wine with dinner, I don't get white wine, period, because I don't really like it. I'm a basic bitch for rosé. That's me. Expand the palettes. Well, this is where Marge is talking about her palette. In that, I mean, her retainer, as we see her side of meeting Homer. Knife and fork together?

Denied yourself dessert? Nice work, Marge. Really? Oh, no. My retainer. I get it. Oh. I thank you, but I don't even know your name.

I bet it's something low rent, like Billy Bob. Or Homer. Big ugly Homer. Oh, I'm sure it's a much nicer name than Homer. Think, Homer, think. What did you say? I'm Elvis. Elvis Jagger.

Elvis Jagger Abdul-Jabar. I appreciate these jokes now as an adult retainer wearer. Oh, wow. See, I've never worn a retainer, though. I have my own team. I mean, I got one, I mean, the listeners are dying to hear about my retainer, but I got one after my braces came off and then that broke and I never got to replace. And then later in life, I found out stress was causing me to grind my teeth into nubs at night. So I got a night guard slash retainer

made for me via like invisible line. So my wife and I putting our retainers in before bed like any sexy romantic couple does at night. I wonder if that would work for me with also having CPAP machines strapped over my face. I really need to bill all the previous jobs I had for all the times my teeth just cracked into pieces from stress. Well, this bit here, they also do admit on the commentary, Al Jingo's like, in the way we was, we say that Marge never wore her hair up before. But I think it totally counts. We've seen many flashbacks of like eight, nine, five-year-old Marge with her up hair.

Yeah, they wanted to make it another, that's the origin of that kind of thing back in season two, but they realized that if to recognize Marge, you need the beehive. and she's adorable in flashbacks with her hair up and that even goes back to like moaning Lisa I think that's the first Marge flashback and she still has her hair up as a little girl too obviously I'm not counting in the shorts where like they imagine Marge and Homer as little kid

I'm not counting that doesn't count not canon and this also feels like a cut joke that I couldn't find but that when the kids are laughing I feel like they're supposed to be laughing at you actually believed that but there's no comment on that. Then Marge just moves on. Yeah, and it's nice that they're pulling from all the pop culture figures of the early 70s with Homer's name.

So Elvis potentially still alive when this is happening. And then Mick Jagger and Karema Abdul-Jabbar are very popular figures of the early 70s. And then we get to hear about another popular figure of the late 60s, early 70s, Leslie Uggums. Occam's. Now, today, Bart would be. saying who about Leslie Uggams because he'd know her as blind Al from the Deadpool trilogy. I wrote that down too and I was like, what? Really? That's who that is? I've only seen the first Deadpool. Not going back for more. But God bless her, making that Marvel money in her late,

in her early 80s, I'm guessing now. Yeah, she's had a real career resurgence, thanks in part to Deadpool. I also think because people rightly recognize that she was like a dynamo performer, like she was a child star in the 50s. She has been famous her entire life almost. but that people also, like, she didn't get enough credit for her skills back then, probably because she was one of the few black female entertainers back then who got to be on TV. I think she's among the, like, half dozen living people who hosted the Muppet Show. Like, there's only so many Muppet Show hosts left. Yeah, that whole episode, this is a real graveyard.

And I'm just so surprised she didn't take on a stage name because I guess she figured Uggams was very iconic. Nobody else is named Uggams. Her in the Deadpool movies, it's really just an excuse for Ryan Reynolds to look at the camera while making jokes about blind people and then make a bunch of jokes about doing drugs together that him and Blind Al do. Though Blind Al is an original character from the comics as well. So they didn't like make it up for Leslie Oggins. She's also in the new Fallout show as one of like the vault elders, I believe she is. Hmm. Okay. Yeah, I think I recall her.

And she was also in Family Guy. Speaking of Family Guy. There was an early joke about her and Family Guy. It's the first time I think I ever heard the term Leslie Uggams. This is not important, but Peter is telling a story about his past. And he broke up with Leslie Uggams because he thought she was Lola Falana. That's a real family guy, early seasons joke. And then she comes back to sing a song with Peter in a much later episode.

When was this? I'm looking it up right now. And it aired in 2021. Wow, man. I mean, that's how active she is now. She just is doing a ton of stuff these days. But I would think, too, that Seth MacFarlane, though, however, involved he is in the family guy anyway.

But he would love to sing with a Broadway legend like Leslie Uggams. Oh, absolutely. I have to feel like her being on family guys because of him or because of someone who knew Seth would enjoy this. You know, when I was in Vegas, there were signs up for Seth McFarland and his big band. I didn't go, but I almost ironically bought $110 tickets to see it. That is too much of an irony budget. I'm sorry.

Unfortunately, every ticket is that expensive to pretty much anything there. Your irony budget should not be more than your grocery budget. every week. Al Jean, of course, as the specific type of comedy nerd, he is, he knows Leslie Elgams as the woman who replaced the Smothers Brothers show and it got canceled for being too woke. So he's still holding a grudge. It's not her fault. She took the Smothers Brothers time slot after they were too negative on Vietnam. I know listeners, it's hard to imagine a time where a comedian would be against a war and face consequences for it. Not have the supporters of the war on the show to explain. Why is this war good?

Don't they actually deserve it? So yes, then we get a rather broad joke about Cookie's accent. But again, I feel that this is about the joke is that she is the person who's different there and is making fun of Marge for not wanting to be different. Yeah, it's a joke about assimilation. And then when, I'm sure there might be a clip here, but Marge burns her hair. She's like, oh, a day is a straight-haired brunette. I feel so bad for you.

Yeah, it's an all right joke with Cookie. Though, again, it's like, they were really into Cookie at this time. I honestly was shocked like, wow, cookie. Cookie made it to like, she has more lines than Luann Van Houten says nothing in this. They used to love Luane Van Houndt. We need to wait for the real gyms to do his cookie Kwan history. I don't think he's done that yet. As I've learned from his recent video of counting ha ha's, you need to, in the comments, just say,

hey, I bet you couldn't give me a history of Cookie Kwan, then he'll do it. This episode goes live in six weeks, but I have to credit the Real Jims for having some great YouTube videos lately on his channel. He has counted all of the ha haas, and he did this amazing dissection of like every couch gag. And counting them, counting the different types, showing when they're phased out, showing the ones the crew is fixated on. Very great stuff. His dedication is incredible. And I also love how the way he can comedically explain the amount of research he does, too. He's been killing lately.

