Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - There's No Disgrace Like Home (Revisited) With Found Footage Fest

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

The family embarrasses Homer in this backward episode, and we're exploring it all with special guest Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher of Found Footage Festival and VCR Party Live! We talk with them about their particular brand of nostalgia, then go deep into Simpsons' history with Al Jean & Mike Reiss' first episode. We talk picnics, pawnshops, shock treatment, and so much more, so listen before we bring out the foam bats! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention podcast listener we've got an exciting new podcast coming just for patrons of patreon.com slash talking simpsons talking futurama season two part one has begun exclusively for our five dollar and up patrons on the talking simpsons network that's the first 10 episodes of futurama coming to you once a week so just sign up for $5 a month at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons and you'll get Talking Futurama Season 2 and all of our limited miniseries, including the entirety of Talking Futurama Season 1. That's 13 episodes.

That is patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Now please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product. Hoi hoi everybody and welcome to Talking Simpsons where we're full of unfortunate noises. I'm your host, the infernal tootler Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today? Henry Gilbert, I'm just fetching the old man his slippers. And who else do we have? I'm Nick Pruer and I'm a dad with a shirt on. And who is our final guest?

And I'm Joe Pickett and I'm a load of rich creamery butter. And today's episode is There's No Disgrace Like Home. As far as anyone knows, we're a nice, normal family. Hey, Bart, last one in the fountain's a rattenay! No! Be normal! Be normal! The classic Homer quote, be normal. Today's episode aired on January 28th, 1990, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day

in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby. Driving Miss Daisy is number one at the box office. Joe Montana's 49ers defeat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV. And the captain of the Exxon Valdez trial begins. He will ultimately be found guilty

of only misdemeanor negligence, fined $50,000, and sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service, which he won't have to do until 1999. Wow. Because of how many appeals he does. But, yeah, that's, I don't think I've ever seen Driving Miss Daisy. I've seen

enough parodies of it to stitch it together in my mind. I feel like I saw Green Book. I think that's close enough. Yeah. Less driving in that one. I feel like I saw Green Book. I think that's close enough. Less driving in that one. Well, no, there's a lot of driving in that one, actually. Per capita, what has more driving? I would bet Green Book does. Was the Green Book in Miss Daisy's car? Plot twist.

Am I misremembering this, or did In Living Color have a sketch called Riding Miss Daisy? I feel like there was where the driver wanted to sleep with Miss Daisy. The funny part was that she was old. Why would anyone want to sleep with somebody who's old? I think I'm maybe making this

up, but there was like a Mad TV sketch where it was a Samuel L. Jackson style character playing the driver and he was quite a foul mouthed. I remember the critic one, it was Malcolm X driving Miss Daisy and he left her to die on the train track saying when the the revolution comes, you will not be spared. Yes.

Maybe that's what I was thinking of. Any sports memories of this Super Bowl from the 49ers? I'm shocked that they played the Super Bowl this early. It's usually February. It's usually February. This year, it's the late January one. And the Simpsons decided to air right next to the Super Bowl They're like, well, new Simpsons against Super Bowl

People will choose Wow Now you're in the 49ers Actually, as we're recording this The 49ers are in the Super Bowl again, are they not? Yes, they are I know that much about sports Nice work, going against the Chiefs

But I guess by the time people are listening to this That game is over. And anybody want to make their predictions for the Super Bowl right now? I think 49ers will win. They're like an ungodly team this year. They're destined. Frankly, I'm sick of our teams winning. It's a big problem.

And all the parades are just a nuisance. Well, the Niners haven't won in a while. On football, at least, the Bay Area hasn't won stuff in a while, I think. Yeah, this city needs to take it down a notch. You guys have been winning way too much. But hey, welcome back to Nick Brewer, and welcome Joe, both from Found Footage Festival.

Love you guys. Thank you. We love your stuff, and we were at your live show last night, and I feared for Henry's safety. We have to apologize about last night's show. It's not the usual show. That is my endorsement for everyone out there, though. Yeah, last night we did our After Dark show.

So it's all of our dirty stuff and our disgusting stuff and swearing stuff. It's relentless. It really is. And normally we don't have that much awfulness in one show. I think what it is, you know, like the show is we find old VHS tapes and show them to people, the parts that make us laugh.

But we have to watch a lot of like pretty gross, disgusting, disturbing footage too. And for some sick reason, we... Maybe we're sadistic. We want to subject people to that occasionally. Not every day. But in the After Dark show it's all there. But it's not pornographic.

No, no, no. It's medical. It But it's not pornographic. No, no, no. It's medical. It's the opposite of pornographic. Yes, yes. It's like clinical. It's clinical grossness. Yeah. The amount of penises seen, I think, were...

Non-erotic penises. Oh, no. No, no, no. Purely medical penises. No, yeah. It was a great show. I did gag reflexes a few times, and I felt very embarrassed. I was like, oh, I hate all these people are just trying to enjoy their drinks,

and I'm going, bleh. I know, and that place served food, too. That's never good. I was surprised no one left. I saw no one walk out, and I thought somebody would. We usually have a couple during that show, yeah. But yeah, you guys are on tour. You're heading out

again to right after this recording so thanks for for coming in to record here yeah absolutely uh well so nick we talked a bit about your you know history with the simpsons so i i was curious joe is that you guys grew up uh pretty close to each other so i'm curious do you have a similar background with the simpsons well i'd, comedy is what brought Nick and I together. Our love of Pee Wee Herman was really like, he was a member of the Pee Wee Herman fan club. And I was like, oh, how do you join? And he showed me how to do it. Pretty popular kid.

Was the card laminated or did you cut it out of something? I think it was perforated. Oh, boy. Yeah. So that brought us together. But my first Simpsons experience was because my dad. My dad loved the Life in Hell or Life is Hell and the different is hells. And he would always buy the books.

And so then we saw, oh, there's a commercial. Oh, it looks like the Life is – is it Life is Hell or Life in Hell? Life in Hell. Yeah. And the animation looked similar to that. And we're like, oh, we've got to watch that. So it wasn't from Tracy Ullman. It was from the books.

Wow. I don't think I've heard that story before from any of you guys. Yeah. That was their on-ramp to it. That's wow. And so season one, you were like straight into the Bart mania. Oh, yeah. I was 100% on board.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had the underachiever and proud of it t-shirt. Among your guys' thousands of VHS tapes, how many Simpson-y type things are in there, do you think? I mean, we've found, I think from our personal collections, have dozens of tapes that say Simpsons on them. And I mean, our mistake, at least my mistake, was editing out the commercials, which would be the valuable part.

I have a tape right by my desk, VHS. It's in my mom's handwriting, and it says Simpsons 94. It's just kind of like a nice little thing to have near my desk. I think all my Simpsons tapes are gone now. I don't know where I... I wish I'd have kept them, but they also have... I think almost none of them have the commercials on

them now, which is too bad. But at the time it was cool to re-watch them without seeing commercials like as a kid oh yeah that was a treat that was a special treat to watch it that way i remember like when simpsons mania took off there was a girl in my grade that had simpsons pants have you seen the simpsons pants it was the whole family like on her thigh huh and then she got the nickname bart because everybody called her Bart because of that. They landed on Bart. Of all the family. That's weird.

So me and Bob know that you found Footage Fest, guys. Have a plenty catch. To save us a little time, we did the lengthy writer and director profiles for this classic episode before you guys came in. So we're going to drop it in right here and then chat with you guys some more after. So we've got a bit of a writer's corner for this episode, a very big one, because these two guys are super important to The Simpsons, especially Reese, but especially Gene. And yes, Al, Gene, and Mike Reese. I mean, we've talked a ton about them. And I'm sure throughout the past five years

of our podcast, we sprinkled their bio throughout. but now we can dig super deep into it this will be a bit of a longer writer's corner because uh al jean has worked on the show for almost 30 years so yeah yeah and they were pretty established comedy writers when they got hired as simpsons i think they're two of the most experienced on the original writing staff they had nearly 10 years of traditional TV writing experience, especially sitcoms. Especially. Especially sitcoms. But yes, they were the most skilled TV writers with like seven years of experience. But would it surprise you that they both went to Harvard? Oh, yes.

And I mean, of course. And their relationship goes back to when they were roommates at Harvard. That's how they became friends. They literally shared a bunk bed. That's how adorable their relationship uh goes back to when they were roommates at harvard that's how they became friends they literally shared a bunk bed that's how adorable their relationship is that's well and especially like for for gene is younger than reese i believe right yes uh a year younger i think but uh but yeah sharing a bunk bed that is uh that feels like they did this in like 1870s not 1970s or 80s, I guess. At night, Reese would go up and shove them cool into the stove and they'd keep warm. But yes, they both went to Harvard. Obviously, Al Jean being a mega genius, attended Harvard at 16, graduated school early.

Apparently, according to Reese, he was going to be a doctor. But Reese was part of the Lampoon and Jean was his friend. He's like, hey, you should come to Lampoon. We got these cool parties with lots of chicks. It'll be lots of fun. And Rhys said he basically was the guy who got Al Gene hooked on crack. He could have done anything with his life, this math genius. But Mike Rhys led him down the dark path of comedy.

I love that Rhys now in his older years, he's reflecting on it like, I prevented Al Gene from being the president by making him learn about stupid comedy he's honestly better off being a comedy writer uh yeah i and i mean we joke uh you know we all talk about the harvardication of the simpsons and how there's a lot of like children of means who go to harvard and it's not as big it's but for gene especially uh the reese too but gene comes from like you know he's a detroit kid he's not the he's not like al gene the 17th or whatever so and his dad ran a hardware store for like 60 years that he worked in yeah i think he said he went to harvard to get away from the hardware store because people would ask him questions and as a shy young nerd he just like

run away from them i i mean i always identify with gene's love of marvel comic books he's a he's a big dork for those he got stan lee on the show yeah that's a great commentary with him on it too one of the best and it was it was before i mean look it wasn't before stan lee appeared in any movie but it was before he was the constant cameo king of the last like 14 years of his life. So from the Harvard Lampoon, they went on to write for the National Lampoon. But they basically knew it was going to be over at any moment. Like it was not a successful organization at that point. The glory days were behind them.

When they were asked to write an Indiana Jones parody where he was a gynecologist, they said that was their darkest moment. But luckily, they got the call from Hollywood, and that's when they went to write Punch-Up for the classic movie everybody loves, Airplane 2, from 1982. I love the tales Reitz has of the writer's room for that and just how dire it was. It was just them in a box on the set, and they didn't write enough jokes to be credited on the movie uh but i i always celebrate any writer learning to get out of the dead end that is print and move into the uh the at least the more lucrative world of television writing my only experience with national lampoon was uh when we were living with my grandma and my uncle was too because everybody lived with grandma

then for some reason uh he had a bunch of national Lampoons from the 70s. And the only reason I would look at them is because at least one page would have a photograph of breasts. Oh, yes. Yeah. It was one of those funny porn things that also could function in the normal way porn would as well, but with jokes. It's a multi-purpose magazine. I mean, I know it for the cover of like buy this album or we'll kill this dog and i think uh mostly i've read about how if you go back to read lampoon things now you only notice like oh this was pretty racist yeah it's pretty sexist you read like the john hughes things that were printed there but yeah now national lampoon is like uh direct to dvd like national lampoon

presents fart school or whatever yeah no i mean since the 80s it late 80s it just became a brand you could purchase to put in the name of something which for folks it didn't even mean like the first national lampoon's vacation meant hey this will be a ribald funny thing in the way the national lampoon magazine is but then by like 93 or whatever a national lampoon's blank that meant oh this is like that Chevy Chase movie. But Chevy Chase is probably not in it. Too expensive. And I think Animal House is a National Lampoon movie, right?

Yes, yeah. I associate that with vacation. It's like, oh, yeah, National Lampoon's vacation, not National Lampoon's Animal House. Yeah, I mean, though, they both come from a very Harvard-y entitled, sexually regressive stance on life, for sure. So after Airplane 2, they were big losers in Hollywood, unemployed, watching a lot of TV, and Al Jean and Mike Reese were obsessed with the TV version of the 9 to 5 movie. They said they couldn't stop watching it. They just could not get over how bad it was. I had never heard of it. I must have run for so few episodes. It never got syndicated either.

There's like one episode on YouTube and I watched a compilation of the openings and you can see with every season it just gets cheaper and cheaper until you get to the syndicated episodes made just for syndication. And it's like the cheapest opening ever with the cheapest like video effects in it. It's really disgusting. I'm unlucky that in my market it was not, it wasn't uh syndicated i missed out on all these dabney coleman classics oh actually jeffrey tambor was playing that role yeah hey he was cool up until like uh four years ago uh yeah i mean all the stories were he was always a monster on set screaming at people and be like but we were in the dark until about four years ago yes yeah yeah but uh you know i never heard any of the stories about Dabney Coleman. No, he's a treasure and still alive

as of this recording. But so unfortunately, they were fired in 10 weeks and totally crestfallen. Like, we can't even write for the worst show on TV. What are we going to do? So what they did was write for a bunch of stuff, including Not Necessarily the News, Sledgehammer, and ALF,

and it's Gary Shandandling show yeah we uh with mike reese in our interview on the patreon uh where we talked about his book uh we had a few questions about his elf time and the gary shandling show time which really was like such uh alf you know it's it it's funny alf is the commercialism of early Simpsons. Oh, yeah. While Gary Shandling is the smarter, more boundary-pushing, weird writing that later Simpsons would indulge in. So you can see a lot of the Simpsons traits in both of those shows. And especially their episodes of Gary Shandling's show were direct movie parodies in the style gene and reese love to do like they're the final episode they did of the gary shanley show was a driving miss daisy parody okay yeah i mean once you know that they work primarily in parody it explains like their entire careers like the critic uh what

they did on lampoon starting with airplane 2 like it all makes sense yeah and then uh i mean that's that's why but they thought would be their final episode of The Simpsons, Cape Fear, is all that. That's a very good point. So, perhaps their most influential moment in TV writing was when they worked for about a year and a half on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. A terrible period for Johnny Carson, a famously prickly guy. He was going through a divorce. Letterman was kicking his ass. He was already weird to work for and when aljean and mike reese showed up to write uh for the non-monologue stuff

they were told like you're gonna last for 13 weeks and you're fired like the contracts were every 13 weeks so people were just constantly getting fired lots of turnover there was a weird caste system in which the monologue writers were in a different building than the other writers and by the way this is all on Mark Malkoff's amazing podcast called The Carson Podcast. Look up Mike Reese's episode, but also just listen to a bunch of them. He's the guy who hooked us up with The Table Read, and he went to that with us, and his podcast is so good. Such a great podcast. And I love on that one with Reese, Reese is very much like non-worshipful of Carson and is deconstructing a lot of the myth

of the man. I think one of my favorite stories he tells on there was like, oh, if you get interviewed by Carson, you definitely get hired at least then. He said the only two people he knew who didn't get hired by that was a guy who came in and he was 500 pounds and a black guy. Those are the only two guys that had Carson in the fire. Make of that what you will. I don't want to give away all of the stories from that podcast because they're all great, but I liked hearing about how when Johnny Carson interviews you for your job, it's just like you're on the TV show, except he's just wearing like a sweaty undershirt. That's so funny. And I also liked hearing about the talent show he made writers put on for him. Honestly, that sounds a bit like Mr. Burns in this

episode. You're right. I can definitely see that. So from all of this, after all this, they move on to the Simpsons. Sam Simon hires them based on all of their TV writing work. And you know what? Lots of people don't want this job because it's just like this very risky thing on a risky network that could make their names infamous. But Al Jean and Mike Reese were just like, it'll be a fun thing to do. And we've done Alf. How is this any worse than Alf? And after this gets obviously canceled in one season, we'll just get on another live action show, the real shows that we're supposed to be working on with all of our Gary Shandling writing buddies. So, you know, from our podcast and just from, you know, watching The Simpsons,

they ran season three and four. They left with the episode Cape Fear along with like 90% of the staff. And they went off to make The Critic, which we covered on our Patreon podcast, Talking Critic. The whole damn series. Yeah. And you guys should listen to our Mike Grease interview. One of these days, we'll get an Al Jean interview to complete the pair. We'll pin him down.

