Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - 'Tis the Fifteenth Season With Pop Arena

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

We go slightly off schedule to do 2003's holiday Simpsons ep, and we welcome back YouTube creator Pop Arena (check out their Nickelodeon retrospective Nick Knacks)! After we reflect on all of the Xmas specials we grew up watching, we follow Homer on a journey of self-discovery. Can you give Certs as a gift? How many bits were cut from the script? And how accurate is this to Mr. Magoo lore? We dig into all of that in this seasonal podcast! Support this podcast and get over 180 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

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Henry Gilbert and today I'm sober...ish. And who is our special guest on the line? This is Greg Stevens and I'm Saturdays and Tuesdays with Morrie. And this week's episode is Tis the 15th season. Happy Thanksgiving from the entire Channel 6 family, including Kent Brockman, who's contractually permitted to replace himself with a cardboard cutout. The real Kent is in a rehab clinic. We all wish him the best. Again. This week's episode originally aired on December 14th, 2003, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history.

Oh my god! Happy holidays, Bobby! Kids want Beyblades and Swan Lake Barbies from Santa Saddam Hussein is captured in the city of Tikrit and hey, ah by outcast is top in the charts Wow Beyblades and Swan Lake Barbies. That was what was on the listicle again This we you and I were both 21 when this aired so I was not paying attention to what the hot toys were then But that's what a search for Top non video game toys were in 2003. I'm just wondering what the Swan Lake connection is I definitely remember when working at blockbuster video

There was just the annual Barbie release like there was always a CGI Barbie movie to tie in Yes, whatever the new form of Barbie was just googling it I found 2003's Barbie of Swan Lake and That was a September release so this gift that you're talking about is a movie not an actual Barbie doll Ah, but the Swan Lake Barbie was the tie-in to film release rates boy. What a racket yeah The Beyblades are still around I saw them advertised on some wrestling program recently. The Beyblades spent a lot of money to be advertised on WWE in the past. I only saw it because it appeared in my feed of like, this is ridiculous, like that kind

of thing. I thought you were going to talk about Beyblade's kids, but we're 10 years too late for that, unfortunately. In my mind, I want to talk about the BeyBey's kids not Beyblade. Saddam Hussein captured in a riot in the lead up to Christmas in 2003. If you want to know what happened there are several references on Arrested Development Seasons I don't know two or three. That's the main way you're going to learn about it. Yeah don't read the actual news. Learn via reference. Yeah hey y'all what a song. I love that song. I remember hearing it, it makes me think of working at the movie theaters at this time because we

had a radio in the concession stand and we listened to that song a couple times. For as jaded as I was about so-called popular music in 2003, as a 21 year old by the way, I've loosened up a little bit over the years, the second I heard this song I thought this is going to be a massive hit and that was the most obvious thought ever because it was, it's an amazing song. It's almost scientifically good. Yes, yeah, it's like there's dark magic to it. It's funny, it's not a Christmas hit or any like new Christmas song or anything for

the week. Instead it's Hey Ya is just blazing it up. It also feels like a song of the Summer type hit, not a Christmastime kind of hit, but it was topping the billboard charts for weeks in a row at this time. And in animation news, Andre 3000 would use this as the launching pad

for the animated program, A Class of 3000, which was not Crass. Yes, that's right. My friends watched it and made fun of it because it seemed like it was entirely self-aggrandizing Like every character calls him a genius like every episode is what they told me But great did you happen to watch any of the class of 3000? I missed it entirely We all missed out on it. Well too bad, but that's what happened the day that this episode of The Simpsons first aired in 2003.

And joining us once again is Greg, creator of the YouTube channel, Pop Arena. And they last joined us five whole years ago to talk about season 10's The Old Man and The Sea Student. Welcome back to the show, Greg. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you have covered a lot of Christmas cartoons in your Pop Arena channel

and your great Nick Necks sub-series and that. I was just watching your one for Olive the Other Reindeer, which is a mat-graining, adjacent or produced production. That's correct. Yeah, Christmas specials are probably my favorite part of the season, except maybe like, I guess, family or whatever. They're just really charming. I obviously, I grew up with the classics, your Rudolphs, your Snowmen, and then when I was a kid, I was a little kid, and I just really charming. I obviously, I grew up with the classics,

your Rudolphs, your snowmen. And then when I got kind of into the media nostalgia scene, probably around 2005, when like the X entertainment sites started coming up. Oh yeah. That's when I started to dig into the archives and pulled out the really corny stuff, the He-Man, She-Ra Christmas specials and the Rubik's the Amazing Cubes and the local theater

productions of the Snow Queen and just really dig in there. It's just a lot of fun. And this one is full of references to a lot of the biggest classics. Do you have a particular favorite of the like, canon, famous, always replaying Christmas specials? Ooh, favorite. And it's referenced here. I probably have to go with the classic, 66, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

That's a good one. That's a good pick. Yeah. They don't reference a few because they felt like they had been referenced too much. So my favorite is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for the stop-motion for the songs And by the way, if you are a Talking Simpsons listener and you're not a what a cartoon listener Well number one shame on you but number two all will be forgiven if you go to that feed and you can check out our episodes about a Charlie Brown Christmas and

The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer We've covered all of the boomer classics so far except for Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, but that killed democracy on the Talking Simpsons network. So, unfortunately, we cannot cover it. That's true. That's right. We put it to a vote and we're like, oh, you guys want to see this. People were not enthusiastic for it.

No. They said, I hate that blind old man. They're the opposite of Homer in this one. It's funny on the commentary that they talk a little about making the episode, but more it's like them joking around about the Christmas specials, especially because like Dana Gould is there and we know Dana Gould has like a great like just 10 minutes he can just do off the top of his head on the Rudolph special. Yeah, it's really like a podcast with Simpsons writers about Christmas specials, so it's kind of fun.

Yeah. Michael Price, the writer of the episode, doesn't have a ton to share about that, but he shares a couple things out there, which fortunately he had a couple interviews talking about his love of this episode, which this is one of his favorites he's done, I believe. By the way, I need to apologize. Whenever we talk about the Grinch I always say the Grinch who stole Christmas but it's how the Grinch stole Christmas. I have to look it up every time I always get the phasing wrong. That trips me up a lot too. Yep.

Well then now there's like three things that are the Grinch because Peacock, I've just been handed like Peacock seasonal ads and they're like yep we've got three Grinches on this channel like they have all the Grinch versions. The Illumination one is treated on the same level as the Jim Carrey one and the Chuck Jones one. I see what Jim Carrey is doing lately. I can see him back in that Grinch makeup. The headline is he needs money. Yeah. Did you see that clip of him from the Sonic 3 red carpet just like literally saying like I have a lot of expensive things I need to pay for. He was passing a hat around. If you do Sonic 3 and choose to play two characters in it, not just one Robotnik, but at least the second one, that is desperation. That's a sign of desperation.

I don't know if it's still true now, but when they announced Sonic 3, you could go to Jim Carrey's Wikipedia page and it says, Jim Carrey is mostly retired. He said he was only come back for very select projects, but it has to be really something special. And then the next line is, Jim Carrey has been announced as Dr. Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. He was looking for a project that spoke to him. Into a bigger house.

Yes, yes. We should point out though, in case anyone has jumped out the window, ala that guy from the PTA disbands, we are doing this episode, we're messing up the order a little bit. Usually we go back and forth between a season 15 and a season five,

but now the timing was perfect because this will launch on the free feed literally on Christmas. We're not gonna do this on like January 3rd or wherever it was supposed to launch, so it only made sense for us. Don't worry. We're going back to the standard order after the holiday season. You're going to get two fives in a row to get us back on track just to make up for it. But yeah, who wants to hear this at the start of January? And we're recording this like in the

Thanksgiving to Christmas day period that is characterized in this very episode. And it's funny that they call this one to the 15th season, because it is them kind of just going like, we've done these a lot, huh? This is the 15th one. That was an astounding title back in 2003. You just reflect, wow, 15 years. And I should note that I was, you know, online and part of Simpsons communities at the time.