I know he'd kill it with a cookie Kwan history as well. It's coming. I think Jim's is a listener. So Jim's get on it. You'd make us happy at the very least. This is where Marge is waiting for the person to arrive. And I get she doesn't want a freak to show up, but I also think Marge as a 10-year-old should just be upset that, like, an adult man has shown up. I'm scared.

It's singing the song Tom Dooley. I think that's a good joke about how the hit song, it's an old folk song by the Kingston Trio made it popular in the 60s, this old folk song, Tom Dooley. But when you actually listen to the lyrics, it's a guy talking about how he's about to die, and he describes how he murdered a woman named Laura Foster. I guess I only know the refrain of Tom Dooley and looking these lyrics up, I was like, oh, this is Tom Dooley. Okay. And apparently this mother's brothers actually did a popular sketch on that show that Leslie Ugums replaced about they were trying to sue the Kingston trio because they said, no, we wrote the song Tom Dooley, even though it's a folk song from a hundred years earlier. And when Marge sees the eyepatch boy, she does think it's cute, just as she predicted. Or just as Mo predicted, she would find it cute.

Which I guess that distracts her enough to not recognize that Homer. I don't know. If you met somebody when they were 10 and then met them when they were 17, would you still recognize them? I think so. There's no way for me to know. But boy, maybe if I was still able to access photos of them as a child, sure. In this case, Homer can't. I feel like me and pictures and my brother, we look the same as 10 to 17. But yeah, I wonder, I guess I feel like I can vaguely remember like, oh, I knew this person in like the sixth grade. And then I met them when they were a scene. you're in high school. I was like, whoa, it's you? Eric. Yeah, yeah. I had a similar thing going on where I went to public school for, you know, grades one to four, one to three, and then I went to Catholic school after that. And then like later, a few of those public school folks like me would trickle into the private school system. I'd be like, oh, it's the guy from third grade. Oh,

what's his face? They also go back to a joke Al Jean really loves, which is they then have the sea captain is sitting in. Anybody can sit just like in Lisa Sacks, just guests show up in their living room for no reason. For no reason, here's a poo. I like that Homer and McAllister have remained friends after this, though. They also suit each other. Yeah, yeah, I guess they got over that. But Homer says, there goes a good friend when it's revealed that McAllister is sitting in on the retelling of this Simpsons lore. This is where Marge warns us that things are going to get a little WB, which Al Jean, it's funny on the commentary. They have to, like, do our job of explaining a defunct thing. It's funny because I feel like even then Fox was still

known as the racier network. I feel like W.B. was more known for we're going to have sitcoms with black characters primarily. Though it was like the home of like Buffy and Dawson's Creek and Smallville. It was, you did see a lot of teens kiss on the WB. Though not that Fox also didn't have teen kissing shows. Yeah, we're living in the O.C. at this time. Oh, God, right. We're all listening to like off the shelf twee indie bands as we watch teens kiss each other

with the occasional same-sex smooch to boost the ratings so he says the WB doesn't exist anymore because it went off in 2006 it combined with UPN is the CW still around unbelievably it is yes they're actually I was shocked

to learn about it too now obviously the most reasons I know what's happening on broadcast television is related to pro wrestling and this is true I thought so yes yeah I'm looking at boy I'm looking at the schedule

It seems like they run about two hours of programming every day, so good on them, I guess. But we have a Penn & Teller show. We have Whose Line Is It Anyway, WWE, and Family Law. I don't know if there are actually any original programming shows left on here. Yeah, none of that seemed to be scripted to me, unless that Family Law show is, like, secretly scripted show. I think the CW, a big thing was in the last year, too, they announced like, oh, yeah, we're cutting back on scripted. same with like there's no more TNT or TBS originals. It's why American Dad

is now on Fox again. Like it's CW is part owned by Warner or maybe they fully own it now, but they're all getting rid of scripted. Yeah, how strange. I guess if you still have a local station that it's not an affiliate of ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox, you might want to buy the

CW's programming package. Maybe that's how it works. I don't know. Well, in the CW having NXT, like that is the fourth tier WWE. Like that's not real. I mean, I mean, people love NXT, it's fine. I'm not saying people don't work hard there, but it's the C tier of pro wrestling for WWE.

But also, I couldn't believe CW even was still a TV network, or than any TV network really exists. Yeah, yeah. I would bet the entire cost of the CW's programming equals the price of the Colbert TV show. Probably, yeah. This is where the first kiss finally occurs. Oh, man, I want to kiss her.

Wait, I just thought of the greatest move ever. Oh, no, he yawned. I'm boring him. Do you like music? I do. I like Bobby Goldsboro Sullivan, Terry Jacks, Parliament, but not funkadelic. How am I supposed to kiss those things? Interrupt her with something witty. Uh, um... Yes? Kids are all ready. What are you, chicken?

Is he making chicken noises? Hmm? Imagine me. I think Homer took that yawn and reach from the Brady Bunch. Oh, that would fit with the time frame of this episode, too. I think that's what popularized it, of course. It was a move for a very long time, but I believe Marcia's boyfriend tried that on her in the Brady Bunch. Oh, okay. I wonder with that.

That one, I don't think I have done. Now, what I have done is fear that any silence on a date means something horrible is happening, and I instantly try to fill it with words. So that's what March did. That was her fallback. Though also, I have been on the other side of like, uh, duh. By the time I was dating, it was well known that the yawn and reach was pathetic. Oh, yes, the yon and reach.

Well, also, like, I've, uh, yeah, I guess it's, uh, mine or not in. the heteronormative dynamic that this one is built upon, too. Yes, yes. I don't think gays are doing the on-and-reach, and if so, they should be cast out of the community. Converted into straits. It might even be adorable of just like, what? We found each other on an M-for-M app here.