Yeah, I think, I mean, when you see this episode, you see so much of the tools that Mike Grease and Al Jean will use through their tenure on the simpsons like characters getting plot points from tv the commercial parodies the film parodies and a lot of adr edited in jokes after the fact like they they learned a lot on their first uh simpson script and you can see so much of what they'll put into practice both as writers in one and two they Though they returned late in season two. They actually didn't. They weren't there right at the beginning of season two.

They did take another job after their time on season one. Oh, what was that? I didn't get that in my notes. I forget. It was definitely like a one-off thing, or at least they went looking for stuff and then got hired back during season two. And of course, they also developed the hit TGIF show,

Teen Angel, which I'm sure is fine. It'd be fun to do an episode of that for this, just to be like, what does a live action Gene and Reese thing look like that they created? And that was their last live action thing they ever did too. And yeah, then as we just talked about in season 10, the pair of them split up and professionally, they're still very friendly on commentary. So it's not like they hate each other but yeah mike reese still speaks in

very glowing terms of aljean i think reese was just done with hollywood uh to the extent that he wanted to show run anything so he had quite a bit of fuck you money yes to throw around yeah and uh you know mike reese uh has been married to the same woman for 30 years. I think that probably helps him in the alimony department. And no children. Al Jean made the mistake of divorcing children. That's going to trap you in a job forever. That'll destroy any comedy writer. So, yeah, Al Jean and Mike Reese were always in the orbit of The Simpsons, even after they left.

So, of course, we know that they did a few satellite episodes in season six around Springfield and the Starsburns. And also in season eight, they did the Sher satellite episodes in season six around Springfield and the Starsburns. And also in season eight, they did the Sherry Bobbins episode and Simpsontide. And some like side stuff, too. I swear they did the MLB meets the Simpsons on Fox. Oh, I'm sure they were doing like promotional stuff, too, because they knew how to write the characters. Yeah, they were the satellite office while still doing critic and taking advantage of the unused critic scripts and the jokes they had there, too. Like, I really appreciate Gene and Reese's, like, economy as writers, that they're just like, why waste a joke? Why lose a joke?

Like, Reese in his book, I think, even mentions how Gene has, like, a very strong, deep memory of jokes done on the show before. Or also like, oh, remember that joke we did in that Golden Girls spec script? Let's do that as an episode. But yeah, so Al Jean and Mike Reese's last episode together was Simpsons Time. Their last professional script they wrote together. Another lengthy film parody. Yes, a bit out of date, as we talked about in that episode. But then Al Jean was slowly sneaking his way back in.

I think before his first return to the show he was listed as a producer but his formal return was in season 10's mom and pop art yeah mike scully mentioned that he you know had some writer's room openings and jean had reached out and he's like well of course i want al jean back in here like it's he had worked on all the classic seasons like scully uh you know makes no bones about wanting to have as many original series writers in the room with him as possible that to help us help him steer the ship in those times so yeah and aljean and mike reese always regretted leaving the show uh you can hear it on the dvds it's very funny now because

they took a disney development deal because the critic was on abc and so was a teen witch wait no uh teenager there we go and uh the entire time you can hear him quote this on the uh you can hear this quote on the dvd like every time i was at disney i said i wish i never went to disney i hate disney so much the symptoms was so great no notes i hate disney i hate well now he's part of disney and those will be exhibit a in his trial against the walt disney company the defamation suit. Yeah, Rick Rees mentioned in his book that he had to re-edit it late to remove any of the specific references to Disney is where they worked. So Al G would make his official return to the Simpsons in season 10 with the episode Mom and Pop Art, which we did for Talking Simpsons. And I think before that, he was listed as a producer, like consulting producer.

Like he never really left the orbit of the show. But season 10 is when he was back on as a writer. And then he would occasionally get some freelance spots throughout a season. Until season 13, he takes over the show and he still is the show runner. Yeah. So the 2001-2002 season, the September 11th season, as we call it uh there was one non-tragedy that year and that was aljean taking over the simpsons yeah it's wild to think that after we did the first uh 10 seasons and then two more seasons after that it then becomes the same showrunner for

the rest of time up to now like and uh you know who knows who will take it over from aljean eventually but yeah aljean he's like he's probably show run more animated television than maybe anybody else at least in the american animation industry i would say that's got to be true it has to be true unless there are some folks who like you know worked on a million spongebobs and then moved over to work on a million other things like i but even then it's like no this is like in pure minutes it's like he's probably done 400 episodes of simpsons so like 21 consecutive years of the simpsons and then two years of the simpsons and two years of the critic before that yeah so like 25 years of tele animated television as the showrunner yeah and and an animated feature film with the simpsons

movie as well like that's that's wild well meanwhile mike reese is just uh he's a one a day a week uh rewrite guy on the simpsons yeah his book is uh very readable it's a lot of stories you might not have heard before but yeah he flies in every week on the same day the same flight and flies back home does not stay in la overnight no i because he hates it that much. He flies in New York, gets back, because he, I mean, if you were rich enough to live in New York and just be there all the time, you'd just go to your like, you know, $200,000 a year, one day a week job. These are all numbers I'm pulling out of my ass. But yeah, if you never heard the audiobook of it, I think the audiobook's a really good one if you love hearing Reese's voice on the commentary. His voice is so great.

And more about Mike Reese, he did a few other things. So essentially after the failure of Teen Angel, he just stopped being a TV writer entirely. Like a full-time TV writer. He's like, you know what? I've got fuck you money. I can do whatever I want. I'm just going to dabble in things. So he did make some animated web series for Icebox.com.

So Icebox, in about 2000, they were signing up a lot of animated TV writers to do these little webisodes of things. And Mike Reese created the series A Hard Drinkin' Lincoln and also Queer Duck, which would become a direct-to-DVD movie in, I think, 2006. Yeah, yeah, which, like, Mike Reese is not gay. He's, I think he turned good-natured gay jokes into a nice thing. I, as a gay man, didn't feel one way or the other about Queer Druck, really. I feel like it's like, you know,

all the gay jokes on The Critic, what if that was a movie or a series? Sounds like it, yeah. Well, that Icebox thing, like, that deal seems to have come straight from the critic. Like Icebox hired him first. That's right. For Gene and Reese to reboot the critic

in some very difficult viewing. But it's like, oh, you know what? These startup, these Silicon Valley guys, let's give them a try. You know, if I'm looking at it from Reese's perspective, he just had a bunch of Hollywood assholes blossom around. Maybe he's like

thought the Silicon Valley assholes would be less annoying. And he just hated Los Angeles so much. He couldn't stand it. There's a lot of that in his book, too. Now he just travels the world. It's true. He seemingly gets dragged to a bunch of places by his well-meaning wife. He's a very

lucky man. I'm not sure if he knows it. He just is always complaining about having to go to some Broadwayway show or this or that or some other country i like that he's such a curmudgeon yeah it's adorable oh and another is post uh simpsons things on top of like the movies he's written for and all this like punch-up stuff he worked on the david cop he worked with david copperfield on something and uh because he and david copperfield are just buddies like he tweets out pictures that and uh our friendly podcast podcast the ride who we had on as guests they did a deconstruction of the david copperfield uh magic thing and the jokes they tell in that that are that he has in there i swear it reads like mike reese punch up oh that could be i think he wrote that show he co-wrote

that show with him one of the things that stuck in my head after that podcast from podcast ride is love david love love you have to listen to a three-hour podcast to know what we're talking about but it's totally worth it or just go to david copperfield show while he's still doing it in vegas yeah be shocked for yourself we won't spoil it for you but there's a yakko warner style voice in it who says lines that sound like mike reese lines yeah uh also more things about mike reese to just wrap up real quick uh he dabbled in the ice age franchise for a bit i think he like wrote the third movie ice age is dead nobody cares about ice age anymore but he like wrote a movie in some of the shorts in the late uh aughts early teens. And he has written, I believe, over 20 children's books. It's really funny if you listen to him on the Carson podcast.

He really just gets rid of the glamour of being a children's book author, where in his world, he sends a manuscript away to his publisher. And then months later, someone illustrates it who he never meets. Someone makes a cover. He never meets them either. Has no say in the artistic creation of that book. And then he just sees a book later and he can he was complaining about the latest cover of his book on this podcast like have you seen this thing it's so terrible yeah he's also like i think he even says he's like a children's book author who hates kids but yeah famously childless uh children's

book author yeah but then again i mean uh lots of jay lena wrote a kid's book too and he's never had kids i mean they're just handed to celebrities who are bored of jay lena wrote a kid's book too and he's never had kids i mean they're just handed to celebrities who are bored like yeah you want to write a kid's book but mike reese is stuck with it like there's other famous people who are just like yeah i did my kid's book i'm out of here like jimmy fallon has a kid's book that i saw it seems like just an easy payday yeah yes yeah and it's really just for parents to buy a kid's book written by a person they've heard of so yeah that is uh is Al Jean and Mike Reese. Lots to talk about, but Al Jean,

mega important in the Simpsons world, obviously. And as far as I know, he's not going anywhere. Disney employee once more. The Simpsons will be right back. Tonight, make yourselves at home. The Simpsons will be right back. Tonight... Make yourselves at home. Hear that, Dad?

You can lie around in your underwear and scratch yourself. Are you listening to me? How do you tame the wildest family in town? Don't have a cow, Dad. Get professional help. You're sending us to a doctor who advertises on pro wrestling? Boxing, Lisa, boxing. There's a world of difference. Will group therapy cure the Simpsons?

You have the ability to shock them, and they have the ability to shock you. Just testing. Tonight at 8.30 on Fox 5. Hope you're enjoying this podcast as much as a gelatin dessert. And a big thank you to our guests this week, Nick Purr and Joe Pickett from Found Footage Festival. So much fun to talk with them. Everybody should be checking out their stuff, whether it's their videos of VCR Party Live, the many Found Footage Festival shows they're doing all around North America and even in Europe.

Thanks so much for coming on, guys. found footage festival shows they're doing all around north america and even in europe thanks so much for coming on guys and if you'd like to hear more of this patreon supported podcast then you need to head over where all our subscribers are patreon.com slash talking simpsons this is what me and bob do full-time thanks to the wonderful support of people like you who support us for five dollars a month on patreon.com slash talking simpsons for that five bucks you get to hear every episode a week ahead of time and ad free you could be hearing next week's right now and the same goes for our sister podcast what a cartoon a podcast where we go through a different animated series once a week plus you'd get to hear our many exclusive

mini series where we cover in the same styles talking simpsons futurama king of the hill and the critic plus there's over 20 different interviews with folks who have worked on the simpsons since day one in some cases many simpsons veterans telling exclusive stories to us in special interviews you can only hear in full if you're a Patreon supporter. So please consider heading over to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons today to support us. But if you want to go to the fancy levels of a cable-ready television, then you need to head up to the $10 level at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons for $10 a month. You get all that $5 stuff I just talked about, plus our premium once-a-month podcast, What a Cartoon Movie, where me and Bob break down a different animated feature film once a month.

Our most recent one was The Animatrixrix the anime anthology based on the classic matrix film franchise before that we did the iron giant toy story the nightmare before christmas a goofy movie akira batman mask of the phantasm kiki's delivery service spider-man into the spider-verse aladdin beavis and butthead do amer, Tiny Toons, How I Spent My Vacation, and more. You can hear all of those in full over 50 hours of Patreon-exclusive podcasts if you sign up at the $10 a month level at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons today! uh so on the director's side this is another of the interesting ones with dual director credit which uh implies someone was let go and the other person directed it. It indicates a non-trouble production. This one is credited to Greg Vanzo and Kent Butterworth,

which honestly, I think we're going to talk a lot more about Kent Butterworth in our Some Enchanted Evening one. So I'll just skip over that a little bit. Kent Butterworth basically was a guy with more of a Saturday morning background who was hired to oversee the simpsons and stylistically he did not mesh with what the simpsons wanted out of their animation he after doing some enchanted evening i think he was in the middle of directing this episode and they let him go but i think by like um guild standards he still got to keep director credit though i think they pretty much

erased everything and gave it to the other director greg vanzo who he was like a border on the show who just got handed it and this is his only director credit on the simpsons uh so let's go into the life of greg vanzo here greg vanzo is a key figure in the U.S. animation world for like the last 30 years. And though he'd only be a director on this episode of Simpsons and also the music video for Deep, Deep Trouble, he was a boarder and layout artist, a board checker, a layout checker. He has a ton of credits in the first and into second season that already defined the look of Simpsons and gave so much to the artistic style of the show from the beginning. On IMDb, Vanzo's first professional credits are on the My Little Pony TV show and movie in the mid to late 80s. But he then moved over to Simpsons during the earliest days after working on brad

bird's family dog short so he i'm wondering if bird after working with him on family dog was like i'm gonna bring this vanso guy over with me to simpsons so he did lay out some boards in about half the episodes of season one including he's one of the two borders on this episode which like that is crazy double duty of boarding plus direction on there and uh he had worked he'd worked through most of season one then on season two he did a little work including he's one of the credited animators on the classic opening of the show that season two premiered okay so the reworked season one opening yeah if you look at him on imdb he has like um a ton of simpsons credits but that's because he always was

in the animator for the main title in the in the opening but what he really did after the first season of the simpsons was head over to a little company called spum co and help with a six half hours of a weird show called ren and stimpy i honestly forgot how involved uh greg vanzo was in ren and stimpy and obviously i love that show so much let's forget about john k yeah other people made that show good he barely made it good yes he was holding them back uh we have a whole episode about we have two episodes of what a cartoon about ren and stimpy look those up but yeah greg vanzo uh part of some of the most important television shows in the 90s and in cartoon history yeah to go from simpsons to ren and stimpy like that is two big um forces of improving animation on television in

the u.s and ren and stimpy especially, it wanted the view of all the folks working in Spumco on it, and Greg Vanzo included, was like, let's elevate television animation. Let's do something more like the classic Warner tunes we all grew up on. You know, let's make stuff like Clampett and Avery and Jones did,

you know, 40 years earlier. And Vanzo, you know, he animated on a lot of stuff. Like he, he had, uh, a small animation thing going out of his garage with his wife, Nikki, who Nikki Vanzo was also a, uh, animation checker on Ren and Stimpy as well. And she worked on some season one Simpsons. I believe like, uh, his biggest Greg, greg animated like on fire dogs that was one of his first ones on ren and snippy honestly you should read the book uh sick little monkeys by our friend thad kamarowski can't promote that book enough it's really good uh and after season one of

ren and snippy which was a troubled production they get sold season two and that's when greg vanzo and his well really his wife nikki has this idea of like you know what we could run an animation production house like we've sort of been doing it out of our garage but what if we moved to south korea and opened up a place there we could oversee it and make sure it was better overseas animation than what the standard was in the 80s yeah i mean the overseas animators were talented at what they did but they were not used to making a quote-unquote good cartoon with full animation they were not trained to do that so the results they were getting back were terrible yeah i mean up to

the early 90s it's decades of uh you know korean animators who are very skilled very talented like but they're being told here is the smallest budget we will hand you we need this as fast as possible and we don't and reuse all you all you can because this is cheap like they it's it wasn't a lack of skill that made a lot of overseas animation bad it was just the machine that they were expected to do yeah and i i follow this ren and stimpy uh art account on twitter it's called the art of ren and stimimpy art account on Twitter. It's called The Art of Ren and Stimpy in artisan quotes, hilariously. But I noticed that they will post a lot of animation drawings from overseas and the best, cleanest ones are always from Rough Draft. Yes. Yeah.