And a few episodes around this time got people to briefly put down the pitchforks and the torches. It was Mo Baby Blues and this one from this era that people sat down and were like, okay, this is pretty good. And I do like this one. I feel like the Flanders thing comes out of nowhere, but they make enough out of it to make it worthwhile.

I really wish there was more of the Flanders subplot buried in the first act to kind of get it going, to kind of hint at what is going to come instead of it just dropping out of nowhere, but I do like this episode. Me too, I think this has more great lines in it than I remembered. I wrote down so many more than I thought I would,

plus there is some really fun animation in this one, not just from a you know, a third party studio but also internally they drew some really funny stuff in this episode including like the freakish Marge crying as she's eating food. There's some amazing stuff in here and we have extra behind the scenes stuff because that guy 3002 before they nuked their Twitter account had an original script of this one and there's a few fun changes to it and it's dated March 27, 2003 to give you an idea of how long it took from the table draft to release of the episode.

And also our podcast pal, Peter Avanzino, even shared with us a few of the storyboards for the episode that he had done that are basically from Marge and Homer in Bed up to the start of the the Magoo parody so there's not a ton extra in there but there's some fun additions too. Well I guess he was fresh off the original cancellation of Futurama then working on this era of The Simpsons. Yeah I think so he must have had some opening in his schedule to take on a board assignment on The Simpsons so yeah. Before he was chained and drawn together. He got to do some of this stuff This must felt like a breath of fresh air

He was like, oh man, can I take another another Simpsons Christmas special? this episode though it begins first with a wacky time to do a tribute to Japanese animation couch gag. I guess we are still in the anime on DVD bubble in America. It's still the explosion before it just becomes the thing everybody quietly watches and enjoys. But now that I've taken 103 days of Duolingo Japanese lessons,

I can tell you what that bench says, and it says Simpsons. There you have it, folks. Did all this Google translating for nothing. Though, you know, on the Japanese title, it has The Simpsons. They took out the Z to fit it on the bench. That's fine, I'll allow it. I think they are good matches like Bart's Astro Boy,

Marge is from Gotcha Man, Lisa's Sailor Moon, Homer is Ultraman, and Maggie's Pikachu, which is the only one that's like fairly less than 10 years old of characters included in it. And I like that Homer does the ultra beam to turn on the TV. That's a nice like specific. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Nita Matsumoto and Ian Boothby did a great Simpsons comic once called Bart Manga featuring Roe Bartman that like

seriously captured Tezuka's style so well in doing The Simpsons. It's a really great parody of Tezuka's style. Has that been collected in one of the Treehouse of Horror hardcover volumes yet? If it was it would have been in volume 2. None of Nina's work was in volume 1 that I recall. It might be in volume two. I think the Death Note one is in volume two, but I'm not sure about the Bart manga. It's a pun because it's in the Bart Man comics. So it's Bart, I should say Bart manga. I get it.

Yeah. But okay, so the episode begins. It's the Thanksgiving meal for channel six. They got channel six on the logo. I was only slightly annoyed that Itchy and Scratchy are present for it. Let's just say that they had a big budget this year at Channel 6 and could like Roger Rabbit style animate them in. Or it's one of those live-action CGI puppet dealies which was still possible

in 2003. Like Moxie? Karl's Martinette is playing Itchy I think. Or it'd be like the thing they just did on the Simpsons NFL game. They just did, which I haven't had a chance to ask you about that Bob yet. If you saw any of the clips out there that are horrifying, they don't let me watch it up here in Canada. So you have to watch Simpsons do CFL. Yes. Too many rouges.

And yes, they wrap it up by letting us know that Kent Brockman is in rehab again. I do love Krusty's delivery of again. They're all a little tired of it. They were supportive at first, but now he's ended up there enough times that they can't care anymore. We see him shopping fairly soon after this, so I think he's doing okay. Or else he's, I don't know, self-medicating. That's true.

Did he check himself out to go shopping with the weather lady? I wonder. And then we also get to see Homer's expanding gut for some good animation there too, which though also after I watched this I put on season 23's Holidays of Future Past and in that one it also starts with the family after Thanksgiving dinner and they're all fat there too. It's like it's a very similar opening. I'm not complaining. This is a real Al Jean combo deal where you're getting two for the price of one.

You get a reference to a movie like 2001, A Space Odyssey, which is a little dusty in 2003. And also following that super on the nose song for a montage. I'm not complaining. These are just hallmarks of this era We just had an episode where there was a parody of a West Side Story song These are hallmarks of like the al gene sensibilities This has averages one song per act. No, sorry. I should say one point seven five songs per act I think is what it averages

Krusty then lets everybody know that this is after 9-eleven because they're telling people to get back to normal by buying things. Oh absolutely, I wasn't even thinking of that. That was a solution to fix our alien economy. That's definitely what, I mean Greg, I don't know if you recall how it felt like W was just telling everybody like, buy, spend, or the terrorists will win. That was the messaging. Krusty is not telling us the terrorists will win. That was the messaging. Cresty is not telling us the terrorists will win, but he basically is. Yeah, I was in high school during all of that. We had this satellite news program

that would be beamed into the classrooms. Channel one. Channel one, that's it, yeah. And it was wall to wall Bush propaganda, all of his little encouraging tidbits. It's hard to remember because there's been so many economic depressions since this one, but there was an economic depression in 2002. It just was a blip on the radar compared to what happened six or seven years later. But I remember I was doing an episode of Retronauts about the year 2002 and I pointed out that there was a depression and I was very poor and very strapped for cash

and some listener was like, there wasn't a depression. It was the one time I had to post a graph in the comments. So you look at the line, the line is going way down. They're gonna reply to you. They need to supply the graph first if they're gonna say it till you're wrong. But my point is it was Because so much has happened in the past 21 years. Nobody remembers the dip of 2002

A lot of us were distracted around that time. In the script It's an even filthier line when crusty is mentioning, you know crying to sex workers But in the original script the line is don't stop until your credit card is swollen and purple. Is the line. Interesting. And then there's a legalese afterwards that's like paid for by the committee to end this friggin' recession.

Just to really hit it on the nose there. And then speaking of hitting things on the nose, it's time to hear the most, it's the most wonderful time of the year. But it's the Johnny Mathis version, not Andy Williams, which feels like it's the second most famous one, right? Yeah, I believe so. They pay for a Burl Ives song later though,

so maybe that's where their money went to. Well, I mean, Johnny Mathis ain't cheap either. I wonder, I bet Al Jean remembers the price of all of these. It's mainly what he complained about in commentaries around this time. The Johnny Mathis version of it's the most wonderful all of these. It's mainly what he complained about in commentaries around this time. The Johnny Mathis version of It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year for the first of many montages in this episode. And during that montage, well, another thing happens

that we have a jingle for. Yeah, Homer kills two birds with one string. Here's our trusty jingle for it. Everybody hates birds, right? Yes, Homer breaks the neck of two birds while lassoing lights around a tree. It's unfortunate. And then he just kicks them under the pile of snow so no one remembers. This is not the most violent thing he does in the episode either. No, no. This is a weird montage. It's fine enough, but there's two jokes

and the music ends and I'm like, oh where's the third joke in this montage? The third joke is not set to this music, but it's still part of the montage. It's weird and I don't know why they did that. I guess they thought it played better of Homer growling with no music over it as he fights his sweater. Maybe that's my only guess. That's probably it. And you know, all these decorations, the second Thanksgiving is over, like these jokes, couldn't imagine now seeing all the Christmas things

that go up before October 31st even. No, you're putting the Santa hat on your 16 foot Jack Skellington on November 1st. This is also, yes, I like Homer fighting with his sweater, though Abe is dying in this episode. I have to think this is the episode where Abe dies off screen at some point. Yeah, especially when he's locked outside in that cold snap. Yes, yeah. It's basically spoilers for Dog of Flanders, but that's basically the ending there, on Christmas Day even. So after all that, it's time for another novel idea in The Simpsons. It's Christmas bonus time at the Power Plant.