Why are you doing this? And it's great. It's a nice running joke throughout the show all 15 years that all of Marge's taste and music is awful. So all of these band she names, with the exception of maybe Parliament, are all like easy listening, schmaltzy 70s Garbo. which, you know, can be charming, but it's still very marge.

Yeah, the fact that she likes Parliament but not Funkadelic, that also shows like, oh, she's not hip enough to like the funkier Funkadelic part. Bobby Goldsboro, when I looked up his songs, Honey and Summer, like, I was like falling asleep listening to them, and I normally like 70s treacle. And, boy, they spent a lot of time on this musical montage sequence here, this dream sequence, which it's a kind of sequence that's done in the past, the psychedelic fantasy sequence. And it goes on for a minute.

And I think they say on the commentary, this is why they submitted this for the Emmy. And I think this is defined visually, but they might be a little too proud of it because it's not amazing and it's not funny. And I'm just kind of sitting there waiting for it to be over. And it's one of the most heard songs from this era is playing in the background as well.

It overestimates the quality of this one. No offense to the animators. But like in Simple Simpson, it has the Spider-Man making your costume parody sequence that is more well animated and has like a moving camera, bigger camera moves, bigger layout choices. Yeah, a lot of work went into this, but it's just like psychedelic visuals and I mean, there are some jokes like Homer, so we see Marge's fantasy, which is all just like flying through the psychedelic sky, she jumps on a Pegasus, which is emits a rainbow behind it.

She goes through outer space. she becomes the moon that kisses the Homer's son. And then Homer's fantasy is all food base, which I guess is funny enough conceptually, but it's not really. But the biggest centerpiece of his fantasy is the snack item, screaming yellow zonkers,

which was a popcorn snack. And that's why that episode from, I don't know, season 10 is called Marge Simpson in Screaming Yellow Honkers, the road rage episode. And I guess it's all like out-of-date snacks, like screaming yellow zonkers. Those got discontinued in 2007, but we're still not that popular in 2004 when this came out.

No, I was looking into that. I don't think I've ever eaten them, but because I just thought, like, well, what are they? Just popcorn in a box. And I guess it came back as a Walgreens exclusive in 2012, but I have not been to a Walgreens in a long time. So I don't know if they were still on the shelves of my Berkeley Walgreens. I think it was all like that, well, in most cases, American snacks are just different ways you package sweetened corn. Yeah.

Or salty corn. Yeah, and in this case, give it a wacky name. And then, yeah, Homer is eating the screaming Elizonkers as they're screaming. And then we see the Quisp Alien who offers Homer a bowl of cereal. He eats the cereal and he eats the alien as well, which is not very inspired. I'm not laughing at this.

It's just, yes, it's all food-based, but it's not really inventive enough. The Quisp alien, like he was invented around the same time as Captain Crunch, also by Jay Ward. But he's the only thing people remember. I never had Quisp. It has been resold sporadically. From what I read, it's just Cap and Crunch,

but in saucer shape. Okay, yeah, I never had it either. I'm just familiar with the mascot via baby boomer nostalgia. Or they're kind of like shaped cup flakes. And I guess the marketing wizards back in the 60s were like, that looks like a UFO, put an alien dude on it. It's a flying saucer in your bowl. Though Kool-Aid man, he was still pretty hip in our childhoods and the 70s.

Yeah, but speaking of Kool-Aid man, I feel like a family guy did the definitive Kool-Aid man animated sitcom gag with its first episode. Not that you can't do one after this, but that was a lot funnier than what's happening here where it's like, well, what if you drank Kool-Aid man's juice, he would die? As a youth, my friends, a weird game we would play is they would

try to ask me like, well, what happens if you drank Kool-Aid man? And I would invent lore for Kool-Aid man to explain why he would be drunk. So this fantasy touched me more than it should have. He's full of blood, and if he spills the blood, he dies. They would ask like, okay, what

if you swam around in him. Would that kill him? And I was like, no, he'd still have his drink inside of him. And were they laughing at you or were they interested? These are things that I've taken tests on to see if I could tell the difference of this. And it's, uh, Henry, I'm not laughing. I was told they were laughing with me and I want to believe that. Well, by the end of this montage, I felt like Krusty saying, oh, that just kept going, didn't it? Yes. Yeah. Well, also, you know what I don't like about it either is that they may get too gendered like oh girls think of first kisses like this but boys think this he's more of a homer sexual here because it's not even about like being into girls or the masculine element of a romance it's

all about i'm still thinking about food no matter what i didn't have these visions of my first kiss i was mostly just incredibly nervous that was my yeah i don't know what i was thinking except for maybe it's it's happening yeah my first kiss was mainly like feeling of like nails on a chalkboard of just like, oh, does it happen? Like, what's going on? I should have been imagining eating candy. I'd probably relax more.

And yeah, that Bart and Lisa only get it because they get very gendered explanations, which I don't know, Lisa, I think Lisa can understand why a first kiss feels good more than comparing it to Hallmark cards.

Yeah, with the right size envelopes and we get some zombie humor from Homer saying it was like a cluster bomb wiping out a graveyard full of zombies. And so Bart's size, he knows what it's like now. I just shopped for a Father's Day card for a stepfather.

Oh, you have to wait till stepfather. Father's Day, Henry, I'm sorry. You know what, it must exist, right? Bonus Dad Day. But when I got it, the cards, I wasn't getting them at a CVS pharmacy or anything. I got it at the local Asian grocery store because they had really cool, like, origami type. They were like extra embossed and had extra designs on it. But those envelopes were packaged in the same sealed thing, so they couldn't get mismatched.

Hmm. I'm surprised there wasn't like a Yellowstone-themed Father's Day card. Like, you're the head honcho of my ram. Dad. You know, I worried we were getting too many. I was like, all right, we can't give him a Yellowstone thing for every birthday and Father's Day. Ask him what other IP he's into. He's got to be into something else, right? He likes 1923 and 1886. All of the spinoffs of Yellowstone. It's the whole universe. So I'm sure there's merch related to it. I don't know if he watched Landman, the most reason to Sheridan show. Bob, I was disappointed to see the landman was not about a superhero. Yeah, the power to control land.