So that was the studio. They started it out of a Van Nuys office that was the US side of things. But really the most animation was done out of rough drafts korean offices which opened up in the 90 early 90s and ren and stimpy season two were their first shows and for the standards like acom who were the overseas production house for simpson season one compare that to what rough draft was pulling off on the powder toast man and in the army now season premiere of ren and stimpy they were doing better work. And I think it was that the Vanzos were able to kind of bridge a gap of communication that had been lost through all the utilitarian art that the overseas animators were being tasked with up to that point. So, I mean, was it as good as some of the carbuncle ones maybe not

but they were close like sven holic that's a rough draft right and stimpy as well and it looks oh it's gorgeous i remember hanging out with uh ian and toby the creators of okko and we were talking about different animation studios and i was like oh who did that i forgot what i was talking about and ian was like rdk did that i'm like rdk what does that mean he's like oh yeah rough draft korea so within the animation world you just called rdk just rdk uh and yeah some of their earliest assignments at rough draft uh other than ren and stimpy they got some simpsons assignments they are co-producers on the deep deep trouble video because it was originally going to be done by the same people who did do the bartman vagra studios a hungarian studio but i think after the problems on do the bartman they're like let's uh greg vanzo you worked on do the bartman can you just do deep deep trouble out

of your studio not as well remembered of a video or song but i i prefer it it's a better looking video like man the hell vision and then Bart turning into the snail version of himself like that. That actually haunts me still. It's horrible. Horrifying, rather. And also some of their earliest work was like, they did animation on the Fern Gully film. Robocop 3 sucks ass. But there's a really funny commercial in it called Johnny Rehab for a action figure.

They did all the animation of that it's gorgeous just look up that commercial uh and also they were uh producing on the original beavis and butthead as well hey wow so i won't belabor this uh with a constant list of things but i did want to name a few of the episodes of ren and snippy that they worked on like some of the most notable ones and the best looking ones like Ren's Toothache, Rubber Nipple Salesman, Sven Hoke, like you said, Mad Dog Hoke, the wrestling episode, Dog Show, one of the few George Licker cartoons, Fake Dad, Stimpy's Fan Club, Vista Anthony. There's just like a huge, huge list. And they're all these gorgeous looking episodes. And also the Vanzos like through Rough Draft, they really helped pioneer cgi being on television animation like

scott vanzo joined the company too and he was kind of the head of their cgi division he's the one credited with um the beauty and king dork animation in the critic as well which that was another of their early jobs like uh greg vanzo his connection with the simpsons even when he moved to korea after season one continued for a long time once the deal we talk about how the deal with klaski chupo ends at season three but i also think the exclusivity with acom ended when the klaski chupo thing ended acom was still doing some animation services but in season four starting with homer the heretic Draft was also doing production on Simpsons. And Homer the Heretic, that is a gorgeous episode, too. At the same time, they were doing the animation for The Critic, and Vanzo's company has stayed in the reigning orbit for such a long time. They did The Critic,

they do Futurama, which one is a perfectly fitting for their cgi abilities too and disenchantment they're still the production company on that as well also a gorgeous show i believe they have been the animation studio on all or at least the majority of spongebob shows too okay and tons and tons of other shows i could list shows all day uh but i did want to mention one more that was folks folks should listen to our What a Cartoon about The Max, because Greg Vanzo was heavily involved directorially, not just as most of his credits on a lot of those shows are like, Greg Vanzo, animation director. And he's just overseeing all the animation in a general umbrella sense on the Korean

side. But on The Max, he is the director of episodes. Yeah, and that is aged better than digital animation made 10 years later. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a real thing that Rough Draft brought to it that I think a lot of other production companies had to catch up with and have.

But it was finding a way through art direction to make CGI work within the show better, better you know or work within a 2d animation in a less obtrusive way and yeah they've animated over 200 episodes including they just did one in the current season so rough draft still takes on animation services for simpsons they also produced many of the simpsons commercials we enjoyed they vagra had done those before but then when there's you can see a stylistic change in butterfinger commercials at a certain point yeah that's when rough draft took over just thinking of how good all the space mutants commercials look yeah yeah yeah and uh and also they did animation services on the simpsons movie

too and greg vanso has a sequence director credit on that film so even though he's not like you know a mark kirkland or a wes archer kind of figure in simpsons animation and this is his only directed episode of the simpsons greg vanso's fingerprints are all over the show up to today like he's his reach on the show is is massive so i assume uh was he working on ren and stimpy and the simpsons concurrently i believe once uh i think it might have been concurrently or like simpsons season one ended and then he moved over to production on the first ren and stimpy because i know the pilot which we've all seen a billion times uh the big house blues pilot yeah it was completed in december of 1990 and screened for the first time

and the series started in september of 91 yeah then i think definitely he was yeah i would bet his simpsons work probably ended early 90 and that would get free him up to work on the season one of uh ren and stimpy shorts and then by season two of ren and stimpy slash season two of simpsons that's when he and his his wife nicky were starting the project of opening up their own animation studio in korea to oversee uh to oversee overseas animation it's funny uh brother from the same planet right that's the name of the episode with the red and peppy parody yes yeah it's it's not even a parody just like an ad for reynolds simpy like we love reynolds simpy here's rey Stimpy scene drawn by a Ren and Stimpy artist.

I believe Chris Riccardi did that for them. It looked Riccardi as hell on that one, which that was really cool of them to do when Simpsons and John Kay were not the nicest of positions usually. No, they took the high road with that. And look who won. Look who won. And honestly, it's their mistake forever having him come on to draw something for them. But that's another story. Yes, we'll get to that in about eight years.

Who knows? But why don't we talk to our guests now? Well, Nick, you've talked about how your work has brought you into the world of The Simpsons, too. Have you guys had a lot of contact with, especially the writers of this, Al Jean and Mike Reese, any? I don't think so. I remember, yeah, no, the table read we were at, I think Ian Maxton Graham was there, and he was a fan of our show

and mentioned that. But that's about it. I don't think we've really had a – we're sort of on the peripheral of show business, so I think we haven't really crossed paths with too many writers and i mean we should say to nick officially on the microphone here thank you thank you so much so much for getting us into the table read thank you nick turned a plus one into plus three through hollywood magic yeah well it's our our friend

mark who had had the connection so um but yeah i, it was a shame that you hadn't gone before that. It needed to happen. But yeah, us whining about it to you finally helped save the day. We should whine about more things. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Yeah, so season one, this one also is written by an ALF guy, and I know you guys have a love of ALF as well. Nick is more ALF-obsessed than I am.

I appreciate ALF, although I don't think I've ever seen an entire episode. Really? Wow. Our family didn't watch it. My viewing was dictated by what my parents watched. They didn't watch that. Nick's family, he comes from a comedy family, so they didn't watch The Dukes of Hazzard. No, no action shows, only sitcoms.

Yeah. And, well, you have at least a couple of puppets in your recording space. Yeah, did you have any of the Burger King elf puppets at all? Hell yeah. Yeah. Oh, I think I still have one somewhere. Do they have the suction cup things? Those don't, but their puppets, there was like the Bruce Springsteen one, the chef, the Hawaiian shirt elf.

I definitely had chef in the guitar one. Yeah. I definitely had those. Was there a girl Alf, some sort of girl version of Alf Puppins? The cartoon, he had a girlfriend Rhonda in the cartoon. I remember I had some beanbag girl Alf doll. Yeah? I don't know where it came from.

It might have been Rhonda. Well, that's a separate podcast. But Al Jean and Mike Reese wrote for Alf right before this. Oh, did they? Yeah. podcast yeah but al gina mike reese wrote for elf uh right before this oh did they yeah yeah just just recently um because uh i had a an elf drive on our vcr party internet show where i said hey if you have a burger king elf puppet my goal is to make a ball pit that that i i and people who want to can come and jump into a giant pit of elf puppets. A flea-ridden ball pit of elves.

Yeah. And so we got, I think, over 100 elf puppets. Wow. And in the meantime, they're just kind of sitting around, so I made an elf fur coat out of them. I just kind of pinned them all together. It weighs like 90 pounds. Oh, my God.

And when you get all those stuffed animals together in one place, it's kind of disgusting because they're all kind of matted. Yeah, there's been like kids drool on it. For 30 years. 35 years of kids drool. Yeah. Like all the cigarette smoke they've absorbed over the years. I posted a picture, though, of me wearing the elf coat, kind of doing a twirl.

And some guy who I guess I was friends with on some social media said, hey, I used to write for Alpha, and I love the coat. He's like, if you ever want to get lunch, he lives in New York and is a comedy writer. And I was like, oh, God, it's all coming true. This is so great. He could put you in touch with Paul Fusco. Well, that's my goal, is to have Alpha be on our internet show. Then I can die happy.

He still is trying to bring Alpha back. I think he can do it. Yeah. I mean, so Mike Reese, he's out of Hollywood for the most part. He will throw anybody under the bus and burn every bridge because he's a fun, you know, storyteller guy. He has nothing but nice things to say about Alf, and so does Al Jean. It was like a nice comedy factory.

It was a nine to five job. There was no drama. The actors hated it. Right. And I don't know if the guy who created the show was happy, but it was like the head writer ran a very nice writer's room, apparently. It's good to hear. I know Jerry Stahl was going through some stuff during that oh yeah permanent midnight and all

that oh that was him yeah that's right that was like ben stiller thought he'd get an oscar kind of movie there which i i watched it thinking it was going to be a comedy and i was like oh no this is the dark midnight of the soul kind of movie though. Then Andy Dick appears for like two minutes and doing just silly. It becomes a comedy movie when he appears as like a recovering addict in the movie. It's really weird. I should rewatch that. I just realized though,

like how many formative things were from 30 years ago. Cause I just saw that the 30th anniversary of They Might Be Giants Flood was out. And that was like the biggest album of my, you know, I think we were just at the right age. I was like 12 at that time, so Batman came out the summer before that. The Simpsons came out that Christmas. Flood came out

in April, I think, and then Alpha was going strong. That was the year you became a man. It was, yeah. Mario 3. Oh, Mario 3. That was a game changer. That'll be in the history in a couple episodes. Yeah, the Flood album, it's funny.

Flood is one of the most important albums to me as a kid, too. But I didn't hear it until they made their appearance on Tiny Tunes. And then I got the album afterwards, because that's where the two songs were on. Yeah, me too. Yeah, when it hit the 30th anniversary, I just pulled it up on YouTube. And I was like, I'll just listen to the whole thing and just get transported back to a a lonely nerdy childhood uh but a happy one uh but yeah this so this episode of the simpsons it is they remark on the commentary that this is all wrong everything's wrong about every character in it because it's homer is embarrassed by the family and he tries

to make them all improve and And also Marge gets drunk and acts up. Everything's wrong. I was expecting to hate it because season one I never watch. But you know what? I felt like there were some redeemable things about this episode. The way that it ends. The way that the whole thing ends with them being brought together

by failing and then going out and buying a huge TV. That is a big theme in the first season is success through failure. And this feels like a pilot for a different version of the show based on the shorts. It feels like this could have been a different series altogether with these different relationships.

Like Lisa is barely figured out. Marge is just as lazy and drunk as Homer would be in the future. It's very weird. And hideous clothes they've got on in this episode. You can totally see that Gene and Reese had just watched the shorts and they're like, this is what simpsons is it's the shorts we'll just expand a little bit on that like that's why bart and lisa are just doing crazy like the stuff they

do at party is basically them in the shorts where they become the uh the jungle people or they just do crazy crap in that one and then the pag short... The pagans, the pagan fun episode. At best, in the shorts, like Lee said, was just a little smarter than Bart, or could at least outsmart him. But she wasn't the super sensitive genius that we would know her as in the future. And did Homer in the shorts... Not that he isn't kind of stupid in the shorts,

but he's much more just this force of order, like he is in this, like, hey, family, we're going to do this. He hasn't full he hasn't anywhere near the stupidity or laziness that we define homer as but it is fun to return to these episodes and this is also like i think when they're finally starting to get the animation the way they want it to be like this is the fourth in production i think it is so they correct uh they correct smithers the backgrounds are a little more together there's

still some wild looking characters in the background but mostly they've got their stuff figured out i think yeah and i feel like this is a testament to for tv shows to give a for executives to give a tv show more than one season you know because i could i feel like in this day and age they would have canceled this after season one. And I don't think they would have given it a second chance. If it hadn't sold all the merch, it was just done. That's the only, I mean, yeah, I think that nothing gets that much of a chance these days. They're like, our Simpsons pants sales are through the roof. We've got to keep this show on the air.

Bart's buying everything. But have you ever seen, like, in a TV show, a jump from season one to season two so extreme? Because season two is fantastic. Yeah, no, I think it's hard to imagine. Maybe Seinfeld? Yeah, well, because Seinfeld's like six episodes. Like, it and The U.S. Office are both like, they're such mini seasons. They're the same with Parks and Rec.

They're just these mini practice seasons. And then season two's the real first season in a lot of ways. I think the difference is that in season one, they were learning to do this for the first time when like with seinfeld and you know married with children and other shows that improved they had made sitcoms before but these people were learning how to make an animated sitcom for the first time which is why like season one was training season two is like okay we know how to do this and here's what works here's what doesn't and uh yeah this episode begins with them getting ready for the big party at mr burns's place i think they uh gene and reese the second they saw like mr

burns was such a big part of homer's odyssey they're like we gotta put this guy like we're already into this guy we're gonna start at mr burns's home and just dig in there and apparently he was not uh named oh yes uh they didn't have a name for him because so a lot of simpson season one characters we talked about it before they have really embarrassing names based on who they are and the working name for mr burns according to al jean was mr meanie like m-e-a-n-y yeah it's uh because he was a mean boss yeah i guess they should have got kevin meanie to voice him oh that would be great all right r.I.P. But yeah, and Homer also enters the first scene wearing a striped shirt that he would never, ever wear.