That's never happened in The Simpsons before, right? This time though, they make out like bandits. Well, at least Homer does. Yes, yeah. Well, and also in 1989, they wouldn't have jokes about a DVD player like in our first clip here. Hey, Homer. I'm your Secret Santa. Merry Christmas, big guy. Oh, my God! A DVD player!

And the first season of Magnum P.I. with commentary by John Hillerman. Apparently, working in Hawaii was a pleasure. Oh, Carl, you remembered I liked TV. Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Who's my Secret Santa? I think it's Homer. Oh, yes, I am.

Your present is right in the other room. Come on, machine, take my dollar. Fine, we'll play it your way. There you go, Lenny. May the spirit of Retson be with you all year long. God bless God. Amen. This gift stinks. Homer, you're the most selfish man I know.

Oh, come on. Mr. Burns is way more selfish. That evil old bone bag, smelling of death, nose like a vulture, followed everywhere by the kiss-ass smithers. Yes, that describes Cathy and personnel to a tee Who I really wanted more mr. Burns But that DVD joke it really spoke to me and it made me whistle for a time in which all of these needless Commentaries that nobody asked for were just stuck on every episode of something like I'm the guy and I'm sure you are too Henry Who listened to all of the get a life commentaries. The Simpsons commentaries were standouts,

but if anything had a commentary in 2003, I was listening to it. Absolutely, I said it before, but at my most disliking of Family Guy, which I have more Family Guy ambivalent now, I still, on Netflix, got the DVDs of every season to just hear more commentaries that were new to me that were about a cartoon.

You wanted them to explain themselves. Greg, were you as commentary addicted as us? Oh yeah. Even now, commentaries are like some critical bits of documentation, even if like 90% of them suck. From a research standpoint, they're very important. Oh yeah. I'm really waiting for a commentary black or gray market to pop up because we see people ripping you know DVDs and Blu-rays and uploading things to archive.org but commentaries don't seem to be prioritized in any way. Sometimes they're uploaded to YouTube that's very rarely. I want to see these retained because they're just so much fun to listen to even on their own without the actual video. Most of the time when I listen to a commentary I am doing something else.

I have to credit the Russo brothers and Ryan Coogler as like the only two real directors I saw in the Marvel movies who actually prioritize making commentaries and getting Marvel to do it. They actually post their commentaries on like they're hosted on Disney plus. And I feel like those are the only commentaries I've seen on Disney Plus you don't see Simpsons ones despite how big the Simpsons are. The kind of dork I am is I bought a laserdisc copy of King Kong off eBay because that has the very first audio commentary on it. Wow. Oh wow. Is it a critic?

Is it a scholar of King Kong? It is. It was Roger Ebert. Oh, it was Roger Ebert? Wow, okay. Yeah, I forgot the criterion I believe is the inventor of the director's commentary like as a track or as a commentary track, not because Ebert is not the director of King Kong, but you know.

Well, we're all explaining what big dorks we are about DVD commentary. My confession is I would get the DVDs from Netflix. I would rip the commentaries with my computer. I would burn the commentaries to CDRs and listen to them in my car. And usually when I went on long trips, I would listen to all the Back to the Future commentaries. There's two for every movie. You were also telling me how much all of the facts that are on the UHF commentary that are still there on the 4k you can still listen to.

Yep. It's a great little Weird Al podcast. Now I have some shocking news about certs for both of you. We no longer have certs or retson in this universe because the mints were discontinued in 2018, likely because they contain trans fats. But I think the mint marketplace is very competitive and certs, the gimmick of Retson was not enough to keep it afloat. And I did like certs. Certs were fine. They weren't in my top picks of mints out there though.

Back then I was more of a gum chewer if I was going to have mints. I don't know. Do you have a mint tier ranking, Greg? I had certs once. I was like, why would I choose this over lifesavers or tic tacs or altoids? I think it's was the worst mainstream mint out there. And I think that's what makes the joke like exceptionally funny is that Homer broke into the vending machine and grabbed mints, but not only grabbed mints grabbed

the worst mints. It was kind of an oily mints. We're here to give this information by the way, this is an added value. Retsin was a compound consisting of copper glutkinate, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, that's where the trans fats came from, and flavoring. And the copper glutkinate gave Retsin the trademark green flex you would see in the certs. And that's why the branding was 2 2 2 mints and 1? Was that right? Was that certs? Well I only say that because that is the deleted joke. I didn't do the certs research and I appreciate this info. I assumed it was there. Henry, it's

called research. But what I do know is in the original script the line when Homer gives Lenny the gift He says it's two two two gifts in one. Oh, yeah, two mints in one was the original tagline Okay, good. Also instead of smashing open the vending machine off screen The original joke was Homer says what you got something against Canada finally. Hey good price on certs So the joke was he was trying to use Canadian money to buy it maybe a little too complicated for that to play off screen you know the Magnum PI DVD set they imagine here much better than the real-life one I looked into this only on season 8 and on three select episodes do you get any commentaries on an episode

of Magnum PI? I'm guessing it's one of those DVD sets where they boast interactive menus as the one feature. I will give them credit for this feature they have which is there's multiple crossover episodes of Magnum PI had, I learned. So the Rockford file episodes they cross over with are included on the DVD. As a Magnum PI super fan you get a complete set of Magnum PI appearances. This is a bit of a tangent, but tis the season. The season one Magnum PI Christmas episode

has the worst title, well, Thank Heaven for Little Girls and Big Ones 2. Ooh, out of context, not so good. Yeah. Who did the song Thank Heaven for Little Girls? Man, I know it's in the movie Gigi and it's very creepy. It's like a French creep singing it, but I can't remember who.

It is Marie Chevalier? Yeah. Yeah. He didn't write it. The two men who wrote it are long dead. Also, this bit about buying a DVD player. I haven't bought a DVD player. I only did it once, and then I got a PS2.

And my physical media player since then have been a video game console. As a legit hardcore gamer, I sometimes look at 4K Reddit, as in the 4K what's coming out of 4K Reddit. They have things of like, oh, it's this 4K player, this 4K player. But I don't know what makes one better than the other, why it's better than PlayStation 5, which I could easily afford.

Maybe they're cheaper than PlayStation 5's. Just a standard off-the-shelf 4K. I wonder. ["The Simpsons Theme Song"] The Simpsons will be right back. How the Homer Stole Christmas is the event of the season about a man who plays Santa for all the wrong reasons. But this time I'm Stobart-ish. In his own warped, twisted and confusled way, he's trying to bring all of Springfield together

this day. Um, shouldn't you all be singing carols or something? The Simpsons all new next week on Fox Laugh Out Loud Sunday. Climate change. A problem so huge, how could I ever make a difference? I'm Marco Ciarnoved, climate reporter for the Toronto Star. I meet a lot of smart people doing really inspiring things in this space all the time. Small things that add up to big climate benefits.