In other words, like a rich white person, right? Played by Billy Bob Thornton. He owns a lot of land and his dumb daughter doesn't understand why. And I like him. I don't want to see him in something like this. This is what I liked about briefly watching it with stepfathers of watching these. I only have one stepfather. Why I'm saying multiple?

Is that why they're called geyser pleasers? Well, what I like about watching them is they are full of good actors who don't get to do good acting anymore. So they at least like it, meaty speeches. Now, are the meaty speeches usually about, you dumb millennials don't respect your elders? Yes, mostly. Well, they've got to start yelling at Zoomers now because all the millennials are old and have back pain. The most compelling character I saw on, the ones I identify with when I watched Yellowstone were like the 40-something children who are like, what are you going to die, Kevin Costner? I want to inherit your house.

Hey, I'm with them. But then after that dream sequence, the post kiss. Congrats. Turn sour. Way to go, Dad. The perfect kiss. It was pretty delicious. It was as satisfying as a million hallmark cards with all the right-sized envelopes.

Oh. It felt like a cluster bomb wiping out a graveyard full of zombies. Oh. But then your father showed his true colors. Whoa. Mm-hmm. Will I see you again tomorrow?

Absolutely. Or my name isn't whatever I told you it was. So we arrange to meet again at Second Date Rock. I like the bit of her Second Date Rock, funny name, but that she puts too many hearts on the tree that it then breaks. Yeah, it's a fun way to signify the passing of time where she carves their name within a heart on the tree, but then she spends the rest of the night doing that over and over and over again. you know, Marge says this is why

she would have never gone on another date with him if I knew it was you and her heart is broken and this is where we see that Mill House is also heartbroken that Homer kisses and leaves him too. Yeah, Milhouse really falling for Homer in this episode.

Now, this is where I stopped having fun because I like the story so far. I'm willing to buy this story about Homer and Marge meeting and not realizing it. But Homer can wrap up the rest of the story in one sentence. Why didn't I meet you?

Well, I got trapped at the fat kids camp and they wouldn't let me out. March would be like, oh, okay. should have explained this earlier, Homer, all is forgiven. Or Marge could have said, well, regardless of what you did, you were nine. And I can't hold you accountable for that as a 40-year-old man. So who cares? Yes.

On two different sides, it's like, well, okay. I feel like by having Marge not care about that as an explanation, makes her a ridiculous woman and saying how women are too emotional and can't let go of a grudge. Yeah, it does feel very pointed in that way. The Millhouse Act break gag doesn't make me laugh. too much, but him still being there in the start of the next act, eating ice cream, that made me laugh. Yeah, that soothed his broken heart.

This is where Bart also explains to Lisa why this happened. I can't believe you stood mom up. Face at least, men are dogs. The worst we treat you, the more you want us. That's not what dogs do. You said dog do.

She sure did. Now, if Lisa's finished with her shenanigan, I'll tell you why I didn't show up. We had just finished our first smooch, and I felt a feeling I had never felt before. I found this stone earlier, and I was going to use it as a nerd smasher, but I want you to have it.

Oh, it looks like a heart. Hey, you're right. Give it back! Oh, no. I still want you to have it, but every time you smash a nerd with it, think of me. I will.

See it tomorrow night, okay? What a kiss. If I died now, I die happy. Oh, shit. It's nice that they don't call attention to it, but I wish they would have been something more with Homer literally falling down the gorge the same way he did in his adult life. It's not quite a gorge, but the way he falls is clearly mimicking the Bart the Daredevil fall.

Yeah, I kind of wish somebody on the commentary would have said, oh, this is a callback to the Bartha Daredevil Fall. Like, it is framed, it's the same side view, it's the same sounds. It obviously is. We don't need the commentary to confirm it. I'd have liked to appear some of their reasoning for it. Yeah, and with the original staff, it felt like it was their favorite thing they ever did because they would reference it a lot, come up in multiple episodes.

I believe behind the laughter was the last real time it was featured. They brought up on that one of like, boy, we do show that a lot, don't we? It was a major moment for the show That it's such a memorable piece of animation But also I think it was them saying Like this is how much we can hurt him in the show You're gonna see a lot of blood on this show I do like Lisa

Deconstructing the poor logic of like Men are dogs, we treat you terrible It's like that's not what dogs do Like yeah dogs are nice That's why people love them I feel like all of these unkind comparisons To dogs were invented when we had a lesser opinion of dogs So now when they come up

Like oh yeah she was a real dog Like dogs are cute and lovable What do you mean? You wanted to spend your whole life with her? On the other side of saying Marge is like a woman who never can let go of something is too emotional. This is like, well, men are dogs, we are bad and we don't care. I also like Homer. Now, Lisa is finished with her shenanigans.

That's good. Yeah, throwing Lisa under the bus for Bart tricking her into saying dog do. Another thing I can critique this episode's writing for, I think that Rock should have come up in the first act. By bringing up in Act 3, it makes the ending feel even more tacked on. Yeah, yeah. In the past, the characters established the Rock, but in the future, in the present, they have the rock. Marge has it in her dresser drawer up until this point. For the last 15 years, that rock has been sitting in her dresser drawer.

Let's say on his way to the date, he's like, and you know what? I have this special rock I want to share with her or whatever. Show the rock earlier. If you show the rock only at the start of Act 3 and it's your resolution of the episode, then it's not established enough. Like, then it feels like a cheat. So Homer falls into the water, almost drowns, wakes up on the shore,

and this is where he is impressed into a fat kid's camp. It's like with Bart, too, where Bart is sometimes written as he is a normal boy, but then other times if you want to call him fat, it is believable. Same with Kid Homer. And listen carefully because this counselor, who I believe is named Bill,

he transforms from Harry Shearer to Hank Azaria. You're right. Wow, you're right. He's shearer here, isn't this? But then it shifts. Yeah, I think for at least one scene he is hanged. Sleep at the Switch is what I say. And we see kid versions of multiple fat characters.