It blinded me the second I saw that striped shirt. I thought that was his company picnic wear. That would be company picnic Homer in the action figure line. Oh, wow. They could sell that variance. Well, and also like homer almost never wears shorts either like it's just it it makes sense it's like yeah it's your dad at the company picnic he wears shorts and a polo shirt but yeah in in design and actual action it just

is glaring and crazy looking i think between this and the uh the jello molds it's really drawing upon like the 60s dad stuff from the shorts, and in early season one. Yeah, it's what all the writers grew up with their parents doing. I think company picnics were kind of an antiquated thing, too. I mean, maybe not, but I remember my dad going to some in the 80s, and

the one thing I remember is he won a Laserdisc player at one of them. Oh, nice! But Mr. Mom, they had a big thing where they couldn't let the boss win the relay race, too, and Michael Keaton had to, like, he wanted to win the race,

but then he had to kind of make it so that his boss, Martin Mull, won. So that just must have been a trope or something. Oh, yeah, impressing the boss. The boss is coming over for dinner. That's the biggest sitcom trope of all time. You're right. It is a little bit

of a cliche in this case. And Future Burns would never have anyone over to his property. There would never be a company to take on his grounds. I mean,

just seeing people milling about his home, I'm just like, what is happening here? They'd be in cages. Season three, Mr. Burns would have caged every single one of them.

I wonder if that was the first mention of the hounds too. I feel like maybe that episode is the first time he ever mentioned the hounds. This definitely is. They have a lot of him figured out right now. Yeah, yeah. But actually let's hear our first clip here of everyone getting ready for the picnic.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah.. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, what's the problem here? We were fighting over which one of us loves you more. You were? Oh, well, go ahead.

You love him more. No, you do. No, I don't. Yes, you do. No, I don't. Look, you'd better get this all out of your system right now. I don't want you embarrassing me at my boss's picnic. Mmm, marshmallow. Homer? I'm trying to get at least some of the unfortunate noises out of my system while I can, Marge. I don't want to

embarrass myself at the company picnic. Are you sure that's enough? You know how the boss loves your delicious gelatin desserts. Oh, Homer, Mr. Burns just said he liked it once. Marge, that's enough? You know how the boss loves your delicious gelatin desserts. Oh, Homer. Mr. Burns just said he liked it. Once. Marge, that's the only time he's ever spoken to me without using the word bonehead. So you guys are both from the Midwest, right? Yeah. When you were watching this in 1990,

were you aware of these weird jello desserts with things floating in them? Yes. I had no idea. Absolutely. I worked at a grocery store. Wow. I didn't even know about these until much later in life. I had no idea what this was supposed to be. Oh, a Midwestern deli in a grocery store in a Piggly Wiggly. It's all different kinds of marshmallow gelatins. Yeah, yeah.

I might be misremembering this, but I remember my grandmother would make those Jell-O's and she would make an orange one that I believe had celery in it. Yeah. Is that a thing or am I misremember imagine that i think it is i think that they had all sorts they went batshit with that with the gelatin like they yeah i mean in the 60s that looks magical yes yeah i think it's more about the look of it than it is the taste of it yeah if you go to the i think the twitter kind of 70s dinner party you could see that at a point in time they thought like jello was the end of desserts. Like, there will be nothing more than this.

So they're putting everything in it, like meat and celery and all kinds of disgusting. Mayonnaise. Disgusting, disgusting things. More disgusting than they show last night. Sorry, Henry. Well, that's not being a bad farm. No, no. Yeah, also, well, speaking of gross, like Homer reaching into it to pull out just one marshmallow and eat it. And it retains its shape.

And then burping immediately after. That's the first time Homer has burped in the series. But he did burp at least once in the shorts. It's the punchline at the burping contest, Allman Shorts, as Homer comes in and burps. To hear a burp on TV in 1990 only on Fox. I'm not even kidding. It just seems like that felt like they were crossing the line. Even the kids fighting over not wanting to love their dad more.

I mean, it's easy. And this is very old man gazing back. But that was so refreshing. Not only was it just seeing funny drawings animated at an influential age is fun to watch. But that sort of subversiveness was pretty rare. And it's weird, because I remember my dad and people saying, oh, you've got to watch Lenny Bruce, and then kind of being like, eh. Mark Saul, they've got a newspaper out.

But they're like, no, but at the time, that was revolutionary. But they did something different, because Married with Children was also subversive like that. The kids would bicker about who hated their dad more. But I don't know. I don't know what the difference is. Maybe the fact that it's animated or... I think it's more cleverly presented in a way.

Married with Children would have just been like, you love dad more. No, you do. But instead, they start with like, no, you. No, you. There's more of a Harper's thing to it. I mean, I think Married with Children primed the audience For like a crude hateful family Simpsons seems kind of sweet By comparison

Did you guys watch that show? Oh yeah Constantly Listeners have heard this story before I got in trouble for quoting Married with Children as a child in class Because I didn't know what the word slut meant, but it was said on the show,

and I said it in class and got in a lot of trouble. You probably got some laughs, though, right? I would hope the teacher at least stifled a laugh. That's important. Now, on the same night as the Christmas special first aired, there was a two-parter Married with Children special, and I watched it again last month, and I was like, I can't believe my parents let me watch this.

It's just like, it's irresponsible. No child should see Sam Kinison that much at that age. Nick, your family didn't watch it. You're a comedy family. Yeah, no. Married with Children was not, I mean, it's not like it wasn't allowed, but it was not a show. My parents thought it was vulgar and dumb, so we didn't watch it. But I'm guessing it doesn't hold up, right?

I actually was surprised at how funny and well-written it was. Really? Going back recently to watch a few. Yeah, it wasn't the toilet flushing show, as the Simpsons would have you believe. No pig. And I looked this up on Frinkiac. No time has Burns ever called Homer bonehead.

He's never said that. Bonehead. Though Carl does call Homer a bonehead in the episode Hello Gutter, Hello Fodder, where Homer bowls the 300 in season 11. It's another famous Homer suicide attempt, I believe, in that episode. Yes, yes. Acts 2 ends with Homer trying

to kill himself. Yeah. I'm so impressed with you. How do you remember the bone? You remember the bone headline. I just tip my hat to you. I just wanted to take this moment to tip my hat to you. Thank you. Joe's not wearing a hat uh the the simpsons then arrive at burns's place and this is like this is also the first citizen kane burns reference the show did too like it's it's really xanadu like the reveal of it though and also they do much more involved xanadu references later it's also mixed with like a

reference to batman the tv show stately burns manor yeah like stately wayne manor which like yeah citizen kane and batman references would define simpsons for many many years to come in the show especially citizen kane but uh and then there's also another like cute line of homer saying like i want your love and or respect and that part's like i'm picking respect that's this there's cleverness in this episode for sure uh and so the family comes into burns's place uh he welcomes them and like the family that burns fires for not being um properly uh respectful like they they also are very crazy looking their hairline is really nuts I think The kid's voice is somebody else's Whose was it?

Ralph or something? Hayden it sounded like He's got that weird Archie hash mark in his head To that kid And then the flesh hair Never good But yes we get to also see the first white Smithers During this next clip

Afternoon Mr. Burns Ah hello there Yes, we get to also see the first white Smithers during this next clip. Afternoon, Mr. Burns. Hello there, Simpson, Homer. Here you go, sir. Ah, oh, yes. Oh, and this must be your lovely wife, Marge. Oh, look at little Elisa. Why, she's growing like a weed. And this must be Bratt.

Don't correct the man, Bratt. Oh, boss, growing like a weed. And this must be, uh, Bratt. Bart. Don't correct the man, Bratt. Oh, boss, look what we brought. Gelatin desserts. Oh, for the love of Peter. That's all anybody brought. Some damn fool went around telling everyone I love that slimy goop. Well, toss it in the pile over there.

And make yourselves at home. Hear that, Dad? You can lie around in your underwear and scratch yourself. Now you listen to me. Trouble, Simpson? No. Just congratulating the son on a fine joke about his old man.

Homer would have been fired for strangling his son in front of his boss, I think. He was right to not do that. Mr. Burns hates children. He could have appreciated it. Mr. Burns is making an effort, though. He's trying to get the...

I mean, it's a softer, gentler... It's not, I want to club them and eat their bones. It went a long way. Burns who says, make yourself at home to guests. That isn't him at all. And the card reading thing, I think, is a Reagan poll, where Reagan would have... Because his brain was dying.

As many famous politicians' brains are dying. He would have information about his brain was dying as many famous politicians brains are dying he would have information about people written on cards to remind himself so yeah but i mean his voice isn't fully reagan yet either though burns it's uh it's close getting closer with this well not all the way there so yeah this this smithers is post black smithers but he doesn't have his brown coat yet or his gray hair it's still blue hair like lab assistant smithers but he doesn't have his brown coat yet or his gray hair it's still blue hair like lab assistant smithers yeah it's so the so this is really where smithers smithers goes through such a change in his three appearances from homer's odyssey to this and then telltale head because in homer's odyssey he's basically a lab technician who like presents the kids stuff in this one he

really is the toady to burns and then in the next one is when he admits he is he is in love with burns it's the first joke about him being in love with is it always the same voice yeah it's always the same voice uh harry's doing and he figured it out from the beginning yeah even when it's black smithers it's still the same yes yeah yeah i think i think that was the first african-american character harry sure voiced in the show one of many carl didn't get a line for a while there and then there's hibbert yeah oh yes yeah which that's based on julius sweeney but that's that's another i thought it was based on bill cosby well let's not talk about him uh but also yeah the giant pile of jello desserts that's pretty fun great foley on that

i don't know what made that noise but it's uh it's very good sounds like uh the sheet of metal i just imagine the sheet of metal you see in the videos of like this is the thunder old-timey radio then the kids just go running wild that is where it really feels like they're just taking from the shorts and they're like oh well what are they doing the shorts well they did this then marge meanwhile like meets another wife like it hit me here of like nobody none of homer's co-workers in the future any of them seem to be married they all are apparently single but this is like 80 different wives at the company picnic yeah none of these i mean we don't have the normal cast of co-workers yet no not even charlie's there yet they i think lenny will

appear in uh the life in the fast lane i think that's his first one i think that's why homer doesn't talk to anyone at this party you just don't see him anywhere outside of chasing bart and lisa around yeah and uh i don't you know burns really trades up later he has goose here geese is here but he'll have peacocks in the future that that homer will step on and kill these are swans oh i'm sorry yes all right that's fancier that is fancier i yeah but lisa lisa is just crazy here too she's she has like one smart line later in it but mostly she's just as uh as rambunctious as that bart simpson so then as homer catches part they are sent to their mandatory sack race uh against them. I do think I did go to a... One year, my dad's work did a company picnic as a kid,

and we went to that. I think I tried to avoid as much physical activity as possible there. Can you imagine... You guys both worked for a video game... Website. A press website. Can you imagine if that company had a picnic? I just try to think of any job I had having a picnic.

Like a Christmas party was a stretch. They probably did like a holiday party or a Christmas party. There'd be like free bagels the day before you left for Christmas. That's basically it. Yeah. No sack races? No sack races. The last place me and Bob worked at had a Christmas party planned,

but then on like December 1st, they laid off 20% of the employees, and they're like anybody everybody's left we're not doing a christmas party it's a christmas party's over actually we did it wasn't exactly field day but it was like what burns did in that uh it was before you came on there bob but we did have a boss who was like oh come to my mansion check it out like we'll have a day at the mansion and it really did just feel like he was trying to put us in our place kind of thing not really it was it wasn't very fun it felt like uh maybe he was trying to be fun but uh but we didn't have enforced uh sack races which like the again a real cavalcade of freaks uh in the lineup for the sack no no employees we ever see again i've never

done the sack race i've done the three-legged, which I think is a cousin to the sack race. I'd rather do a three-legged race. I mean, in that case, you only need rope instead of, what, like 50 burlap sacks? I remember using a burlap sack, putting the burlap sack, your legs together and walking like that.

But this is not that. I was wondering, how does the father-son thing fit in? Are they together? I guess it's fathers and sons are all competing there okay but it has to be fun but against mr burns that also i guess larry where's larry burns i guess also with like the uh it feels very old-timey in that it's like uh just a father and son thing not like parent and child it's it's a it's a more old-timey gendered uh thing there too uh but i

like that there's the exception that everybody knows Burns is supposed to cheat. It's just fully agreed upon. And then Bart being the rascally is, won't let that stand. Go! Whoops. Gotcha! Whoa, careful, Dad. Blow a gasket

and you'll lose your job. Now hear this. The father-son sack race will begin in five minutes on the north lawn. Participation is mandatory. Repeat, mandatory. That is all. You remember the rules from last year? Yeah.

Shut my mouth and let your boss win. Hey. I don't know who to love more. My son Joshua, who's captain of the football team, or my daughter Amber, who got the lead in the school play. Usually, I use their grades as a tiebreaker. They both got strideis this term, so what's a mother to do? Mm-hmm.

Well, I sense greatness in my family. Your family? Well, it's a greatness that others can't see, but it's there, and if it's not true greatness we have, we're at least average. I don't want to alarm anyone, but I think there's a little apky call in this punch. Really distracted by all the circus music in the background. That music sucked.

I never noticed it until listening. The music in this episode is weird, too. Once we get up to the waiting room, there's that Love is Blue song. Yeah. For some reason, they use that song. Yeah. There's that Love is Blue song For some reason they used that song Yeah, a big trademark of this season Is just constant background music Often library stuff, often licensed music

They were just overthinking it They're just like, we need sounds constantly We can't just have any silence The footsteps are loud, everything is squishy and squeaky Maggie is sucking over dialogue It's a noisy show I don't want to be meaner To original composer

richard gibb but that that music in the background is just so distracting here but i guess it's not to notice i never noticed it when it was i was seeing the visual at the same time but just in this audio was like god that music behind marie couldn't even hear the dialogue i was just fixated on that music richard gibb was he in all the, was that just a season one guy? Just season one, yeah. He came over from Ullman to do this, and then after season one, they got Alf Clausen. They'd have until they fired him three years ago, I think. Who also wrote music for Alf.

He really did. The perfect choice. Alf on Alf. But Richard Gibb probably didn't know how to do animation, right? He wasn't an animation guy. I'm i'm defending oh yeah no i think in his case it was just like hey you you were a composer on tracy olman this is tracy olman spinoff just you know do this like yeah i i don't blame him for not getting it you know it was the first time anybody on the show had done anything like it so yeah yeah homer grabbing away bart there to uh do it also the

marge marge meaning the the mother of the pretty baby that they just leave in front of the tv that's a funny joke there too and you can see the happy little elves for for just a second another season one favorites there yeah marge just getting drunk it's uh i feel like she's gotten drunk like four times ever in the show she really does it's always very funny they play this one clip all the time at the simpsons land it's the one where she gets drunk on long island iced teas oh yeah that one's really funny that was constantly that was in a loop there they should be selling long island iced teas then at the simpsons land duff gardens over there in that area yeah have you guys ever been to the universal? Yeah, yeah. Oh, pretty great. I went a couple years ago. Yeah, I've been a couple times. Oh, yeah, it was fantastic.