Small things, big climate, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. The Climate Solutions podcast is brought to you by SmartFlow from Enbridge Sustain. Happy holidays to everybody ironing their clothes with a cat right now. It's Henry Gilbert and a big thank you this week to our guest, Greg from Poparina. If you don't know the Poparina YouTube channel, you should really be checking it out. And also all the cool stuff they do on Patreon. We are big fans of Poparina, especially the Nick Nacks video series that is an in-depth history into everything that has ever aired on Nickelodeon. It is years long at this point with so many great videos in it. Thank you, Greg, so much for coming on this week's episode. And if you enjoy this

podcast, you should know Talking Simpsons at this time of year and all the rest of the year is only available thanks to the listeners who support us at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons at this time of year and all the rest of the year is only available thanks to the listeners who support us at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for $5 a month folks at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. They get ad free episodes without any ads like this or the other ones you hear in the podcast plus they get them a week early. You can hear next week's episode right now and they also get tons of bonuses including monthly episodes of talking Futurama and talking of the hill us going just as in depth into those as we do an episode of the Simpsons and all of our previously released almost 200

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Until it was surpassed by many other ones after it. We have a lot of fun talking about how Frozen has roots all the way back to the Walt Disney era of the studio. And before that we covered the Hanukkah classic, Eight Crazy Nights. Well, maybe the only Hanukkah animated feature film there is, but we had a lot of fun talking about the Adam Sandler starring vehicle. And we have a giant back catalog that if you're in the mood for holiday themed cartoons we've covered Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on What a Cartoon Movie, we've covered Tokyo Godfathers on there and we've covered a

Muppet Christmas Carol with tons more as well. Please sign up today to check out our gigantic back catalog of What a Cartoon Movies and all the other cool stuff we do at patreon.com Slash talking Simpsons But yes, Homer is told he is selfish, which, I mean, he is selfish not buying Lenny a present until the last second. This seems more thoughtless to me than selfish. Yeah, and I don't know about both of you, there should be a dollar limit on a Secret Santa. I think Carl's going way overboard.

In 2003, that's like a $300 purchase, probably. The DVD set alone is like 80. Oh yeah, oh god yes. Now you can get all the complete series of Magnum PI on Blu-ray for like $40 I would bet. Or you can just walk out of the store with it and they won't care. They'll be happy to get that off their shelves. Actually what store even has a physical like disc on a shelf anymore. That's true. Yeah. So this is when Burns is giving out the bone eye which is just a five dollar cafeteria voucher and I joked about it before but yes just like in Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, Burns giving a crappy bonus or in that case no bonus in that episode is a starting point for the plot though in that one the starting point for the plot is the Simpsons are poor It's the opposite this time around

Yeah, money is not a Christmas issue. Although they're taking advantage of having more money, but it's not like oh I need money I can't afford presents for the family without a bonus that that is not we can see how much that has not become a concern In the past 12 years of the show I mean just like how there are episodes of they want to do you know what's it like to be in a private skybox They just have to have burns magically hand Homer money So Homer and the family can do rich guy things that the writers of the show do and here's another case of like Well, we want to write Homer going to fancy shopping like I do. Well, we have to hand Homer thousands of dollars. It's good that it's Burns giving him something he thinks is useless and he's also casually

racist about it. Yes. Calling Joe DiMaggio an ethnic is very funny. And that yes, the confectioner's card featuring a current baseballer is an accurate recreation of the 1936 worldwide gum DiMaggio card that I saw an eBay listing for $40,000 today so very worth it. I was looking into this it's gone for as high as $70,000 in very good condition. Nice man. Oh and the follow-up to the Kathy joke that's funny I chuckled I like seeing Burns's female twin who's Kathy. That's

why Burns didn't even get mad when Homer was doing basically another version of the like, he's right behind me, isn't he? kind of joke. But it's because Burns also likes dishing on Kathy. Like nobody likes Kathy. But once Homer heads out, they cut two big things from the original script here that make things clearer. I kind of wish they'd have in there. One, Homer's driving home from work and he is considering selling a kidney after getting a lousy bonus. And then he goes like, wait, instead of selling a kidney,

I should try selling the card. That brings him to Android's dungeon. Okay, instead of immediately going there. And then also, when I saw Comic Book Guy give him what seemingly is a fair price for it, I was like, wait, this doesn't seem like the like skeezy jerk comic book guy I know. In the original script, they have an internal monologue moment where he goes like, play it cool, play it cool, and then he freaks out and admits it's worth a bunch of money.

Well, there's probably not more than, I don't know, $500 in that register. Well, I guess there has to be slightly more than that for Homer to use to buy the Astor label later. That's true, though. You're right. Yeah, Comic Book Guy should not... His local comic shop in the register... Like, I've cashed out a register like that, and $250 the most as you're getting in there,

unless it was a very good day at the video store. Unless he's also selling lottery tickets, which is something my comic book store did. Oh, wow, that's a good deal. I've never been to a comic book store that sold lottery tickets. Mm-hmm, good scam. So yes, Comic Book Guy buys it off of Homer, which again, Comic Book Guy is not baseball card guy,

but the androids cards in comics, it makes sense. The comic book store I went to was also a card shop for sports memorabilia as well. And actually, in his first appearance, he is selling a Carl Ustrimsky baseball card with the big sideburns. It's right there from the beginning. So Homer gets a pile of cash from Comic Book Guy Headsome

and then we cut to The Simpson House and they're watching a parody of one of my favorite Christmas specials as well, though I haven't watched in a few years. Watch it again, Henry, it won't be one of my favorite Christmas specials as well, though I haven't watched it in a few years. Watch it again, Henry, it won't be one of your favorites. Oh. It's a little dull, I will say. I just watched it again last night for the first time

in I think probably over 30 years. It didn't really persist long into the 90s replays of this, and I think it's because it debuted with a Garfield Christmas. On the same night you had Will Vinten's A Claymation Christmas Celebration and a Garfield Christmas. On the same night you had Will Vintens, a Claymation Christmas celebration, and a Garfield Christmas. And I think that basically wiped it off the map

in terms of millennial cultural memory. I taped them both together, so yeah, I would watch them on the tape as a youth back to back. So honestly, maybe my Garfield love, I put it onto the Claymation Christmas special. It got caught in the Garfield love splash zone And yeah, it's weird this special not to go into too deep much detail But I don't think we'll do a podcast about it because it's almost all visual and just a lot of Christmas music videos

The weird thing about it is the best segment is not claymation Which is a strange thing in your Claymation Christmas celebration special. It's animation created by Paint on Glass. It's the Joy to the World segment. It's really cool. Yeah, that is gorgeous. Yeah. It's like Joy to the World with like in a black church.

It's very, very neat. It's kind of like an acid trip because I think Will Vinton and his crew were all hippies at that point, right? Oh yeah, yeah. In Portland. Something about this episode, I almost wouldn't call most of these segments parodies, it's because the version we see here in The Simpsons and the actual Claymation Christmas celebration,

they're not that different. Yeah, that's true. I was just thinking, this underlines just what a simple concept the California Raisins were. It's hard to explain to anyone born after, I don't know, 1998, why it was exciting to watch the California Raisins were. It's hard to explain to anyone born after, I don't know, 1998, why it was exciting to watch the California Raisins, because I remember as a kid,

I think I saw this the night it debuted, it was all like the race to the California Raisins factory. You're sitting through all the other segments of the Raisins show up, you're like, hooray, it's the spokes raisins for the California Raisin Advisory Board. I'm so excited. I can't explain anything about that.

I can't explain why this was a phenomenon. They had four albums. They had a Saturday morning cartoon. There were multiple specials. There's nothing to these guys. Yeah, I remember the Hardee's growing up had several California raisins promotions and my brother and I collected the little figurines from it

and prized them so much. And it is crazy now to think about like claymation versions of raisins to tell you that raisins are good. Like everybody loved them. And they kind of look like singing poop. I'm sorry, everybody. Actually, there was a deleted line from the episode

that is really funny that even explains this where Lisa asks Marge about the California prunes, like, this doesn't make any sense, and Marge says, actually it was very popular. People had never seen prunes sing and dance before. I felt like anything was possible. I felt a lot of things back then. Oh, that's really good.