Though the curly-haired fat kid has no lines, I want to think it's Luigi. What do you think? I don't know. Luigi, I guess he has the same body type as all of the male characters, but I only picked out comic book guy, Wiggum, and Quimby. Yeah. And surprised we didn't see a Barney in here.

Right. Actually, in general, where is Homer's only actual friend? from Super Crazy No Way School High School, Barney in the way we was. Barney just phased out in favor of Lenny and Carl, I feel, in these seasons. It's just like how in the episode they killed off the Barfly.

Barney is not in it, essentially. They just write Barney out of stuff. There's that curly-haired one, and then there's a different, like, brown-haired guy who's not comic book guy. I feel like there's two other fat... Why isn't Fat Tony here for a Fat Kid Joe? That's true, yeah. I guess Fat Tony

would be much older But still, they're breaking some rules here. And this is where Homer is trapped at Fat Camp. So you thought you could make a break for it, did you? Well, no one ever escapes from Fat Camp. Because the only way out is up a gentle slope. What's the Fat Camp? I don't belong here.

Ha, your boy bosoms tell a different tail. Okay, take a break, ladies. No in the grass. He didn't say nothing about this poison oak. Sweet, sweet poison. Uh-oh. That Wigam sound is so good, as Aerea does, they keep it in, but like, Wigham is dead. He died.

He is dead here. His trachea closed up. And this really brought me back to my childhood where the fear of Poison Ivy and Poison Oak was rampant, but I never succumb to it. But, you know, playing with neighborhood kids, playing outside, every shiny leaf, potentially Poison Oak or Poison Ivy. Like, stay away, stay away. We weren't sure what would happen if we touched it. But we were just terrified of the idea. Oh, yeah.

Hey, this is why I stayed indoors all the time. I think I knew a friend or two who got it, but I also never ended up with, I certainly didn't eat any of the sweet, sweet poison. It's one of those things that now, it would just be annoying if you're an adult, but if you're a kid, you think, if a bee stinks me, I'll die. Yes, yeah. The last time I was stung by a bee, I just felt horrible for the bee. I was like, oh, I'm sorry. You got basically what happened was, like, years ago, like five years ago. I was on one of my, like, morning exercise routines.

And then at some point, I had walked by a bee and it got, like, tangled up in my, jacket arm sleeve and then when I was like at a grocery store near the end of it I just feel like a poking sensation in my arm and I was like oh what happened like this poor bee was trapped there and stung me after it was stuck there for so long trying to sting its way out and also I was happy to learn I was not allergic to bees that's the best way to learn by not dying it's placed on an old vibrating belt machine is what Wikipedia tells me these are officially called Yeah, only seen in comedies. Nothing made after the Three Stooges shorts, by the way.

I don't think these ever existed beyond the 30s. Does a Steambox at least still exist now? Do people still use those? I've been to plenty of gyms in my time. I've never seen any of this equipment. Maybe in like very specialized physical therapy, these things are used, but I feel like this is outdated and it might kill you.

I did see that in the $500 range, you can buy vintage ones of these on eBay. People are selling them. Yeah, I wonder if there is like, any scientific proof to using these. I feel like it has the same scientific basis as they used to sell this on infomercials. It was like a belt that would shock you throughout the day to make your stomach muscles tense up. I don't think that works either.

But I feel like the idea was it's stimulating your muscles enough that it will naturally burn fat. I don't think so. That's like the electric face toner that our pals on Found Footage Fest. Yes. Same principle. They moved on from belts to electricity and then they realized, well, none of this works. You actually have to exercise. I'm sorry.

Also, this joke about that he has a date with a skinless chicken breast, this feels like written by writers who are mad that they're having to be on a diet. Yeah, like, I have to eat a turkey burger. Fortunately, I enjoy white meat chicken quite a lot. A key component of my protein-rich diet. What's the name of this camp, by the way? Oh, darn. Camp Lardo way?

I got Camp Cia tree earlier, but did I write down this one? I think this is Camp like Flabaway or Lardaway. I feel like I'm now on this diet because to have fun on the weekends, I'm slimming down, folks. I have a single salmon filet and a ton of broccoli for dinner every day. It is what people are calling a very autistic dinner, but I say, no, I am making this choice for the sake of simplicity. That's your pescatarian version of the skinless chicken breast. Yes, yes. And, hey, David Lynch did the same thing to simplify his life.

He just had the same meals over and over again because he didn't want to think about what do I have to cook today, what do I have to make today? So I'm living the David Lynch lifestyle just as creative, just as successful. Though you smoke 50 fewer cigarettes a day, I'd say. That is true, that is true. But I've made several hit movies. That's the one thing we do have in common. So Homer is trapped there for that long. And then it honestly feels like different editing than they normally do.

Just like it is a hard cut and then the next day on the screen, they don't normally do that kind of editing. Is it like a fade or something, like a weird fade? It's like a really quick fade. Yeah. This is where Marge is trying to follow up on her mystery man. Hello? I'd like to speak to Elvis Jagger Abdul-Jabbar. Hey, don't you try and prank me with a fake name.

I will whip out your intestines and use him to make a lanyard. Hello? Hello. Oh! And that's the origin of that. That boy I kissed wouldn't even tell me his real name. Typical. All boys want the same.

Same thing. To kiss until they're hot and heavy, then vamos. Trust us. We know everything about boys, except what they look like below the waist. I have some theories based on a G.I. Joe I bought. Well, I never want to date a boy again. Are you leaving camp because of that boy? Because that's what I've been telling everybody.

You're also pregnant. I just can't stay here. You can't stay here. Everything reminds me of him. You know, even though I'm lukewarm on this episode, I love that it gave us, and that's the origin of that. Yes. As a very lazy shorthand to let you know, okay, here isn't it cute that we showed you where this thing came from? And they're being very self-aware about it.

I use that in a ton of letterbox reviews. I've used that throughout my life. And I thought it came from the bludder years, but it's from this episode. It's a great line. I should be using it more, too. Like, and that's the origin of that. Like that he looks at the camera to say it too. Well, they credit Matt Warburton for that one.