Hollywood or Orlando? Orlando. Oh, wow, yeah. Now I've been to Hollywood more times than Orlando. I don't know which I like more. Orlando's got more food things there. You can eat at the Frying Dutchman in Orlando. My only complaint is that Moe's is not a real bar.

I mean, you can order beer there, but it comes in a plastic cup, and there are kids everywhere. I want it to be like the 21 and up zone, Moe's Tavern. It wasn't dank enough for me. Not enough dank. No pee pee smell. And the less said about the color of the Flaming Moe, the better. Oh, yeah. Don't get me started. Orange?

It's orange and non-alcoholic. I mean, come on. You have to bring your own cough syrup from home. You know what else was weird Is to hear a southern accent You don't really hear southern accents that often Unless it's Cledis Unless it's mocking the entire south As inbred rednecks

The rich Texan, I guess That's about it Like a crazy millionaire or the poorest white trash Has a southern accent in the show Yeah, actually having a fancy woman Or a woman who's stationed above Marge Like a crazy millionaire or the poorest white trash has a southern accent in the show. Yeah, actually having a fancy woman or a woman who's stationed above Marge have a southern accent. You're right, that's very different voice casting. Yeah, yeah. I like her humble bragging thing, too.

That also feels like more from a live action sitcom of this just kind of dialogue of manners. Of just like Marge having to hear someone else brag and she's like, my family's good too like this was a simpler time too was the joke that uh they were kind of trying to cover up their drinking or did they know or what because like let's have some punch in big quotes you know yeah i guess i guess i'd see it as they're all the women they can't just drink wine at the thing they don't want to be obviously drinking so just one woman spiked the punch and they're all just getting drunk together but in a more feminine feminized setting that's okay for them to do it wasn't like protecting children from that right i mean like we're like sensory and alcohol oh you know maybe i feel like adults were just constantly drunk

around me all the time as a kid there was nothing to hide well now that now everybody like kathy lee and hoda would always, like, drink wine. Oh, God, yeah. You know, like, they're always getting drunk. They celebrate their wine daytimes quite a lot, yeah. I go to a lot of breweries, and as a childless person, there are kids everywhere. Why are people bringing their families to breweries?

Oh, yeah. The kids, they've got to be bored. Yeah. Maybe they've got root beer for them, you know? Maybe, maybe. There should be a separate pen for them. I like how the second they turn on the TV with the happy little elves, the kids are all just mesmerized.

They do not move any time after that. Like, that's an early kind of statement about the power of television, I guess, on the show. They ripped that joke off on Rugrats, I just realized. A lot of season one is ripped off for Rugrats. The dummy bears in Rugrats are the happy little elves stand- one Is ripped off for Rugrats The dummy bears In Rugrats Are the happy Little elves stand in

And there's a joke About like a parent Turning on the TV As the babysitter And it's just It's this stupid Like treacle Yeah you're right

But that's the truth Though isn't it Like with my niece And nephew They turn on these YouTube videos And they're just Zoned in

Have you ever seen The like open up eggs Or something like that Have you heard of this Kinder egg Kinder Egg things. Mesmerized. Hypnotized into this. You know, from a certain vantage point,

I am jealous because when I was six or seven, if there was a TV show that was only opening Transformer toys, I would have watched it all day long. Yeah, I mean there are like child millionaires on YouTube who are just filming themselves playing with toys and opening toys and they have more money than all of us put together let's do a spec script for season 32 where maggie is transfixed by a

kinder egg opening oh there we go totally that's that's at least one act of the show there yeah yeah the kids i mean i know too was my mom told like, I was always mesmerized by the TV as a kid, too. Like, I watched it every second I could. Yeah, I mean, I had a working mom, a single mom, and I probably watched, like, nine hours of TV a day until the internet came around, and that was my new fixation. Remember when everybody said that that was bad for you? Yeah. And, you know, to watch all that. And I know so many people, myself included, who watched eight hours a day and were all functioning.

My eyes work perfectly. And we have good jobs, right? I mean, you guys have the greatest job in the world. Oh, well, thank you. I think we're tied. I think we're all tied here. Yes, you guys. Man, to be surrounded by VHSs all day and just a new magic to find everything.

The moral of the story is have your kids watch lots of TV. Exactly. When the economy collapses, they can make their own job. That's the ultimate moral. They all get drunk while, meanwhile, the game is played, and they have to let Burns win, which it's funny that even like, so Bart jumps ahead of all of them, gets way in the lead, and they still are all like in such a level of deniability

that they're like well no burns obviously won they just ignore that homer tackled his son to prevent him from winning and they treat burns like he won and that led to a very weird image you you tweeted out last yeah the shot of like burns like raising his hands and it goes on for too long and i think they put dialogue over it to sort of make it less weird. But I just tweeted it out. I frinky-acked the GIF. And it has like 100 retweets and 900 likes. Like people, this haunted other people too. This like weird Burns like raising the roof animation.

His images? Yeah, it's very strange. Oh, yeah. That's odd. Very weird. And he says like, those ones, eh? Those ones this year, eh? And the people behind him are quite freakish, too.

Yeah. But the burn cycle is so distracting. It's too fluid. Like, the hand motion is too fluid. It's like he's rotoscoped or something. And his tackling of Bart also looks very painful as well. And you know what I've noticed? There's a lot of, like, Bart-like people in this world.

Like, that bottom right of the gif. Well, that was a rule they'd later institute. It's like, no one can have the flesh hair or Bart or Lisa spiky hair. Even in the opening theme, there was an adult with the... The adult Bart at the bus stop? Yeah.

Or at the later and most tavern, there's one of the patrons at the bar also is just like, he's a lighter toned Bart with like his hair slick and Barney had the flesh hair too in the beginning but yes Homer prevents Bart from winning while Marge is having quite a time

oh no Bart no no no close one this year. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, I said, enjoying the shade. Hey, brother, pour the wine. Drink the drink that I have made. Hey, brother, pour the wine.

He's here at last, my one and only. Goodbye, friends, and don't be lonely. Hey, brother, pour the wine. March, I need you. Hey, did you try the punch? Snap out of it, March! You've got to come with me. The boss is going to make a toast.

Oh, I'm not much of a drinker. I picked the perfect time to start. Sounds like he's going to say, you. He's got something primed up there to call March. I guess if you don't count Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, this is the first song in The Simpsons? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Even though neither one is original.

This is a Dean Martin song. Do we have a clip of that? Yes, this was made famous by Dean Martin. It's Hey Brother, Pour the Wine. Here we sit and join the shade. Hey brother, pour the wine. Drink the drink that I have made. Hey brother, pour the wine.

Tell you why the day is sunny I'm in love with lips of honey Waitin' to see the way she walks Hey brother, pour the wine Oh, that's a great song. It's like a lusty male song, a very masculine bro-down song that Marge is singing. And I have to wonder if Julie Kavner knew

how much she'd be singing in this voice when she started doing this role. What's the name of that song? I'm going it down hey brother pour the wine you asked the hive minds uh and uh yeah that that song was written by the original david seville ross baghdasarian oh yeah the alvin and chipmunks the alvin and the Chipmunks? The Alvin and the Chipmunks creator, witch doctor, singer, songwriter, Ross Pegg Zarian. He wrote this one before that. So, yeah. I mean, that's such an easy.

I wonder if he wrote it for Dean Martin or once he finished it, he's like, this song about drinking. All right, Dean Martin. He's my number one pick. Did that song make it on any of the Simpson compilations, like Simpson Sings the Blues? I don't know. It should have.

I don't think it made it onto the TV albums. I think it's a licensed song, so they didn't want to pay for it. Oh, yeah. That's true. I was wondering in re-watching this if they would, you know, in like Simpson season 3 through like 12, would they take that leap from reality the way they, like, I felt like they were still figuring out the tone. Like, were they really doing this coordinated dance number, or was that a fantasy

sequence from Marge's point of view? Because, like, you know, like, what is the reality, you know? Yeah. That's a good question, yeah. I have to imagine Marge is just stumbling around, and she's just imagining this beautiful dance sequence. I think in season one, it's supposed to feel like that, yeah. And I mean, you know, in season six, we'll have the See My Vest song song which is supposed to be like reality that bart and lisa is watching but in this case yeah i think they it's more a fantasy in marge's drunken imagination i guess bart and milhouse go on the squishy bender and so there's some there's some

drug or drunk drunken flights of uh fantasy in that oh yeah or well they're not drunk. They're high on sugar. And they see cats, which has never been more popular. But yeah, so then we get Burns' toast, which has what would become his catchphrase for a time, I think. Musicians, cease that infernal tootling.

Thank you all for coming. March. Knock it off. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. March. But now it's time to say goodbye.

Please get off my property until next year. I suggest you don't dawdle. The hounds will be released in 10 minutes so there it is the first releasing of hounds reference on the show which i think by season 10 they make a joke that like oh the hound should be released and killing you i don't know what to tell you i think it's the last time they did a hounds being released gag the funniest part uh about that to me and one thing that always made me laugh in the simpsons is the dumb crowd think and the mobs reacting to things so like he's saying

i'm going to release the hounds and you leave and they all applaud and and it's like you know it's like give us how quimby or just tell us what to do and we'll vote for it you know it's just like i love the dumb mob that's easily swayed by things and, you know. Yeah. They don't slow down clapping or seem to realize what he said means they'll be torn apart by dogs in 10 minutes.

I think by season three, there would be no empty threat. He would just release the hounds on them. Yeah. I mean, they wouldn't have gotten on the property. Like, well, if you remember the Thanksgiving one, even if that's not too many episodes after this one, he releases the hounds on Bart for just being there.

He's like, oh, a child's here. All the hounds on this kid right now. Kill him. The line, infernal tootling, is probably my favorite line in the entire episode. Oh, yeah. Tootling. Tootling. They're having fun.

Infernal tootling. They're having fun with burns with old-timey words for the first time i guess yeah i yeah this burns his way the burns other than his line in the last episode uh homer's odyssey where he first appeared and he says like i haven't seen this kind of thing since jolson other than that he doesn't really have many like old man kind of things this this is much more the the goofy old man or well the angry mean old man that uh that burns is and uh and all these writers in this first season they were all baby boomers right like they were yeah there's no yeah there's no i guess gen x was watching the simpsons at this point yeah i think i think uh oakley weinstein must have been the first gen x uh hires they're like. I think like 66 counts as Gen X.

If you're born in 66, that's when they were born. I think by like five and six and seven, they're starting to get more Gen Xers in there, like David Cohen, too. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm starting to think that's why my dad liked this so much. It spoke to him, like this infernal tootling. No, my mom got all the jokes in it.

I mean, it was helpful for me to have my mom there watching with me because she could just explain references that made no sense to a seven-year-old who was just enjoying watching the Bart show for all the Bart fun. And I remember your dad always loved the turns of phrase. He would just get stuck on one line from a sentence episode. He still does to this day.

Rich Creamery Butter, the one that... You mentioned Rich Creamery Butter. Oh, he talks about Rich Creamery Butter. Anytime there's butter on the table, it's Rich Creamery Butter. That's sweet. Butter Oh he talks about Rich Creamery Butter Anytime there's butter on the table It's Rich Creamery Butter That's sweet Oh and on birthdays It's always Happy birthday

Happy birthday Happy birthday Boy or girl Awesome We do that for every birthday I love that I love your family That's wonderful

So then they're leaving And we get to meet Like the proto-Flanders family there Like Flanders exists in season one But he's've talked about before, he's a yuppie. He's not the perfect angel family. These are the Gammels? Yes. Named after Tom Gamble.

He's got a very interesting voice, Tom Gamble. He was a writer friend of Jean and Reese from their previous work. And then by season 10 or 11 tom gamble and max pross is co-writer they get hired onto the simpsons finally like the gamels and also professor frank are named after writers who would later then join the show so the gag of homer paying bart to kiss him it did it feels even weirder now like oh father paying his son to kiss him that seems odd but um in the script there's two bits in it they talk about where they they seem to think they're writing for a cartoon

show so they're like we need cartoonier directions so they mentioned the commentary that won the the fight between bart and lisa in their script they're like oh you know a big cloud with fists flying out of it like uh that's what their fight is and they wrote that bart turns like green and then plaid and disgusted at the idea of kissing homer and that got just like sliced out of the script like no that's not that's not what we're going for on this show yeah it seems like matt graining had pretty strict ideas about that from the beginning uh-huh yeah i mean he hated seeing even like too many tears like that's a cartoony amount of tears too many i think i made the right choice with the colors thing there yeah but what do you mean like he

likes he liked things to be realistic you mean like he didn't want like snoopy tears coming out yeah yeah he had the term rubber band reality where things can pull back so far before they snap back to like consistency and i guess like some things were too extreme for him but i think he was often like way too rigid about certain things. I think so sometimes. Which sort of made the show a little stiffer and not as fun to watch over time. I watched a roundtable on YouTube

with Conan and a bunch of the old writers and one guy, I can't remember who it was, but he was talking shit about graining. Or he was maybe being more passive-aggressive talking about, well, man, it's just... I would bet that's Jay Kogan. I mean, the phrase is, graining rhymes with complaining so no i heard uh yeah i remember that interview because that was the first time i'd

seen any of the writers talk about how tracy ullman sued them for money for the for the show and kogan was like yeah she sued us like screw her i think was gonna send him in and aljean was like yeah i'm not touching that that's all you that's all you kogan i think it was this guy that sent him in. And Al Jean was like, I'm not touching that. That's all you. That's all you, Kogan. Was it that he was a bad boss? Or was he just opinionated and just wouldn't budge, stubborn? He seems like not a bad boss. But I think he just has very specific views of what he wants animation-wise.

I think early on, before they knew it would be a hit, he thought like, this is my one break. This is my one shot to make a TV show and I don't want it to get messed up. So that's why he was very strident. And I think comedy writers hate authority. I mean, they're going to hate the man in charge no matter what and complain about him. Yeah. But I think,

I think, um, it, it was good to have that, um, guiding force that was strict because especially in things that, um, have now evolved like sensitivity

cultural sensitivities and things like that he was way ahead of the game in terms of being a portland you know yeah bleeding heart and and so like now the uh all that stuff has caught up and i think the simpsons holds up better than a lot of shows because of graining sort of guiding yeah his rules i think so too, yeah. And part of that, we heard that Groening rhymes with the complaining thing when we interviewed a guy who worked on the earliest Simpsons

games and got to hear all the rules Matt Groening had of like, well no, Bart looks like this, or Bart does this. So, but I think I like that he was so invested in his project, and I wonder too if that he was so invested in his project. And I wonder too, if sometimes those, I love all the old sitcom writers there, but I could also see that like they, Groening didn't go through the system like they did. Like he didn't have the pedigree of like, well, I was an assistant producer here and

then I was a associate producer and then a producer and then story editor and then show runner. and then I was a dissociate producer and then a producer and then story editor and then showrunner. Here he is like, this is a guy who went from cartoonist to shorts on Tracy Ullman to showrunner. And so I could see that causing a little like, you know, friction with some of the other folks in the staff. Yeah. Well, I mean, the seasons were defined by like the battle between Sam Simon and Matt Groening for who controls the show kind of then too and sam won the appu battle he did win that appu battle i also do like the gag that homer after he bribes bart burns judges that as like what a guy trying to suck up to me even though he's surrounded by

suck ups he does not notice but smithers immediately sucks up to him and he doesn't notice uh was that an intentional joke i think so some jokes in this are so subtle that only when you talk them out loud you're like oh that was a joke it just wasn't expressed as uh up front as simpsons would learn to later yeah i think i just realized that was a joke for the first time on my 60th viewing where he's like i've never seen such an obvious attempt to curry my favor and smithers is like yes very good sir very very good burns doesn't even react at all or sneer at him or whatever right uh and so then they head outside and homer sees the perfect family and uh he is a bit jealous of them even imagining them as like angels flying up into the sky uh all as he sees his own family is like demons which again like homer you are the one tearing down

your family this is such a weird opposite direction to go and it does feel more like like uh rose not roseanne even i like uh like an episode of home improvement would have been hit uh the dad saying you embarrassed me today we need to work on these things yeah let's hear the uh them singing bingo also just feels very old timey in that section too. There was a farmer who had a dog and bingo was his name-o. B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O was his name-o. Homie, get in the car. This is where you belong.