That would have made this seem better. Yeah, I guess it was just such a new concept for people that we were willing to make the California Raisins a fad for about four years. But boy. So by the way, this parody, according to my sources, is sung by Jim Gilstrap, a backup singer for Stevie Wonder, who also performed the theme for Tailspin, the Disney cartoon. Oh, that's cool. I didn't know that. Thanks for looking that up, Bob.

And it's fun to encounter jokes that are about to be mothballed, like, oh, we can't do this joke anymore, not for problematic reasons, just because it is becoming outdated and also people are losing the reference point. We are the fruit that your grandmother loves. I think this is the last old people like Prunes joke on the record. Where are Prunes at now in the published consciousness? Do people think about them at all anymore? Maybe Jen Alpha is just weighing to prunes.

I mean, prunes and raisins were sold to me as a kid as like, oh, healthy snacks or whatever, but they are not the healthy snacks I have now. It's like all sugar, like in so many calories per bite. Though if you give me this holiday season, a fruit cake full of raisins, rum soaked raisins or prunes, I'm eating those up. Look at these split. I say cut out the middle man, just drink rum.

Yeah, I can't chew rum, Bob. Oh, if you work hard enough, you can chew rum. This parody and the other stop motion parody in this are both done by the Kyoto Brothers Productions, which was a big and still are a big deal. They basically were. It seemed like if you were in Hollywood and said, I want a parody classic stop motion, this was the only studio you knew to go to because at the same time this episode aired, what's number one in the box office that I didn't mention because it would just be repetitive. It's elf elf is top in the charts up until return of the king comes out and Elf also has the Kyoto brothers do the stop-motion parody of rank and bass in that too

Like they were the only ones you could hire to do that then apparently but they're not as good as the you know Japanese overseas production studios that did it for rank and bass, they're pretty good. I was thinking about we covered para-Norman this is probably the era rather in which Wilveth and Studios was being reorganized and you know the Nike guy was swooping in and getting rid of everybody cutting the dead weight etc etc so there is no Leica quite yet. That's right. To do all the stop-motion stuff. Maybe they would have said no to parodying themselves for the prunes part. Maybe they would have said no to parodying themselves for the prunes part.

The Kyoto brothers, if you don't know them, they are Steven Charles and Edward Kyoto, and they made it themselves famous as legends in special effects with killer clowns from outer space. And they also did Large Marge in Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Robocop's 6000 Sucks commercial like those are all 80s classics. And they previously did a segment on the Simpsons it was the Davey and Son of Goliath segment I think I forget what episode

it's in it has nothing to do with anything that surrounds it. Oh it's Homer with the R backwards yes. And previously Al Jean and Mike Reese worked with them on the critic because they did the Nightmare Before Hanukkah segments. Soon after this, well, actually when this aired, they are probably working on Team America because they built the puppets for that too. Oh cool. And they worked on the 2021 Oscar nominated Marcel Deschel was shoes on. So they're still at it.

The Kyoto brothers. There's a separate feature on the DVD of the directors all together on The Simpsons. A bunch of them including Stephen Dean Moore from this one, he's talking about how he timed out the boards for this. So basically they still drew it traditionally and they made the boards, timed out the animatic and then sent it to the Kyoto brothers to produce it just like they would for the other overseas animation normally. And when it came back, Stephen D. Moore is like, I'm a genius. I timed this out perfectly. And then he realized that Kyoto brothers just re-timed the whole

thing themselves and reposed it themselves to make it work as good as possible. They also did a good job designing the Clarence Clemens prune I think the one playing the saxophone is good likeness. They're not that different looking than the California Raisins I think there may be five percent different they're just a different kind of shriveled fruit. I think the only thing you'd call a parody of like, oh, this goes farther than the raisins is that there's a raisin Jesus wearing sunglasses with his arms up. Like, that feels more blasphemous.

That's kind of the parody point there is in the original Christmas celebration, the original Claymation Christmas celebration, they did do Nativity stuff. They did like Doo-Wop, Three Magi, and they did do the California Raisins singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but they never combined the two. Yeah, that's a good point, Greg. One thing I notice about the Claymation Christmas celebration is that so many of the specials we love are very secular, even though they were made in the 60s when there was more people going to church, more religion being discussed in public.

But the claymation special has a lot of very religious songs and religious imagery as well. The non-raising things that stick with me from it is just all the jokes about Wasail. And now I can't see, even in this episode when Wasail is on screen, I think of that joke about Wasail. And now I can't see, even in this episode, when Wasail is on screen, I think of that joke about Wasail. I mean, MSD3K also has a great joke about Wasail, that it's gone skunky if you get old Wasail, but. You know, I would have fired that other dinosaur, unprofessional, deeply unserious about his job.

You want a one where everything goes fine and it's just the fancy T-Rex. The one guy's like, we're gonna talk about jingle bells. The other guy's like, I like to eat food. Yummy, yummy. Are they a little ciscillinebrity? I don't think really that, but. In design, but they're just like two different types

of gay dinosaurs. Every Letterboxd review points that out. I'm not being offensive. No, no, they's a chemistry between them. They're very gay coded. Yeah. Hey, they may fight on screen when they get home. The sex is great.

So after the prune scene, Homer busts in holding money and tells everybody they're gonna go shopping at the fancy place, the Springfield Heights Promenade, which on the commentary they say is specifically a reference to the fancy outdoor shopping center, The Grove, which our pals on podcast The Ride have talked about a number of times. And The Grove was also in the news because the evil billionaire who owns it, Rick Caruso, tried to run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, unfortunately lost.

Trey Lockerbie This is hot off the presses because The Grove opened in February of 2002. So this is a new experience for all of these folks that I've never been to the Grove despite the many times I've been to LA But this is a good parody of the upscale shopping areas where if people like us go in They assume we are there to shoplift if you from your point of view you're like who is walking in and taking these items and paying For them. I don't understand I just went in one of these places that was like it was a Christmas store that had opened in downtown Bellevue, Washington. And I was like, oh, this looks like a neat candle. I like candles. I like scented candles. So I pick up this candle that I'm like,

this looks like a $15 candle to Target. $85. And I thought, who buys these? Like I became Jerry Seinfeld for a while. But $85, that was insanity to me. No, I've never been to the Grove either. I assume it's a lot like Universal City Walk except much fancier being an outdoor mall. Yeah, no flip flops allowed. I love like, let's shop till we droop. I think it's drop.

I think that's drop. That's a very violent image, Lisa. That's a great line. Yeah, there's this like here I don't understand maybe either of you could help me out here, that Abercrombie and Rich, I get that maybe the clothes are a little overpriced, but on one side there's a poster of a buff young person.

The other side there's a poster of a buff man, but he has a nerd's head. And I guess that's the rich part of Abercrombie and Rich, but I don't get the joke. I have no idea what the nerd model guy is up to. I don't know. Yeah. I was pausing and stroking my beardless chin. My closest guess would be that at the time Abercrombie and Fitch, their ads were known for nearly nude, beautiful people were in them who also were like quite young. But it may be, it's just the joke of like, even the nerds in these have perfect

bodies, like maybe it's that, but I love the sign gag too. Our prices discriminate because we can't. That's a good sign gag too. And you know what? It's a predictable song, but Burlives is silver and gold does fit for like fancy Christmas shopping. It's not a bad choice. All the songs in that special are great.