Yeah, I believe so. That was his joke. But it's immortal for me in these mid-season. And also here's Cookie Kwan, spreading rumors and gossip, all probably in her plan to rule the West Side, as she often does. She's encroaching upon the West Side right now as a 10-year-old. And this GI Joe talk as well. See, this is 70s G.I. Joe talk.

You can't take the pants off of the G.I. Joe's from our child. Yeah, they're painted on. The G.I. Joe's from that era, very big, though, right? Yeah, they're at Barbie scale. Like, they can kiss a Barbie back then for a G.I. Joe. Or, as the British call them, action man's. Like, I think I learned that again. I was reminded of that again when we did Red Dwarf this year.

I think there was an action man reference in that. Oh, in the Crichton episode, when he's trying to rebuild a Crichton, he's like, oh, he's old action man down there. I don't think I got that joke, but I assumed he meant an action figure. I forgot the G.I. Joe, that's how it was translated over there. Well, because, you know, It is hard to understand British retailers of these action figures are like, British children don't want to buy American Soldier the Doll.

They don't understand what General Infantry means. General Infantry Joseph, not flying off the shelves. Left Tenant Joe. This is now where Homer is planning his escape, and I do like this little passive-aggressive gag here is funny. Oh, the pain. Man was not meant to sit up Oh

We've got an emergency here We need 10 CCs Pronto And by CCs I mean cupcakes I know what you mean Bill I've worked here longer than you Yeah that's an example of them Going further than just telling the corny joke

Which is what I really appreciate Not just saying can we break for recess And then have Homer going to recess and that's it Yeah see this shows they know how to do it Like that bit to say, yeah, I know what CCs are. That it's them slicing through the cuteness with something more clever, which is what you want from Simpsons. Yeah, it's not just a pun.

It's also a joke about a guy being passive aggressive to his coworker. Yeah, I've worked here longer than you. Like, it shows that there is a long history of these two guys not getting along, and it's coming out in this moment. I don't think he needs cupcakes. They should be discouraging that kind of behavior. Yeah, actually, that seems like a negative. to do there in this case and counterintuitive to helping though i guess this is comic book guy's

first heart attack of many yes yes and this is when homer uses this distraction to run towards the scale repair truck and the gentle slope see this is why i train on gentle slopes every day and where i live i don't succumb to the problems homer has here what rattlesnakes yes yeah i've ready for rattlesnakes gentle slopes are mostly like i have a route now i have a route now i'm like my five, six mile route is usually around about four different gentle slopes up and down. How's the heart rate? What are you getting it to? Pretty good.

The fans want to know, Henry, are you breaking 100? Oh, yes, definitely. I get into like 120s, 1.30s, for sure. I'll tell you what, I am in an insane amount of pain because I went to a spin class with my wife. And I was like, I use the elliptical every couple times a week. So I'll be fine. And I was able to get through the exercise, but my muscles are just like shooting fiery daggers into. me right now from every side.

I have been scared off of a spin class for that. Also, we do have machines in our gym here. I could just do a solo spin class that I just do on my own with like a program or something. You need a man at the front of the room giving you inspirational messages and telling you how to sit. There is a soul cycle

within a few blocks of us. I could give it a shot. And I will tell you, what I believe I'm probably the only straight man in the class out of the three men. Really? My gaitar was out. I was scanning the two other men. Speaking of heterosexuality or not,

there's a deleted scene attached to the next scene of Patty and Selma about this, where Homer arrives after Marge drives away, and we did see it at Marge when she left, she threw the rock, and it broke. That's an important plot point, too. So this is when Homer arrives just too late to meet his girl. Bye-bye! Oh, thank God they're gone. I can't believe I went five minutes without one of these dream sticks.

Hey, have you too long, Sherman, seen a pretty girl? If you are who I think you are, that girl is gone, and she never wants to see you again. She wouldn't do that. We shared something special. What? Just because she smooched you? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Was that special? No.

Well, I guess the reason why Homer does not recognize Patty and Selma later in life is because he thinks he met two men. Oh, okay. One of which who kissed him. You know what? That then counts in why he doesn't think he's kissed any other girls because he thinks they're a longshoreman. Yes, this adult male sailor forced a kiss on me. Yeah, honestly, I feel like Homer should say to Marge like, well, this was really scarring for me to Marge. When Marge is not forgiving him, he could, but obviously, Homer's a man.

He's not supposed to, like, feel emotions. We were not having conversations about male mental health in 2004. Well, this is also where the only deleted scene on the DVD is hidden on the menu, and it is an interesting one for the history of Patty. So after Patty kisses Homer, she reflects on it, too. Was that special? No. I didn't think so either.

Yeah. Kissing Boys is overrated. Want to play field hockey? From now on, I never don't. I don't want to play field hockey. That's good. You know, I noted it was Patty who kissed Homer, and I forgot that there was a deleted scene that followed up on that

because they're working their way towards telling us more about Patty. The fact that they cut it feels like they chickened out on having a joke there. Yeah. I was glad to see they at least once planned on having that be the joke because Patty being the one kissing Homer and then hating kissing a boy completely fits with them walking up to. finally having patty be a lesbian character pull it up on your DVDs folks to appreciate their design of sporty field hockey lesbian girl who talks to patty there well she will not make another

appearance unfortunately so the story is over homer is heartbroken too and he sees a little broken heart rock this is where we see that the truth does not solve all the problems for marge chance of true love. And now that my special girl has heard the truth, I know she'll forgive me. Earth's the special girl, you forgive me, right? I guess so. Uh, I think we'll go to bed now.

What are you doing? If they fight in front of us, we might get new bikes. Homer, when your nurse are hurt for 30 years, it doesn't go away in an instant. What about now? Oh, no. What about no? No, Homer.