Yeah, Homer, Room for one more. One of us. One of us. One of us. One of us. Ha ha ha. We are. We are.

We are. We are. We are. We are. I like how satisfied and drunk Marge looks there. Yeah. She doesn't look fully sick or anything. She's finally happy.

And Maggie's just loose in the car again. We didn't know about child safety seats then. But yeah, that one of us chanting, that's the show's, I think, I'll say it's officially the show's first like dialogue repeating parody scene from a movie as in like we're just going to pose it and say the lines of dialogue from a movie to explicitly reference a film my guess was rosemary's baby on that one was that uh freaks one of us one of us gobble gobble gobble gobble and such a deep cut reference though and a very obscure movie

then i'm sure it's still obscure now but how would you how would you find that movie how would you know about it yeah i would think it's just like midnight screenings at the hip places in la did your mom explain that reference to you no i didn't get that one for years until i i basically had seen this is probably the first time i'd seen one of us recreated in something but i feel like every cartoon show did yeah and so eventually i just looked it up or i i somebody told me like oh it's from freaks like now you can just watch that one scene on youtube you don't have to watch the entirety of freaks to see that scene i i don't think i have seen that whole movie just just clips from i think i've only seen the one of us see it's like 45 minutes it's the shortest movie i've ever seen yeah it's uh that sounds like even shorter like carnival of souls yeah yeah all right um maybe i should make some time for that one give it a shot uh and i like

the demonic family design too those are great yeah they're especially they're just wavy and on fire pretty much and so then they come back from the break homer again totally out of character demanding the family not eat and watch tv at the same time and they eat together like this is so the homer of the shorts totally do you think this episode is on homer's side i kind of think it is after watching it with the yeah i think they the show wants the family to be better and homer they they agree with homer that they should be. Because I guess technically Marge does get drunk and the kids do act out. And Homer is solving things in the incorrect way, but is at least trying to figure things out, at least trying to improve things.

Did you guys eat dinner at the dinner table, or would you eat in front of the TV? Oh, never. Maybe like Christmas or some special dinner once a year. Christmas or Thanksgiving, that kind of thing, never. Maybe like Christmas or some special dinner once a year. Christmas or Thanksgiving, that kind of thing, yeah. We used our dining room table for board games and puzzles. I think we did that more than we did eat together, that's for sure. Yeah, in my family it was like, go to the kitchen, get the food, and then go to your separate TV and watch it. Yeah, a little slice of heaven, sounds like to me.

It's perfect. Did you have a TV in your room? I did, yes, with with cable one of those kids not good cable but still i got the yeah i got my own tv by age eight that's and then i was just glued to all television all the time did you get a vcr in there too or i think vcr wasn't until i was like 12 or something so i think a lot of it was parents thought for a long time video games would ruin your TV. So they're like, well, he loves video games. Just get him his own TV. He can ruin

that one. It blew up right in front of you. I'm still scarred from it. Now, yeah, you guys, for all your pop culture love, you guys don't seem like big gamers, though, right? Oh, I was brought up on NES. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah i had that like

right when it came out yeah for some reason i i planted my flag in the ground of sega so i had the sega master system always contrary wow yeah and uh no i just thought the graphics were cooler so i got the master system and everybody else had the nintendo and all the cool games i was playing like super baseball and uh yeah i remember playing Wonder Boy over at your place in like sixth grade. And I think it was a cool game. That's one of the best ones. We'll also talk about jokes that are not obvious until you think about them too much. Like they're watching a show about vultures, how the father feeds them and how he has to lead the rest of the family.

Then Homer comes in and tells them to eat together like that another like too subtle kind of joke i think and he turns the tv off right before the vulture is about to vomit so like both act two and act three open with homer coming in and turning off the tv as the family is laying around he prevents a lot of vomiting in this one they just take their tv trays to the table and that's when when Homer makes his prayer to God. Thank you for this microwave bounty, even though we don't deserve it. I mean, our kids are uncontrollable hellions.

Pardon my French, but they act like savages. Did you see them at the picnic? Oh, of course you did. You're everywhere. You're omnivorous. Oh, Lord, why did you smite me with this family? Amen. Let's eat. No no i'm not done yet but homer how long are we supposed to sit here and listen to you bad mouth us to the man upstairs i'm sorry marge but sometimes i think we're the worst family in town maybe we should move to a larger community don't have a cow

appearance right there I think he didn't say don't have a cow man before this It's changed up He said eat my shorts in Barth the genius so catchphrases you have cowabunga that was another one that's a funny one on the commentary they're

like oh he never said cowabunga on the show but he did he said he said it in the first episode of season two it's enough yeah yeah but uh yeah i was eating my shorts cowabunga don't have a cow man there was one instance of cool your jets man and i had that t-shirt did he ever say underachiever and proud of it or that was just the no i okay i think that was just a thing graining just love yeah do you think he wrote that do you think raining wrote the underachiever i think he did yeah i think well i do know that i do recall though like in bark gets an f a character i think it's jay lauren prior says like he's an underachiever, but proud of it. Oh, right. So he says it, but not Bart. Right. Okay.

And also like, I'm Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you? Like that's, that was his other catchphrase. It is really shocking to see how off Marge is. Like the most shocking image in this episode is her laying on the couch, eating a TV dinner. Yeah. Yeah. It's so wrong for her.

Well, Marge is just like kind of dumb in this one too. And she's like, maybe she moved to a larger community. Like that says she's written as stupider than Homer in this. It's so weird. There's a handful of season one ones where she's dumber than Homer. It's very much like Peggy Bundy laying on the couch eating bonbons style humor. Yeah, Homer's omnivorous thing. That's another.

That's a solid joke. I love that joke. Yeah, then we get into kind of a fun just time killer gene and reese and their uh scripts they'd like having these little scenes that are basically just a sketch and the sketch is visiting other houses to see what those families are like where they accidentally become peeping toms which is pretty funny and in concept the other first family i look at is incredibly freakish like they're supposed to be the perfect family yeah i mean intentionally freakish but not in the style of

the show no in any way they look like they're from duckman we said it in the live show yeah they're duckman characters i swear they look like they so everett peck was working at klasky chupa at the time he isn't in the credits but i swear that's's an every peck design. I think it might have just gone uncredited. Can I just interrupt here, going back to Duckman? Oh, sure. I did have a Duckman t-shirt, too. Oh, nice. Was it a what the hell are you staring at t-shirt?

That was his catchphrase. And it was way too big on me, but I still wore it. Official Duckman merch. Bring it back, I say. I need one of those. One of my favorite jokes with a friend of mine who's been on the show before dave ridden was how when duckman was airing on usa they would do ads on sister shows on usa like wwf raw and there's such a funny picture of jerry lawler wearing a duckman

is that when uh duckman corn fed called in and then corn fed calls in as well to promote it during raw it's it is very weird crossover we're still trying to make our duckman miniseries happen i swear it's gonna happen one day one of these we've done one episode uh so they leave the first house then they peep in on a second house where it's it looks like it's like grandparents caring for a child there they seem far too old to to be that parent a kid's guardian uh and they're the ones who say get the gun which that's another like recurring simpson statement of get my gun the second time homer was uh shot at yeah shot at in the christmas special for stealing the tree yeah that's right yeah so this is but this is the first time the whole

family has been shot at it's weird weird staging where they run about 10 feet and then they just start walking it's like well we're out of the range of this gunfire now they get in cover behind like a hat like a two foot tall brick wall and they're like it's like a cover-based shooter is happening now in this world uh yeah it's it's very it's very funny staging by greg manzo and his team on that one then you know homer and bart they arrive at their house and they don't recognize it's their house uh which i think you know i think they're just uh on adrenaline from almost dying that they don't recognize it i that's my excuse for that then another one that's like a too subtle of a joke kind of thing homer says like i want to be alone with my thoughts and then it cuts

to mo's bar so you're supposed i think the joke is you're supposed to be like he's gone out drinking he didn't want to be alone with his thoughts but now it's just normal like yeah yeah of course at mo's bar in the next three goes yeah uh but uh yes this this is not the first appearance of mo we've seen him a few times in the show before, but there is a first appearance in this next clip. Fans are getting just a little bit anxious here. Another beer, Moe. What's the matter, Homer? Bloody is fight of the year. You're sitting there like a thirsty bump on a log.

Eddie! Evening, Moe. Want some pretzels? No thanks. We're on duty. A couple beers would be nice, though. That'd be two bucks, boys. Just kidding. Good one, Moe. Listen, we're looking for a family of peeping Toms that's been terrorized in the neighborhood. Quiet, boy.

Let the nice people enjoy the views. Don't worry. This dog has to sit. Hey, what's gotten into Bobo? I got some wieners in my pocket. That figures. Come on, you stupid dog. That dog is the only good cop

in the entire Springfield Police Force. That's true. And there's like two minutes of original Harry Shearer dialogue in the background. Oh, the boxing? The fight commentary.

He recorded all of that. There's like, there's that, there's the sound of the crowd on the TV, there's the sound of the crowd in the bar. It's just so noisy.

Are there jokes in that Harry Shearer read? I was trying to listen it doesn't seems pretty straightforward to me i don't know maybe if you're if you found a way to isolate it or find that track he did sneak in some jokes but uh who knows i think that fight's supposed to well one of the boxers i think is supposed to look like 80s marvin haggler in there i think the the marvin haggler sugar rain leonard fight was like april 87 so not too long before this one. And they're still trying to figure out Moe's. And it's coming together, but there's still like this weird

foyer in which there are swinging doors that lead out to this, you know, mud room or something with a cigarette machine. It's, I mean, the background isn't as many floating objects, though, as we saw in, say, Homer's Odyssey. That one is much less defined, even. I love the joke about how he says it'll be two bucks for the beers. Like, the cops just expect to get free beer there. It reminds me of the Eddie Murphy SNL sketch where he's playing Mr. White, the white guy. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And he pays for the newspaper. Like, no, just take it. No one's around. What are you doing? Yeah. Now, I like the little beat where he says, like, just kidding, guys. And they're like, good one. Clearly, they looked at him for a second to be like, what?

You're not just giving us free beers? Like, oh, I was joking. Here are those free beers. Good one, Moe. They're on a first name basis. So yeah, Eddie and Lou, first appearance. Lou is white here, but he's named after some baseball player in the Detroit Tigers. Lou Whitaker! Sweet Lou! I had to look that one up.

I don't know who that is. I know Lou Whitaker. Yeah, I had his baseball card. It's because Al Jean grew up in Michigan, so he knew the Tigers pretty well. That was his team growing up. Lou was always supposed to be African American. He wasn't supposed to be

yellow in this scene. They just messed it up. I like too that they say like, oh, we're on duty, no pretzels, but we will drink. Like that's, that's pretty funny too. And that dog looks crazy also. Like he's like, he looks almost like a balloon animal. He has such extreme like dimensions too. Very cartoony.

Took him a while to figure out dogs, especially with Barth the General. And I always forget this episode has another very important line from Homer that gets kind of glossed over. But he mentions his mom and says, God rest your soul. I'll play the clip in a sec. But it is recognizing Homer's mom is dead. Homer is not saying out loud, my mom is dead. But he is letting the viewers know, this is why you never loud my mom is dead but he is you know letting the viewers know

this is why you never see homer's mom but you still see grandpa in the show and that would stay just that one off line it would just stay as fact that homer didn't have a living mother until they change it up in season seven here's the line is homer homer and Barty have like kind of a harsh bar fight. You know Mo, my mom once said something that really stuck with me. She said, Homer, you're a big disappointment. And God bless her soul, she was really on to something. Don't blame yourself, Homer. You got Delta Bad Hand. You got crummy little kids that nobody can control. You can't talk that way about my kids. Or at least two of them.

Why? You got two I haven't met? Why you? There's five you haven't met. And a tremendous right. That's just gunnery. Ladies and gentlemen, this fight is over. Thank you for the war.

Yeah, I guess that commentary there is meant to be double for what's happening in the screen scene, but it's not like jokes anyway. No. I guess I never took that God bless her soul to mean she was dead, but I could read it that way. I think that's how they're... Definitely, you wouldn't say God bless your mother's soul if she was still alive, would you? I don't think so, no. I don't think so. Because God's currently blessing her soul. Right. He doesn't need to be reminded

to... Right, is that how it works? Well, let's define her terms, gentlemen. Are you talking about redistricting or resounding? Oh, I don't have the jingle here. I'm going to put it in later. That's the needless pedantry jingle. Let's define our terms, gentlemen. Are we talking about redistricting or are we talking about reapportionment? Oh, well, can't win them all.

Well, also, I mean, let's talk about pedantry here. Homer says, here's five you haven't meant. They are four-fingered. Oh that i guess they wouldn't have known that when writing the script now when you read this is like more of a live action real thing homer just immediately punching barney like sucker punching barney at a barstool that's dark like if you were to imagine say i like even dan connor on roseanne doing that you'd be like that's a dark time for dan just socking a guy at a barstool but for some reason it seems like yeah it's normal homer punched his best friend in the face like hard and there's a fun shot of mo just looking down at homer on the floor not even reacting happens a lot yeah this uh i think

they dropped that too that barney can easily defeat homer in a fight like homer threw the first punch and barney still just took him out with just like one sock to the head maybe that's why homer's dumber after this episode is that he took extreme brain damage from this uh this beating from barney also like what they're two i haven't met that's a little too clever for barney to to say in the show uh but he But he's not as... They haven't fully discovered how awful they want Barney to be and how dark they want to go with it. And his hair was flesh-colored, too. Yeah. He stopped dyeing his hair after season one.

I think, actually, by Telltale Head, he's kind of getting... The brown hair. I think you're right, yeah. But yes, as Homer is lying on the barroom floor, he sees a commercial that will change his life. All-Star Boxing is brought to you by Dr. Marvin Monroe's Family Therapy Center. Huh? What? Honey, aren't you going to work today?

No, I don't think so. Honey, you have a problem, and it won't get better until you admit it. I admit this. You better shut your big yap. Oh, you shut up. No, you shut up. No, you shut up. No, you shut up. Oh, shut up. Shut up.

Shut up. Why aren't you both shut up? Hi, friends. I'm Dr. Marvin Monroe. Does this scene look familiar? If so, I can help. No gimmicks, no pills, no fad diets. Just family bliss or double your money back.