We covered it in 2021. We see yes, Kent Brockman and Rainier Wolf Castle and I'm assuming Stephanie the Weather Lady is the woman with Kent Brockman, I'm assuming. It looks like her from pre-order. That's her, yeah. I think they gave her some new winter clothes for this design. And now, you know, everybody with shitty fake AI can do your picture on a Rembrandt. We can all do that. Hey, before that it was Photoshop, but people had to work for it. Damn it.

Homer says he hands them all money to go shopping for each other and then they'll buy a gigantic tree. He promises them Bart and Lisa head to prodigy barn, which does look like expensive smart kid toy store where everything is like educational in some way, which does take away some of the, I mean, I love playing with a rain stick at one of those things, but I didn't want to learn too much. Then Bart blowing up the capitals and that he realizes he's learning something. That's a good gag too.

It's an accurately rendered PlayStation one. Yes. Yeah. Though it should have the dual sticks on it. It feels like he definitely was playing on that same PlayStation 1 when they did the Hockey Dad fight joke. Yeah. A few episodes ago. I mean the OG PlayStation 1s didn't have the dual sticks.

Yeah, it's just a PlayStation. They did not make like a new system for it. And I feel like, talking to jokes like that feel like they should be there, it's Lisa who says, oh look a toy store. Then you don't get a joke from Lisa in the toy store. Yeah, I wonder what she was up to in there. It's Lisa who says, Oh, look at toy store. Then you don't get a joke from Lisa in the toy store. Yeah. What about she was up to in there? I guess it wasn't funny enough to keep in. And it's not even in that script either. We had to Victor's secret where Marge is buying gigantic underwear for Homer. And I like that it takes two metrosexuals to fill in Homer's underwear. It's a good animation on their flag folding ceremony going on there. Incredible technique on it, yeah. And we then head over to Homer,

who has a really good line. Here I'm talking about a cut line that is actually they improved on with the thing. Homer said, something for Marge, something for Bart. Instead of key ring for Marge, key ring for Bart, which makes him even, that makes the selfishness even more clear. Though it still changes how the dialogue works though, because if you kept it as the original like something for Marge, something for Bart, big thing for me, I think is what he says.

So it, I guess it works better with something, something big thing. But what a useless thing, this astrolabe. Like it's it does look like the type of garbage that a rich Simpsons writer would buy. It's a real sharper image slash Sky Mall kind of object. Like the world's largest crossword puzzle. You just buy it to say you have it. But you can also, I went online in Amazon and looked up astrolabes and they're all very small and under $50. I did like searching the Google shopping tab for it.

I'm sure I've seen an Astrolabe like at a museum or something, but I've never considered even buying one. Though when I went to those sharp-er image things, I'm drawn straight to the like, put your hand in the little like, little shavings thing. Yeah. Oh, the shavings. Oh, the shavings.

Oh, well not shavings, the little pegboard thingy. Yeah, the bunch of like blunt pins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then you think about putting your face in there and you realize it's covered in filth and you shouldn't do that. And then you do it anyway.

Yeah. This astrolabe also just does everything that a phone does now. That's most gifts from 2003, a phone does it now. It being $500 seems very realistic and Homer just, he buys it for himself. It's when he learns that it's Margaret Cho's birthday, that's when he chooses it. And that is an accurate joke. Yeah, this really sets it in time because later they reference that it's December 6th,

the next day. So we are currently December 5th, 2003 in this episode. And Margaret Cho did just turn 56 years young. So happy, happy December 5th birthday to Margaret Cho. And we know Homer's a fan because in Simpson Tide, he's joking around with the drill sergeant. He's like, do you think you're a comedian or something? And he says, well, I'm no Margaret Cho, but dot, dot, dot.

The show is a bone to pick with Margaret Cho, ultimately. So the Astrolabe also has coordinates. Did you look those up? I did, but Greg, I will allow you to reveal the grand mystery here. Yeah. Finally know where Springfield is. 42 degrees North, 71 degrees West. That puts it smack dab on to Boston.

Yeah. For whatever reason they chose Boston, maybe because they all went to Harvard. That's gotta be any Boston reference has to be Harvard, I think, every time. Well, damn, man, I didn't even think of those coordinates there. That's impressive that it's actually real coordinates they put in there. Then Homer buys it off screen and we then see that they are gonna go shopping but Homer's got only two dollars left so he's gonna take them to the rough neighborhood. I don't like that Lisa is the one to voice discomfort of

being in a poor neighborhood. She's allowed to be scared, but it does feel a little classist by Lisa to me. I would expect it of Lisa. Cause she's the bad liberal. Like that's her thing. I mean, that's kind of what they turn her into sometimes when they want to make fun of that kind of person. Sure. That's true That's true. And as they go around there

I have the clip of it because this leads to a whole thing which I wish they'd mentioned in the commentary But I feel like this convoy parody is coming from a specific place But let's listen to the little original music they put in this episode original music they put in this episode. Stupid jerk! Dad, I don't like the looks of this neighborhood. It's fine. Everyone just relax, lock your doors, don't make eye contact with anyone, and listen to the radio.

Now let's downshift to the holiday spirit with Christmas Convoy. Stars shown bright that silent night, ninety miles out of major town, hauling gold and myrrh and frankincense, three kings put the hammer down. Now see, I wish they'd have mentioned this on the commentary, but I think this is making fun of a real thing of re-recording pop songs as Christmas songs. Yeah, I mean on the commentary for Behind the Laughter, they point out that they were obsessed with BTO's Taking Care of Christmas, their own parody of Taking Care of Business. That's where Simpson's Christmas Boogie came from. So I feel like it's all drawing back to taking care of Christmas. Greg, are you aware of these parodies of,

well not parodies, they're self weird alifications of hit songs to make them Christmassy. Not to an expert degree, but I know what you're talking about, yeah. I have a few samplings of them here actually. Bob, you mentioned it. What's funny too is in two of them, the whole band didn, you mentioned it. What's funny too is in two of them, the whole

band didn't want to do it, so they're really just credited to Randy Bachman's taking care of Christmas. Well, he Christmas and doing it right. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. Oh yeah, I'm not hearing the overdrives. Where are the overdrives? There's also Mike Loves Santa's Going to Kokomo. I didn't think I could hate Mike Love More. I love hearing these also rands because we know the songs that stuck around and I just love hearing these craven attempts to just carve out a niche in the Christmas song ecosystem. And I have one more example of this.

This is the whole band Cheap Trick who did it, but this is I want you for Christmas oh Well, didn't I, didn't I say I want you for Christmas? Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. Ah, thanks, that's rocking out. Well, I like Cheap Trick, but not like this. Please. That was my favorite of all of them because I just love that song the most, maybe. I Want You to Want Me. Well, what we heard is a parody of the C.W. McCall 1975 novelty song Convoy. Which I only know from being mocked on both The Simpsons and Futurama.

I don't think I've ever heard it in the wild. And Futurama just played their cover of the song. They didn't actually dress it up with any funny lyrics. Or have a boy sing into it for a commercial. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, it was featured on The Simpsons before. It was the used for the Mr. Microphone commercial that gets Homer to buy it for Bart on his Simpsons before. It was used for the Mr. Microphone commercial that gets Homer to buy it for Bart on his birthday.