What about now? No, Homer. What about now? No, Homer. Marge, I'm really sorry I hurt you, but I've done way worse stuff since then. There was the gun I hid from you, the time I sued the church, ruining Lisa's wedding in the future. Remember that? Homie, I know this shouldn't bother me, but a girl only has one first love.

this section of the show is not necessary at all I don't like it but I really do like the joke how Homer points out where he ruined Lisa's wedding in the future Yes He's like remember that goes unremarked upon by March sorry No and he says remember that Like she's supposed to remember a flash forward For a non-canonical episode

Yeah But they already had to waste a minute on a montage That wasn't very exciting And now they're kind of two minutes short The episode really should have ended In the way these flashback episodes always end where we get the important moment of the flashback and we get like 15 seconds in the present where the kids are grossed out or they're not interested but Martin Homer and I have never

been closer but here it's like I've decided I want to fight for two minutes this is a straightforward version of the like let's hug him again bit in the Homer and a poo yeah I'm thinking of in the way we was they're talking about you know their their moments in the car together it's like and we never split apart it was true love forever Bart is like gagging and that's the end of the episode and then in Maggie makes three it is the moment where like do it for her the episode immediately ends after that

when we go to the present and even in Lisa's first word it's the moment with talking in Maggie right? He says goodbye to Maggie and that pretty much wraps it up like in 30 seconds tops for the big moment of her first word but it's always a sweet moment not that story pissed me off Homer

oh and hey here's another one in Lisa Sacks the same deal of like well you got to get a new air conditioner but and then he buys her a new sax, and she's happy. It's not after the story's over, then Lisa says, well, but yeah, but you still lied to me about why you bought me the saxophone. Yeah, I guess it is realistic that someone can do something wrong. In this case, I feel like Homer is blameless because he has a child.

Someone can do something wrong. They can make it up to you, but you can also still be angry because, you know, you're just working through those feelings. You'll eventually get better. You just need some time. But we were working with a 22-minute episode of television here. This is not the time, like Marge being a complicated human. or this kind of complex storytelling

or more complex emotion. That's not what this episode wants to be about most of the time until this time. It feels like a time killer, not actual dramatic intent. This episode should be, let's reveal a very cleverly plotted element of their past that makes sense

to, in terms of both the history and the characters. And they do that, but then they're like, fuck, we don't have anything more. What do we do? It maybe feels like Gene overthought. we've definitely talked about oh this act three got rewritten a lot

this act three got rewritten a lot I wonder if in an earlier draft it just ends like how those other ones do like oh homie I love you kiss at the couch everything's fine and Algin's like how we do that too much can we do something else with that instead

and then this comes in to be different yeah they eventually worked their way to that sweet moment but then there's you know 90 seconds to two minutes of ugliness and like you know some have been lied in joke that's so weird also i do appreciate that when homer is listing the mistakes he's made it's not just classic season stuff he names the suing the church episode from like a two years earlier

yeah i guess they weren't as fixated on always referencing the golden era back then now obviously in a season 36 episode of him doing the same scene of counting his misdeeds to march he would be walking backwards into a bush yes i was going to say there would be a bush behind the bed they would both like merge backwards with the bush the producer would be like we haven't done that joke in a couple episodes right it's been five episodes since we did a bush gag so let's go for it so this is where homer then reveals that he actually okay this is another bit i don't like and i'll play the clip in a sec but when march says i guess it didn't mean that much to you i was going like he just recounted in perfect detail how much it meant to him yes yes that really upset me

not really upset me but i thought like you had a very nice touching story a little corny a little cheesy but you mostly stuck the landing and now it's like well Marge I'm still mad I guess it didn't mean that much to you like he told you everything he remembered he remembered his first kiss with you perfectly and this is from Homer who has copious brain damage that makes him forget everything yeah he forgets his name he forgets how to breathe but yes this is where Homer makes up to Marge

after this is needlessly elongated I guess it didn't mean that much to you that's not true I thought about that girl every day of my life, till I met you. I wish there was some way I could believe that. All right, this is my memory box. I haven't opened it in 30 years. Ooh, a letter from my old pen pal.

Someday I'll write you back, Osama. Ah, here's what I'm looking for. Oh, homie, you did care. I sure did. I kept it right next to my IBM stocking. I kept my heart too. But somehow you realized that was a good guy after all? No, as a reminder of the hurtful things men can do.

But now it can have a second meaning. Oh, Elvis. Oh, anonymous girl who turned out to be March. And I guess with that sweet ending, it was deemed Emmy-worthy, at least by the staff. They overestimated that happy ending there, I think. But yeah, this bit about, this is like three, two things knocked together here. First, we have, like, an Osama bin Laden joke is sitting within a Robert Blake murder trial joke. Yes.

I guess you looked into this recently. I saw your tweeting about this, or blue-skying about this. Oh, yeah, just a little bit of like, okay, wait, this joke, I keep forgetting, if it happened after the 2001 seasons, I'm like, wait, is this referencing that? But yes, Robert Blake was tried for the murder of Bonnie Lee Bakely in 2001. So this is definitely made to make you laugh at, oh, Homer doesn't know that Robert Blake and his Beretta character are canceled now, or this is uncomfortable and weird. Though the other research I did was that, so I just watched the movie Serpico for the first time.

It's pretty good, pretty good movie. And I didn't realize Serpico in the movie is a weird guy. Like, that's what's interesting about Serpico. He's like basically a hippie who wanted to be a cop. And he has earrings. He wears like weird floppy hats. And he has a lot of pet. He has a pet bird, a cockatoo in that movie.

Okay. He's kind of like Ace Ventura then, right? Wow, yes. Actually, Serpico has a lot in common with Ace Ventura. But Serpico, based on a real guy, is a weird guy. guy, he had a pet cockatoo. And then, like, two years after that on Beretta, when they make up that show, they give him a pet cockatoo named Fred.

And I was like, okay, wait, they just ripped off Serpico. They were like, oh, a cop with a cockatoo. Like, let's make that a whole TV show. I feel like in both Serpico and Breda, the cockatoo didn't figure into things much. Well, the cockatoo is only in one scene in Serpico. And Beretta, I have to think they apparently had two birds to play Fred, one that could fly and one they couldn't fly. Oh, very nice. I've never seen Beretta. It was never on when I was watching Nick a Night, but I always appreciated the bird aspect, but not the fact that they hired a murderer.