So call today. Dr. Marvin Monroe's Family Therapy Center. 1-800-555-HUGS. Why don't you call right now? When will I learn? The answer to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle. They're on TV!

That music cue is really strong. Again, Richard Gibbs did that a lot. The brassy, like, ba-ba-ba-ba. I don't know if that was a good parody of a commercial at the time, though, was it? I don't feel like commercials were actually like that back then. Commercials about depression? I mean, there were barely commercials about being depressed. I don't know.

I love the way Hankank is area plays that guy though yeah i think maybe the joke was like it was such a thing you wouldn't see just like the harsh reality of a depressed father screaming at his wife and a child walking in it'd be like are you feeling sad call this number now it'd be more like gentle and reassuring i think that part spoke to me but like the little reenactment at the beginning i don't know i don't know if i remember i don't think they'd go that extreme back beginning, I don't know if I remember commercials like that. I don't think they'd go that extreme back then, yeah. I don't think so. Talk about Dr. Marvin Monroe, though.

Yeah! I guess his voice, but not appearance, is based on this guy called Dr. David Viscott, who at the time in the early 90s was a very popular radio and TV psychiatrist in the Los Angeles area. Did he look like that? Absolutely not. psychiatrist in like the los angeles area did he look like that absolutely not no no just just but though not even he you can see the starting point for harry shearer's voice but it's not fully that he goes way raspier than than viscott yeah do we have a clip of him yeah here let me let me play a quick uh and why don't we actually like heal some hearing the voice of uh dr david viscott david viscott we're working on the, but that means this is an opportunity for

you to learn something that you don't usually learn on this program, something about feelings. You know that most people don't know how feelings work, and the truth is that if you don't understand how your feelings work, you really don't understand the world around you. The truth is, the way you see the world is in large part distorted by the feelings that you have not expressed, that you've held in, and that are causing you to see those unexpressed feelings in the world. I zoned out a long time ago. The pop culture, the pop psychobabble that he would do is what Marvin was based on. In the episode that was supposed to air first it was

essentially a parody of his talk show where people would call in and talk about their problems and you can see clips on youtube of that happening in the real world like people calling viscott and him helping them through their problems like a frazier style character maybe frazier was based on him too like the premise of frazier yeah you know his speech you're like well yeah you know actually it might uh frazier might really be based on David Viscount as well. And with some soothing saxophone music in the background. It kind of has a bit of a New York accent. Yeah.

Let's talk about feeling. Yeah. Again, I never heard of this guy. I mean, he died in the 90s, I think. He's been gone for a while, and then... He died after Marvin Monroe died. Yeah. But he came back.

I know he's not dead. Monroe did come back, yes. Don't correct us in these comments, all right? You know he came back. But yeah, Marvin Monroe, in his first appearance, he's a radio guy. Now he's already franchising out and doing, on top of his radio show a family help center and i like to that he's like no fad diets like why would a fad diet be involved yes and also it's a very gina reese thing that and that would carry over through so much of simpsons in plotting a

simpson watches television and then a commercial comes on that tells them which will be their next plot point and so i was like yes the tv told me what i'm gonna do in the next act but even just shouts it at the screen like they're on tv that's a great line i think gene and reese would often do like let's start an episode with a tv parody or start an act and i think two acts start with tv shows on so the first one was a nature documentary and this one is itchy and scratchy right yeah and let's talk about itchy and scratchy here this is their first appearance in series but they had been on the shorts as well uh just in one off scene they uh in the tracy holman season three short the bart simpson show they appear come basically the same it's a blue mouse and a black

cat but itchy doesn't have his orange vest on though that's the the one difference but yeah the itchy and scratchy come from the same place as the happy little elves of making fun of shitty hannah barbara cartoons but i think the writers and artists were way more into itchy and scratchy jokes of just obscene violence than happy little elves jokes about being boring yeah it let them draw gory looney tunes so they were way more into that that's what it's really about and it's also funny that marge with her future is just sitting on the couch watching the cartoon with them happily is she laughing along with it i can't remember was she was she enjoying that i think she was i mean i think

they're just sitting there silently aren't they yeah but they're smiling they're enjoying it together but yeah this this wasn't staged like so many other Itchy and Scratchies that end with a horrible thing happens on screen and Bart and Lisa just laugh uproariously. In this particular one, it wasn't that clever, though. There's the rib cage, and then they rolled his head through the rib cage, which usually Itchy and Scratchies, it's more elaborate, more horrifying.

In a Tom and Jerry, you wouldn't have seen a rib cage no that's so slightly it's slightly more extreme but not as extreme as a decapitated head a severed head yeah that's true pretty it'd be more of an explosion and then a blackface gag more acceptable i think for kids like one of the reasons the simpsons really spoke to me and my family and probably a a lot of people, is because TV was a central part of their lives. Yeah. And I think collectively we all watched 40 hours of TV a day, the four of us here. So to see, you know, like plot points dictated by what happens on TV

and the family watching TV, you didn't really see that. Even on sitcoms like Roseanne, it wasn't really, you know, maybe it was like they're watching the big game and you hear the sounds, but that was it. So that was also kind of a new thing. I remember in sitcoms, whenever they would finish watching, like on Cosby Show or something, they would finish watching the show and then they would immediately turn off the TV.

And I was like, that's not how it works. It's always on in the background. No, it stays on all day long. I think just like realistically, a live action show couldn't film parodies or, you know, make fake cartoons, but it could all exist within this world. Right. Just draw it. Yeah.

Through that function, it then let it express how much television and family really did watch. Like, that also, I mean, Lisa explicitly says it in this episode of saying like, well, you know, our family are more like the ones than they are on TV. Most families are like us. That's what this episode's all about. I think it's like Gene and Reese saying, here's how they're not a sitcom family like every other sitcom is. I'm just thinking, like, they would do TV parodies on Married with Children, but you just hear the audio of what Al was watching, like the Psycho Dad episode or whatever. Oh, Psycho Dad, yeah. So Homer turns off the TV and calls a family meeting.

And I like how Lisa says like, why can't we have a meeting when you're watching TV? That's another good line. And then Homer is saying like, again, it's time where this is such a proactive Homer who like does things like we, we just did season 10 episodes. And in those to get Homer to get off the couch, like takes immense effort from other characters for plot reasons. Uh, but they decide they're going to go there. Uh, though they are a little short on funds. Why can't we have a meeting when you're watching TV?

Now look, you know, and I know this family needs help, professional help. So I made us an appointment with Dr. Marvin Monroe. The fat guy on TV? You're sending us to a doctor who advertises on pro wrestling? Boxing leads to boxing, and there's a world of difference.

Gee, are you sure this is the right thing to do? Honey, I've given this matter a lot of study, and of all the commercials I saw, his was the best. Nah. All it cost is $250. We don't have that kind of money. Well then, we're just going to have to dig deep. Marge, go get the kids' college fund.

Hey! Oh, Homer. Oh, come on, Marge. Why scrimp now on the off chance that they'll actually get in someplace? 48, 49, 50. $88.50. That's it?

That's the college fund we've been saving for all these years? I guess I'd have needed a partial scholarship. That's the family can't afford $250, which I did an online inflation calculator. $19.90, $250 is like $500 now. But even then, a family that's not liquid for 500 that's they're in trouble like that's a that's a tough it's a tough situation so between the the hair jar of money uh bart's piggy bank and homer's odyssey and this there's like three plot lines about like three secret stashes of money it's true in the first four episodes that aired and uh apparently

in the originally in the piggy bank drawing that was crushed it had like you know blue eyes on it or like they they digitally changed it to black eyes uh when it aired because they the feeling was like it looks too real it looks like they smashed an actual pig open for it uh and also i like homer's delineation of like boxing and there's a world of difference between boxing and wrestling he knows both worlds i also like the uh of all that i did a lot of study of all the commercials i saw this was the best i think that's my favorite line that's a good one yeah that feels like contemporary homer like yeah that's yeah and this is yeah the very cash draft family like you know consider again season seven homer

will just pull 900 out of his wallet like it's nothing i think that was them saying you know what it doesn't matter anymore yeah story point needs homer to have money then he'll just have money let's not waste time any vacation is possible for this family now it's fine uh well hey they needed all those mega saver things to get that one vacation to japan they at least kept that in mind they then head off to pawn the tv instead like the family marching to a pawn shop is a very i feel like you wouldn't have seen you might have seen that on merry with children but you wouldn't have seen that on the cosby show the uh the the stalwart of uh family i hate even talking about it anyway uh there's also a gag of Marge wanting to pawn her engagement ring and Homer saying, you know that's not going to get us $250.

His objection is it won't cost enough money or it won't bring them enough money. In season 10, a joke establishes that Marge's engagement ring is made out of rock candy. He was right. Homer is right. And it took Marge until season 10 to realize it was made of rock candy. Homer is right. And it took Marge until season 10 to realize it was made of rock candy. They meet the pawn shop guy. Actually, this is a quick clip.

I love this pawn shop guy. I do too. No, Dad. Please don't pawn the TV. Oh, come on, Dad. Anything but that. Homer, couldn't we pawn my engagement ring instead? Oh, I appreciate that, honey, but

we need $150 here. Afternoon, Simpson. So what can I do for you? Would you pay $150 for this lovely Motorola? Is it cable ready? Ready as you'll ever be. Mister, you got yourself a deal.

I love ready as you'll ever be. Yeah. I guess Gene and Reese wrote in their script, no offensive accents on this guy. So I guess make of that what you will. It sounded like creepy Ned Flanders. Yeah, yeah. He's just this weird. You got yourself a deal. But he also like, the weirdest line to me is that he recognizes Homer.

He's like, what's that? Can I need you for Simpson? He's been there. Yeah. But they don't say like, oh, time to go back to the pawn shop or go into the pawn shop. It felt like a David Lynch character to me. The pawn

shop owner and then his hairstyle was kind of swoopy with weird teeth. Oh, yeah. And also that he looks like he's from another era and he doesn't leave his little window. Yeah. And there's not really a joke in there he doesn't really say a joke he just kind of says it in a creepy way and i don't think they realize they

could write like background gags because there's nothing funny in the pawn shop i think there's like a bazooka in the background on the wall maybe it kind of looks like one but there's no like sign gags or funny things i was gonna say the pawn shop it didn't have a funny name yeah i just said pawn shop right yeah they should have yeah you're right yeah and they i wish they'd remembered this character because i feel like he could have been as recurring and funny as a lot of characters on the show yeah like this the pawn shop and dr marvin monroe's a family therapy center there's no funny name like season two would have like a funny slogan under it or something like that but they weren't thinking that far in advance and so they head into the family therapy center and uh the like there's a

punk skinhead family first which bob you correctly identified where they're more famous from yeah this uh i guess the skinhead father he's actually they used him as the boss of mo's bar in the arcade game because i assume they're just given a bunch of characters and they're like he could be a boss let's use him yeah so if you remember in the Simpsons arcade game, at the end of Moe's bar, you fight, or I think actually he's a mid-boss. No, he is the boss. He's the last boss, yeah.

He's the boss, yeah. He's just like this guy who shuffles back and forth. Drunk. It should be Barney you're fighting, but I think they, I would bet Matt Grading probably had an objection to Barney being the villain of the bar. The first boss is like one of the wrestlers you see on TV in season two. I remember that, and then I don't think I ever had enough

quarters to get past that part. You need about ten bucks to beat that game. And right before you get in that room, you fight the father-son duo of mobsters. The gangsters? Yeah. That's such a weird... I like those characters. And then there's the I'm with stupid family, which that's just a crappy joke.

Badly drawn, not really communicated very well well and then the kind of funny joke that also is like too subtle of the happy family from the first act is there and they all hate each other now i think it was a lot for them to ask you to remember this family because there was such a brief exchange between them and homer i like totally forgot about them then another great line of like where marge is saying homer you've driven a stake through the hearts of those who love you and then homer says like hey no pain no gain that's uh a very weird exchange by homer uh he's counting all the money there's also a great line of like parts saying like well if you really want to be impressive the whole where our tv used to be

then there's the great gag of the not the good Simpsons version family coming out. Yeah, the after family coming out. And Homer with hair even, who is just Fred Flintstone. Another weird thing, and I brought it up earlier, is that the song Love is Blue is playing as the, but a Muzak version of Love is Blue is playing in the background. I didn't notice. Which I didn't know if that was, you know,

were they trying to say something with having that song? It was like a big song in the 70s. Weird. In season one, they did a lot of covers as background music that I think that probably cost them a lot of money for a thing nobody noticed. Yeah. Well, I listened to the song and it was a cover of it.

But I think they mues-acted it up a little bit more. Because it is kind of already a mues-ak-y song, but, you know. Well, just in the last episode, Homer's Odyssey, it's in Moe's bar, and it's playing that Patsy Klein song in the background, but it's a cover as well. I think they thought that would set tone better, but it's just kind of distracting. There's a lot more, like, diegetic music in the background. And in the future, if there was a song playing, it would be the joke. Like the joke is you're hearing this song or we're going to do something with

this song. But yeah, I didn't even notice the music. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, so they get their appointment with Marvin and,

uh, he starts them with a pad of paper to draw their problems. I love, they all draw Homer. Homer is obviously the problem with the family, right? To any outside observer, they know that. And Homer's humming off. We go obviously the problem with the family. Right to any outside observer, they know that. And Homer's humming off we go into the wild blue yonder.

Yeah. I noticed for the first time. Oh, is he? Yeah. And he's drawing a fighter plane. That's funny that that's the song he's humming as he draws it. That is appropriately dumb Homer who gets lost in his assignment and just draws a bomber. I remember that joke.

I was like, there's the Homer we know and love. Except his drawing would be far worse. it's honestly not childish enough. Yeah, it would be a childish, more childish drawing. Like a robot or something. Yeah,

it would be a, it was a competent looking bomber, actually. But yes, the entire family sees Homer as a bit of an ogre. Homer? Whoops.

Sorry, I wasn't paying attention. Well, if you had been paying attention, perhaps you would have noticed that your family sees you as a rather stern authority figure. An ogre, if you will. No, Doctor, that's not true. Ogre is such a strong word. Right on, Doc. Another successful diagnosis. That does it!

Wow. Okay, you want to kill each other that's good that's healthy there's nothing necessarily wrong with hostile conflict all i ask is that you use my patented aggression therapy mallets good idea all right i don't know okay let's take another deep cleansing breath that uh that's a great line, too. Okay, you want to kill each other. That's good. That's healthy. Somehow, Homer about to bludgeon his son to death with a lamp is more shocking than the strangling.

Yeah. Well, the animation is great on it. Like, how quickly he just goes off screen and gets this lamp and then is right above Bart in, like, killer position. Like, if Monroe hadn't stopped him, Bart would at least be unconscious. off screen and gets this lamp and then is right above bart in like killer position like if monroe hadn't stopped him bart would at least be unconscious like uh and again like this should be like i'm calling the police now that's what marvin monroe should say uh he wants their money this whole section here is actually like an elongated version of the family therapy short here yeah tracy ellman show too which that one ends with

bart bart tortures the guy until they all turn on the therapist that's the one that ends with bart shooting suction cup gun at the other guy and he had stuck to his nose and also the really gross part where bart like spits out his uh the peppermints back into the big wad of mints yeah god it's almost as disgusting as, say, grape juice in someone's mouth to drain out. I tried that this morning. Did you really? No, I didn't.