That could be Bart. No, I mean, it is such a corny song. Is part of it being a popular novelty song is that it gets away with almost saying the F word in it? I think absolutely. In 1975, that's all you needed. It was so much easier to be a popular novelty song. No it novelty people have to go so above and beyond to get attention now So they leave behind all the fancy stuff and buy a tree that constantly catches on fire when Homer touches it

And why do things I love always burn and then also I love how Homer says isn't it sufficient when looking at the tree I wasn't sold on the first Tree igniting joke, but I kept happening and I got a little more into it every time. Just the light petting of the tree causes it to burst into flames. I would have liked a third one, though the Simpsons already have burned down a tree for another Christmas episode. Oh, by the way, we don't need to hit every joke in that montage we passed, but there is another bird violence joke where the James L. Brooks hobo and another hobo are roasting crows over a trash fire. Oh man, I missed, I thought that it was James L. Brooks, but maybe I was still just thinking about Gil trying to kill himself, which it's an off model Gil in that shot, but because

he's got the new son the next time we see him, I can safely assume that's Gil. That's him. This is where the family, I'm glad that they speed this up that they're just like hey, wait a minute Homer You bought something for yourself? Like it's not a secret. Yeah, you don't wait till Christmas to find out they find out immediately that Homer wasted all the money on That crazy gift for himself and as Homer justifies it we get another reference to something rather recent Gorgeous, huh and And quite the bargain. Isn't it kinda dry?

Oh, it just needs a little, uh... Whoa! Why do things I love always burn? Isn't it sufficient? I thought we had enough money for a good tree. Homer, is there something you're not telling us? It is 6.31 p.m. in Montreal. The moon is waxing tonight.

What's that? Uh, woo-hoo! Maggie's talking! Hmm. You wasted our money on something extravagant for yourself. There's a trickle-down theory here. If I'm happy, I'm less abusive to the rest of you. You're doing something extravagant for yourself. There's a trickle-down theory here. If I'm happy, I'm less abusive to the rest of you. No, Dad. This time you were just plain selfish. I am not returnable.

I will be testing my smoke alarm for the next three hours. This is Saturday, Tuesdays with Maury. Now I don't think Homer read the book, but I'm sure he saw the TV adaptation with Hank Azaria playing the author. That has to be why they did that. I mean Tuesdays with Maury was a famous thing at the time, but it's a wink towards their pal Hank Azaria at the time, but it's a wink towards their Pal Hankazaria at the time biggest. I think like Emmy nominated, Jack Lemmon won an Emmy, I believe, for it. But

it definitely was a big deal. Now, Mitch Albom, like, is the Five People We Meet in Heaven more famous than Tuesdays with Morrie? Oh, maybe. I don't know if Morrie has resurfaced. Tuesdays with Morrie and Five People We Meet in Heaven are what I call Target books. There's always this little segment of semi-sad inspirational books like The Lovely Bones and Eat, Pray, Love and The Secret and all the Mitch album stuff. It's always got a nice little dedicate section at Target. They usually have like a gold seal on them too or something. Yeah.

You know, they're inspirational. podcast from the Toronto Star. Listen for a new season with a new case early 2025. Meanwhile, look for new bonus episodes of billionaire murders at thestar.com or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. And I have to say, seven years later to the show did an episode called Thursdays with Aby, which is a Tuesdays with Maury parody in which Hank Azaria plays that style of author. And there's a very fun surprise at the end. I thought it was a very funny episode. We'll get to it by 2030. There was originally another Tuesdays with Maury joke in there when they ask him like, confess and he's like, okay, I confess that I actually don't have allergies. I was crying

during Tuesdays with Maury. So it would have been a good follow up. But yeah, the Homer, they are so disappointed in them. Lisa doesn't even make a good joke. She's just like, no, you're just selfish. She's done with joking around with Homer, and they just all abandon him. We come back from the commercial break. Homer and Marge are in bed, and this feels like

the roughest their barrage has ever been in this. Just in how they're like, this is so mean. It's almost too realistic. Yes yes it definitely feels taken from the lives of Simpsons comedy writers who bought extravagant things and argue with wives about it some of it feels like husband venting especially with how Marge explains how her anger will be parceled out oh yes yeah jamming at you just when you seem the most content. Though I like the animation of like,

Marge says parcel out, she like does like a dealing cards motion, like that's what an animator can add to good- It has Dana Gould written all over it, that line. I thought the same thing. If anything is about like a toxic relationship in a good, mean comedy, I usually think it's writer, comedian Dana Gould on it, yes.

But this is a dark time for Margegin Homer's marriage. Like they have so many jokes about like marriage is horrible, right? Like that is where so many Margin Homer jokes come from. I also thought it was very Dana Gould, the line of like, that's not true. I cared what you thought once you found out. Yes. So Homer gets sent away from bed sent sent to sleep on the couch, and he's going to stay up all night watching cartoons, which when I watched several of these cartoons again, just for prep, I was watching them from the couch and I should have had my astrolabe next to me too. I mean, hey, the late night on the couch, but they talk about this on the commentary.

This is like one the last times You had to schedule watching these specials Yeah, and a lot of these aren't as available as you would assume now to watch a claymation Christmas celebration a title I hate saying over and over again I had to go to archive org and just find somebody that uploaded it because there's a DVD and it seems out of print Nobody is streaming this. I don't know who owns the rights to all these Will Vinton specials, but yeah, a lot of them just aren't in circulation. I think you need Apple TV Plus to watch

the peanut stuff, I'm pretty sure. I was lucky to have the Magoo on DVD, so I just pulled it off the shelf. I purchased it when I thought we would maybe do it as a movie. That was on Peacock one year because I did watch that when I watched it with my mom recently on their dreaded. I gave up trying to turn off motion smoothing on their TV.

I had to watch Mr. Magoo with motion smoothing and it killed me. Killed me in recent. Killed me in throw up I think. But it's a losing war. I don't know about like with you guys with visiting parents or watching things on your parents' TV. They just like it being on. I can't

stop it. I got lucky in that I don't have the motion smoothing issue, but their entertainment system is so labyrinthian. To get from like Roku to the Blu-ray player requires four remote controls, like 20 button presses, and I always have to just get my dad to just do it for me. My mom and stepdad do have too many remotes and I blame them having like its speaker, regular TV and then the cable box and I just want to tell them like you don't have to use what Comcast gave you. But when Homer's watching the Christmas specials he comes across first a parody of I'm gonna say a parody of Santa Claus has come into town Though the title is more of a parody of the year without a Santa Claus

Yeah, this is the year Santa got lost. I gotta admit. I don't like some of these specials I think as a kid I was psyched to see more of the stop-motion animation before I knew what it was But I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of Santa Claus being a young redheaded man. I just I rejected the idea entirely. That one I just rewatched this week, but I'd seen it before. It's like I actually prefer the year without a Santa Claus because that's the heat miser and snow miser and those guys are a lot of fun. I love the designs. So when Santa Claus is coming to town that one's hosted by a Fred Astaire.

The animation on this is great. I don't know if I like the parody because it's just the Jimmy Stewart character being a reactionary conservative. A not specific enough way to be funny. So this kind of is a failure of a parody. I feel like they're wasting these animators time by not making it funny enough. I did like hearing the shout out to Nixon's Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. Yeah, I guess that is specific, but not in a way that made me laugh. But he's also surrounded by the island of misfit toys, which it's like, you're really mixing your metaphors here. You know that Santa Claus is coming to town, that really is like the prequel. It's so just like a prequel movie now where it's like, how did the Wicked Witch of the West become this thing or whatever? And this is like line by line every part of Santa Claus mythos is explained in that universe

like well why is he also called Chris Kringle? Why does he have all these toys? How does he see the people? What's the magic to see kids how they know they'll be good or bad? All of these things are answered. There's a very funny joke that Matt Selman says on the commentary. He says they should really do a movie where they examine how Santa's workshop actually functions and how do they explain all the magic and how things are built and the reindeer like

that's every Christmas special yes he doesn't want to completely straight face that which I love that's the entire Santa Claus universe every movie is that and Peter Evans you knows art that he shared with us. He did like the full setup for the storytelling by the Jimmy Stewart puppety character. And it's a great drawing. You can see the Kyoto brothers did a great job here, but you can see it started on the line work by the Simpsons artist. So Homer though can't take any more of this and he changes the channel. But what does he see?