His catchphrase was like, and that's the name of that tune, I think is the catchphrase. That's his catchphrase? I think so. I think so. What I do know is that when he died in 2023, the Emmys and Oscars did not put him in the in-memorium. His son was mad about that. Okay. Oh, I'm looking at Beretta catchphrases, and there's multiple. He was kind of like Bart. Part Simpson of his age. Oh, okay. So one of them, the one I'm most familiar with is, don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

And you can take debt to the bank. Oh, right. That do the crime, do the time thing. That was in headlines of his murder trial. That's right. Yeah. So there you have it.

Robert Blake, R.A.P. Yes, yes. Rest in power. We've covered this before. What was this thing? It's like, I was, listen, I didn't kill my wife. I was going to get the gun to kill my wife, and then someone else killed her.

Classic story. Yeah, he was found libel in the civil. trial, but quitted in the main one. But yes, it was basically his girlfriend, Bodily Bakely. She was shot and killed by someone that he said he had nothing to do with. And he's like, well, no, I was going to get my gun. So I couldn't have done it. And I believe the prosecutor said that he had hired the man who killed her to do it and that he had intentionally created the alibi of like, no, I was going to get my gun. That's why I obviously didn't kill her. the perfect crime yeah the ibn stocking like that's at least silly it doesn't make you just laugh at like oh homer knew osama bin laden somehow i don't want to take this apart too much but it's only a pun it like has no practical application i'm thinking like why do you what a christmas stocking that says ibn that's but you know homer saying oh anonymous girl who turned out to be marge i got to chuckle at that at the very end yeah i mean we've covered some pretty rotten episodes at the end of season

and the only downfall of this outside of some light cornyness and some rugratsiness is this final two minutes and I wish I could just do my phantom edit of this and have it and just like cut to them in bed immediately exchanging the rocks and saying oh homie I love you after the flashbacks end you know taking an account of what other bad episodes did in this season that we've watched recently of like margin Homer you know don't hate their children Homer is not blackout drunk and no one goes to jail So you know

That's right Yeah Marge is not framed For any crimes by Homer Yes Actually on the Everybody goes to prison this season Count

The Real Jim's popularized I remember Technically Homer isn't like arrested But him going to Fat Camp Kind of is a The character is arrested Or in jail segment Yeah he is in like

Essentially a prison camp They're even playing The Cool Hand Luke music During his stay at Fat Camp Man, you're right. Boy, it is like seven episodes this season are about one Simpson going to jail. And I feel like 80% of the time you are hearing that cool-hand Luke music. You know, it's a good, it instantly puts you there. Like, just like how the natural makes you think baseball.

Absolutely. As far as non-canonical episodes that are things that mess with canon that bothered me at the time, obviously a few years after that will be that 90 show that made me so mad. any anger I had about this, I totally forgot. Yes. With so many other canon defying episodes since that 90s show, I wonder how I'll feel about it now. Now it just seems very inoffensive in terms of like what has happened since with the playing with the timeline. That was the first time they were kind of spitting in your eyes saying, well, what about this, huh? What if they grew up this time? What do you think

about that? I assume I'll be 46 or 47 when we cover that one. So I wonder, well, I have the same energy for it. Old age will calm us down a little bit. We'd be taking our medicine and squinting at the screen is that homer i can't tell anymore well i guess it's time to wrap things up because it's bedtime uh for us so thanks everybody for listening if you want to hear more of us and if you want to get these episodes ad free and also access a vast vast vast back catalog of patreon exclusive episodes go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up for five bucks a month you'll get the episodes like i said ad free which is very important but also access to over 200 bonus miniseries episodes we've covered things like

Futurama, King of the Hill, Mission Hill, Batman, the animated series, and The Critic. And for that five bucks a month, you get the entire back catalog, but also new monthly episodes of both Talking of the Hill and Talking Critic. It's a great bargain, a great bang for your buck, only five bucks a month at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well that gets you all the $5 stuff naturally, but also one immensely huge podcast once a month for patrons of that level. And what's happening there, Henry?

Bob's referring to the What a Cartoon Movie podcast that we do each month. it's also at free just like the $5 stuff but for $10 a month you also get basically three extra podcasts and one which is us covering an animated feature film super in depth like an hour and a half on the history and making of an animated feature film and then

scene by scene deconstruction full of trivia and awesome secrets that we cover each time we're reaching the end of our summer of the Disney 2000s it started with an extremely goofy movie we then did Lilo and Stitch from 2002 we then did Atlantis the Lost Empire and we just wrapped it up with Treasure Planet,

possibly the biggest bomb of the Disney Renaissance era. And those are just our most recent ones. We have years and years of a back catalog there, hundreds of hours of us covering so many things, Disney Renaissance, classic Disney, all the Toy Story films, a bunch of studio Ghibli films as well, other anime, and even junk like Cool World,

we've covered it all on the What a Cartoon Movie Podcast. So please check out all the ad-free bonuses there at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. And I've been one of your host, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Blue Sky, Letterbox, and other places as Bob Servo. And my other podcast, by the way, is Retronauts. It's a classic

gaming podcast all about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts and sign up there for some bonus episodes every month. And Henry, what about you? And you can find me active on Blue Sky and Instagram as Talking Henry. I'm always posting up a storm there. And if you're

still following me and Bob on any of those places on social media that you also need to be following the at talk simpsons pod account on all of those places you stay up to date when new episodes go live when there's patreon content that's exclusive whenever there's new art of us all that stuff is shared on at talk simpsons pod and don't forget talking simpsons.com is your home for all of our free content thanks so much for listening everybody we'll see you again next time for season five's the boy who knew too much and we'll see you then I can't wait to meet the girls.

I can't wait to meet the girls. That's right, you're working in the kitchen. That's how I can't pays the bills. What bills? We got no water, no heat, we catch our own breakfast. Twelve kids died at our camp. We need the money to pay lawyers. I thought we were going to play fun games at camp. Oh, here's one. It's called Stay Out of My Way, idiot.