I bought that. Guys, go to, listeners, go to the Found Footage Festival after dark shows to understand this reference. I'm keeping my mucus within me. It seems to be doing some job. But yes, Homer's reaction to being called an ogre Is pretty, I mean it makes it true He's going to beat his son to death

Right in front of them And my family loved the joke of them Hitting each other with the mallets And Homer's disappointed that he's like Why are we even bothering? This doesn't hurt each other And then Bart unsheathing the foam pad And the foley on him Hitting Marlon Monroe That makes me wince every time bothering this doesn't hurt each other and then bart unsheathing the foam pad and the the folia

and him hitting all that sound really funny that makes me wince every time just getting whacked in the knee with a metal rod yeah you can just hear his shin splintering like it hits here and i mean it goes without saying but harry sure is so funny his his performance as marvin wrote it's a funny voice and he makes lines. I mean, his delivery is just really funny. I think he stopped doing this character or like requested

they stop using him because it hurt his voice. I can see that. I think it was the same with Otto too, but not as severe. Yeah, Otto still gets to

stick around with that voice, but he's, that Monroe, I mean, I think they ran out of things they wanted to do with Monroe anyway. If they were going

to have a doctor, I think they just liked having Hibbert be that person. Yeah. After smashing his knee or his shin, then it's time to step it up a notch to electrocution. Everyone comfy? Good. Now, don't touch any of those buttons in front of you for a very important reason, i.e., you are wired into the rest of your family. You have the ability to shock them, and they have the ability to shock...

Disgusting. Why, you... No, Homer, not yet. You see, this is what is known as aversion therapy. When someone hurts you emotionally, you will hurt them physically, and gradually you will learn not to hurt each other at all and won't that be wonderful homer oh yes doctor bart how could you shock your little sister my finger slipped

so did mine you know i think that scream there was used in the arcade game too that sounded that yeah sounded a lot like a bart and lisa scream together yeah but yeah this was like the perfect uh 90 seconds of comedy this sketch and i think this really helps sell the show even more this little set piece here yeah i think it was like the first viral moment of like if you were to show if the simpsons was going to have a news story this would be the clip they'd show at the start of it at the top of the local news like the huxtables they are not yes and it's not like even dialogue based it's all just editing and animation yeah i think i love this when the simpsons do a set piece like that because because it reminds me of Moe and the Lie Detector, or Mr. Thompson, or, you know, it's like almost a vaudevillian kind of sketch. Yeah, and the drawings of them electrocuted is so funny.

The fact that Maggie is also strapped in. Who put a baby in this machine? Like, let her sit to the side. Her brain needs to develop more i think yeah though then again she did join in on the malleting she was happy to do that but somebody shocks maggie we don't know who it's still the mystery of this episode at first you wonder like who shocks marge and you're like well maybe it was maggie because she's randomly pressing stuff but yeah i gotta think it was bart who zaps maggie i going to think he's the one who would zap a baby. I do like that the animators took the time to animate Marge doing the two finger at the same time.

I also like how Marvin explains, he's like, you have the ability to shock them, and they have the ability to shock you. And then the second he says they can shock you, Bart zaps over. And this scene, the talk about being viral, I think it is the first time a simpsons clip was ever in a movie it is featured in die hard 2 this clip is played on the plane that i believe it is that um the the body bedelia she's on the airplane and he's got to save it with dennis franz i barely remember die hard too but when

she's on the plane the plane is showing this scene from the simpsons on it uh and that film came out of theaters july 4th 1990 so just six months after this aired uh but it was another fox show so i think it's just like fox fox helping fox there i think this also really showed gene and reese how in after they get the animation back in editing they can make something funnier and they can add a lot of dialogue because i think this electrocution bit was half as long before i think they repeat a lot of shots so many quick cuts and repeated shots it's uh it's perfect like they found the perfect amount of shocking to include in this segment yeah and uh that their skin is smoking at the end, too. It's that extreme.

Yeah, that part's great. But this was kind of one of their... I mean, sometimes they do tedium jokes, like the stepping on the rakes sideshow, Bob. I felt like this was just one that went on for longer than it needed to. Yeah, it stops being funny and then becomes funny again. I can see that, yeah. Yeah, when I watched it again, we played it for a live audience, too, at our live show. And even then, I was like, wow, I think we all forgot how long this was.

It just kept going. That's why you get to feel for Monroe, too. He's like, please, stop. Can't you hear me? Stop. And also the quick cutaway to Burns saying, like, this energy conservation fads is dead as the day. We do hear an excellence. Yeah, yeah.

It's Harry, he re-recorded, as we talked about in Homer's Odyssey, Harry re-recorded Burns. Burns was originally done by an actor named Chris Collins. But this episode feels more like Harry did the first read-through of Burns and is more fully owning the character, I think. Yeah. But yes, the electrocution finally ends. And in a way, the family earns money through their dysfunction.

Hey, nice hair, Mom. Gee, I thought we were making real progress. No, I'm sorry. You're not. Please. You've just got to go. Wait a minute, Doc. Your TV commercial said,

Family Bliss or Double Our Money Back. Oh, but that was just... Uh... All right. Get the money. 21, 1681, 24, 1682, 24, 1683, 24, 1684, 24, 1685, 500. Here. Just go. And never tell anyone you were here. Wow. 500 smackers. 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, Shouldn't we be heading down to the pawn shop to get our TV back? That piece of junk? Forget it. We're going to get a new TV. 21-inch screen.

Realistic flesh tones. And a little curtain so we can wheel it into the dining room on holidays. Yay! Oh, Homer. We love you. It's Tony Town, Gibbs. let's tone it down gibbs yeah again he's like oh yeah the big first britches uh but yeah i think too gene and reese they always talk about how like if you put 20 seconds of sweetness at the end of anything it makes people love it's a huge lie i think i lived through the era of realistic flesh tones on tv but i don't remember it i looked it. It's a huge lie. I think I lived through the era of realistic flesh tones on TV, but I don't remember it.

I looked it up. It's like I guess on some TVs had a setting where you could adjust the color of the flesh, but not the rest of the color. Yeah, because I remember occasionally you'd turn on a channel and they'd kind of have a greenish skin tone. Or like pinkish sometimes. Yeah, but that was like very old. See, I thought that was a self-referential joke,

that their flesh tones were. Oh, I didn't think about that. I could see that, too. Too clever. Another too clever joke. Well, also, the idea of a cable-ready TV, just that feels crazy now, too. For me, it's like, does this TV have a USB drive on it?

How many HDMI ports? 21 inches. Yeah, 21 is there. I think that's even a joke, then, of like, 21 was a small, was a mid-sized TV at best in 1990. Modest. Yeah, and the exit scene of them walking away was also fully redrawn and reused as the credits for the Simpsons arcade game.

If you could beat the Simpsons arcade game and murder Mr. Burns, then you would see them walking up the, walking down the street in the arcade game and murder Mr. Burns, then you would see them walking down the street in the same pose and everything. Yeah, on an endless loop. And I like, too, that they basically gambled on their dysfunction and won, and they made $250 out of it. I think Marvin Monroe, he's setting himself up for failure saying, double your money back.

Who defines family bliss? That's an accurate commercial depiction. They always do double your money back. Yeah, that's? That used to be, that's an accurate commercial depiction. They always do double your money back. Yeah, that's true. That was a big thing back then. Yeah, that's like the dominoes, you know, it'll be cool if it doesn't arrive by X amount of time

kind of deal. I had a weird memory of seeing this on a TV at Sears this episode. There was just like the area where they were selling all the Simpsons merch and they would always have one episode on TV and this was it.

And I remember watching like the last half of this while my mom was looking for blouses or whatever. How did they have it? Did they have a VCR hooked up to it, and they taped it off TV? Must have been a promotional tape or something. I think it was like promotional tape, yeah. That video's probably out there somewhere. Just like plays on a loop forever.

Wow, you've got a new taste of video to seek out. It's out there in a landfill somewhere. We're going to find it. I guess the only other note i'll say there is at the end there marge marge has also just written so like her shorts thing of like now dear do you think we should go to the pawn shop like somebody afterwards she's like well let's get our tv back like that march i think they really didn't figure out marge until life in the fast lane i think that's the only time she has any life behind it.

Which episode is that? That's the bowling one. Oh, right. Jock. Jock. They show that Marge has the ability to be offended at a bad birthday gift

and contemplate infidelity. Right. Right. The bowling ball episode. Yeah. But any final thoughts, Nick and Joe?

I thought this was like hinting towards what the simpsons was going to be because like i think at its best the simpsons and and what one thing that i think my family and i responded to was that your family has inside jokes and you don't feel like other families and you watch a lot of tv and and it sort of cemented that idea and was i thought a more realistic depiction depiction of what my family was like. Yeah, and I think this set the stage for future Simpsons episodes, too. I thought

the ending was very appropriate for what I consider Golden Age, what most people consider Golden Age Simpsons, as the, what do you say, success through failure? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that that's, yeah. They all realize they love each other more than ever after failing together. Right. That's sweet, yeah. Yeah, they hadn they did. And they all realize they love each other more than ever after failing together. Right.

That's sweet, yeah. Yeah, they hadn't found the characters yet, I guess. It was kind of opposite day for this episode. But the sentiments were all still the same. Another thing I noticed in this episode is that they used a lot of cross dissolves in between transitions. Oh, yeah, a lot of fade out. Yeah, the biggest one I noticed was when it's like, get the money, and then fade, and then to the money counting. Cross dissolves aren't good for comedy.

It's just so slow. It diffuses energy, especially after such an energetic scene as the electrocution. They hadn't fully figured out how they wanted to edit the Simpsons yet either. I'd like to issue a correction. Earlier, I had said said we sang happy birthday, happy birthday, boy or girl. It's you're the birthday.

You're the birthday. I bet people already commented and they're erasing their comments. It's been in my head this entire show and I thought I'd save it

for the end. That was the right call. That will punish anyone who comments before the episode is over. People do that. I know. You should be fired for that, Blonder.

At least I appreciate when a commenter says, like, I haven't listened yet, but I hope you mentioned that. At least say that you haven't listened yet in your comment. But you guys have a flight to catch. Yes, we do. Tell us all about the Found Footage Festival. You put on a great show last night. You'll be back in the Bay Area in April, but you're traveling all over the place. You've got Patreon.

You've got streams. You've got all kinds of stuff going on. Talk about it, please. Yeah, our primary source of income is doing touring live shows. So we have like 60 shows between now and June, I think. And it's going to be a busy time on the road, so you can come see us live.

And we also just started an internet show called VCR Party. That's every Tuesday night at 9 Eastern. That's a ton of fun, yeah. On YouTube. And yeah, we have a Patreon So you can chip in and help us keep this goofy project alive Yeah we have an office with

10,000 VHS tapes and we've Maybe gotten through 32% of them And so yeah each week we just pull off Six different videos and watch them It's an amazing office I was telling Bob about one of my favorite weird finds you had Was that Dolph Lundgren exercise tape Oh yeah That Quentin Tarantino was somehow involved Yeah he's the production assistant on there I was telling Bob about one of my favorite weird finds you had was that Dolph Lundgren exercise tape. Oh, yeah.

That Quentin Tarantino was somehow involved in. Yeah, he's the production assistant on there. And I've heard there's so many stories from that, too. That he had to pick up dog shit most of the time. That's so funny. And yeah, no, and your Christmas one that is relatively new when this came out, that was another great one, too. So, yeah. VCR Party Live, your regular streams are really lots of fun.

And yeah, not all are as rivaled as the night me and Bob just had with you guys. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's the exception to the rule. After Dark is, yeah, it's a different show. You know what you're getting. But thank you guys so much for making time for us. It's an honor to be here. Lots of fun.

So, thanks again to Joe Pickett and Nick Pruer from the Found Footage Festival. We just saw one of their shows last night. We loved it. Make sure you see them if they come through your town. Lots of fun, weird footage. Often gross if you go to the late night show. It's not always gross, but just know which show you're going to because there's two different shows they do.

But it's fun either way. Yeah. If you've got a stronger stomach than me, I think you'll really love the After Dark one. And also their VCR Party Live livestreams. Check them out. Yeah. And if you like things like Everything is Terrible and Tim and Eric, it's the same sort of awkward, you know, love the after dark one and the uh and also their vcr party live live streams check them out yeah and if you like things like everything is terrible and tim and eric it's the same sort of awkward you know public accessy kind of jokes and uh footage and stuff like that so yes thank you so

much to the found footage festival guys for coming on and if you want to help support our show and get every episode one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and for the low price of five bucks a month, you'll get just that and also access to everything behind the $5 paywall. That includes all of our miniseries, of course, but also the most recent one, Talking Futurama Season 2 Part 1. And that is 10 new episodes of Talking Futurama. And if you stay a patron at the $5 level, we have two new miniseries coming at you in 2020, one in the spring and one in the fall. So stay tuned for those even more bonus content for you. And if you stay a patron at the $5 level, we have two new miniseries coming at you in 2020.

One in the spring and one in the fall. So stay tuned for those. Even more bonus content for you. And Henry will tell you all out there what is happening at the $10 level. An extra long podcast every month that is voted on by patrons. And I believe our most recent one is the longest podcast we've ever done. Yes, yeah. I think we break that record every month. Yeah.

Yes, we're talking about the What a Cartoon movie podcast. You know, we have our sister podcast, What a Cartoon. But now, once a month, we do the What a Cartoon movie, where we cover a different animated feature film in hyper detail, just like we do on Talking Simpsons. And it can only be listened to in full by our $10 a month patrons at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. If you're a $10 subscriber, you could hear us doing the Animatrix right now. Me and Bob talk all about our personal histories

with the Matrix. We go deep in how not only the series, The Matrix was made, but also how the Wachowski sisters made the jump into doing animation with some of the top directors in japanese animation and we go short by short to discuss the many great folks who worked on it and if you sign up now you get to hear a bunch of older ones including i definitely would suggest the iron giant one if you love all the animation talk in

this one and simpsons chat so please sign up $10 level at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. So I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And my other podcast is Retro Knots. It's a classic gaming podcast. Every Monday, check us out at retronauts.com or go to patreon.com slash retronauts for extra episodes every other friday henry how about you hey you can follow me henry gilbert on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g i'm sure to share any of my fun thoughts about the state of the world and also whenever there's new podcasts going around

i tweet about them there too or even i promote that i'm going to fun shows like the found footage fest show after dark also as long as you're following things on twitter go to the official talking simpsons podcast twitter account at talk simpsons pod there's tons of fun things on there not only retweeting me and bob when we talk about cool things going on in the talking simpsons world but also just fun cool clips and gifts and stuff all on there you'll you'll love following at TalkSimpsonsPod. Thank you so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next time for Bart the General, and we'll be together Homer, don't stifle the youngster. Your family must feel free to express itself. That's what these pads and jumbo markers are for. I want you to draw for me your fears, your anxieties,

the roots of your unhappiness. Now, take a deep, cleansing breath. And begin.