Now back to the year Santa got lost, starring Jimmy Stewart as the voice of Mr. Mailman. Santa was in an awful pickle. Beatniks had given drugs to the reindeer and they were no darn good. So Santa placed a call to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. Jimmy Stewart as a puppet is just wrong. And now, back to Mr. McGrew's Christmas carol.

Mr. McGrew, I love that blind senile old man. I can't find my way back to the home. I heard you the first five times. Oh, you work on Christmas or you're out of a job. Is that clear, Cratchit? Sir, I'm over here. Oh, I'm sorry. Pardon me, ma'am. I see you're expecting.

May I listen to the babies? Pardon me. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, McGrew. Once again, you've mistaken something for something. This is just a parade of really good Dan Castellaneta impressions. I do love that. Oh, Magoo, once again you've mistaken something for something. This is just a parade of really good Dan Castellaneta impressions. I do love that. Although you'll be shocked to hear this, Henry. I think watching this episode in 2003 made me aware that there was a Mr. Magoo Christmas special.

I had no idea. Because I don't think they were running it as often as they were running the true classics. I mean, to be fair, it was the first animated Christmas special ever. It has that honor, but I feel like it didn't last as long in terms of staying afloat on the air every season. I counted on my mom being such a Magoo super fan that she would seek it out. And she bought it on DVD, like around this time or whenever it first got put out on DVD, she had it.

And we have watched it every year. When I last visited her, we watched the Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. And then afterwards I pulled this up on Disney Plus and just showed her these scenes and she's like, well, she was so impressed by how accurate the recreations were in this. I think this kind of gets to my point earlier. by how accurate the recreations were in this. I think this kind of gets to my point earlier.

I don't think Mr. McGrew's Christmas Carol is really a parody. It's like just Mr. McGrew's Christmas Carol recreated from memory. With more like Simpsons style humor. Now I assume both of you have seen the original. Do they still do the blind jokes or is that just the upfront when the characters are themselves? Because from what I know about this, the characters are themselves, and then they put on a play, and the play is what most of the special is.

Yeah. There's fewer than your average Mr. Magoo cartoon. And a key difference between Magoo and Magro is that Magoo never hurts himself. All of his blind antics hurt other people. Yeah, he's kind of indestructible. Yeah. No, actually, that's a good point. I do remember from the special, when he is Ebenezer Scrooge, it is, I can only remember one time when he sees the Marley door knocker, he goes like, am I seeing things?

Do I need glasses? Like a very out of character thing of Magoo realizing he has bad eyesight. He's blowing the whole premise. But then he goes like, no, no, of course I don't. No, I mean, they Simpsonized the designs a little bit in Everybody's Yellow, but especially like Cratchit and the ghosts of past and future, they're, or yet to come if I have to be very accurate, they just look like their characters in the special.

In the original special they go out of the order, it's present first and then past, which confused me every time I watched it, I'm like, wait, did I miss something? Did they cut out the past this time? Now I refuse to see this. Like they can't, why did they violate the tradition? It's gross in that way. I don't know why. It's also too long.

Like your patrons were correct in not voting for it. It's too long. As a mama's boy, I take offense at this on my mother's behalf here. So, yeah, I mean, that pretty much just sums it up like, you know, Oh, McGrew, you once again confused something for another thing. Yeah. I mean, we're big fans of Christmas Carol on this network. We covered them up at Christmas Carol last year for our What a Cartoon Movie podcast series. Matt, someone points out that it is weird that they never did the Simpsons version, but they also point

out that if anyone pitches that they are immediately made fun of. Like, oh what is Mr. Burns, Ebenezer Scrooge, and oh yeah, Homer is Bob Cratchit, sure. What else happens? You can't do it after this episode. Not after the ribbon they give it. But it's such a perfect story with this, it's such a well-known format that you can have so much fun with it. We just did the Beavis and Butt-Head Christmas Special for 1995 and they have a lot much fun with it. We just did the Beavis & Butta Christmas Special for 1995,

and they have a lot of fun with it there. We're gonna touch ahead, but when they bring up the other versions of A Christmas Carol, are you familiar with the YouTube video, 1200 Ghosts? I am not. No, it's a 54-ish minute long video that edits together over 400 different versions of A Christmas Carol. Pretty much every version you can think of

is just constantly cutting between them. I'm checking this out. That sounds like great holiday watching. I like that it is just a series of shelves you can stack jokes on, because we all know what the shelves look like, we all know what they can support, and people just go in and they place their own jokes on the shelves.

I do have to say this is a weird 2024 Christmas time is a weird year for Christmas Carol since it is about what if a rich man felt shame about doing something. And also what if everybody in one vision of the future everybody thinks it's awesome that a bad rich guy's dead and everybody's celebrating and dancing. Well that's completely out of touch. I don't know who would ever be happy if a rich man died. Impossible. It'd be so beneath us and just disgusting to see. Especially if he was rich based on human misery alone. I've said this. This is an old thing I've said a million

times but the richness of Ebenezer Scrooge is so small compared to a 2024 rich guy. He is barely rich. Yeah. He's not even upper middle class. So there's one deleted scene on the DVD but boys it a doozy that I totally get why they deleted it and it's a secret deleted scene. So to preface this one because it's going to sound weird if I play it out of context. Are you guys aware that mr. Magoo had a houseboy named Charlie in his original cartoons? I'm vaguely aware of this guy. Is he just basically very put upon for having to oh wait. No, that's his nephew I'm thinking okay. No, I think I know you're talking about here Henry. Yes I was unaware of the existence of Charlie or if I had buried him in my mind. Charlie is a houseboy that Magoo had,

who is basically like his butler. And he is a very extreme, very bad Chinese caricature. It's, Greg, I don't know if you've heard of this. I've seen it, yeah. Yeah, so. I'm guessing probably named after Charlie Chan. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, well, Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

And, well, so, okay. Let me play you the deleted scene first. So basically, this starts with McGrew in the scene of him using a cat as an iron, and then, well, it continues from there. Ah! Oh, McGrew! Once again, you've mistaken something for something. Bloss, Bloss, someone here to see you.

It seems urgent. McGrew, I am the ghost of Christmas past. So yes, an Asian caricature walks into the room and says McGlue. And now, if you don't know the character of Charlie, you just think Simpsons did something very racist. M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M- racist Mr. Magoo sidekick character right? Let's make fun of that and instead it just looks like the Simpsons is being racist. Yes. Wise cut I will say. I mean this is the era in which there was a lot of ironic racism to make fun of racism but then we learn it was it's often re-appropriated by racists so you have to be a little more careful with that stuff. I have a tiny clip here of the original Charlie just to let you know that they did a accurate recreation of it here.

So, wow. So he says blos? Yes. Bled. He made bread that's bled and... Yeah. Well, I understand the whole LR transposing thing, but they're just making up, like, things that happen. This is not accurate anyway. But yeah, they accurately represented that. This character was so racist even then that by the end of the 60s they were apparently redubbing his character. They're like, oh, this is so bad. It can't make it out of 1969. This is two races for people in 1969.

It feels like some writer was like, oh, what do Chinese people do? They say L a lot. Just jamming L into every word. I think that's what they do. But so there you go. It's secretly on the DVD. You got to click up and it's one of those classic DVD secrets, but it sits there. So Homer freaks out as he gets deeper and deeper and more sleep-deprived. I guess that's their explanation. Like he's not drunk he just is up very late and that's how he imagines that the TV is talking to him. And we get to the ending as he sees the grave and the grave has his name on it. Him reading all as Al, unloved by all, as

unloved by Al. Did that make Al Jean chuckle there? Well, maybe chuckle was the figure of death, or the ghost rather, tapping on all to get his attention, like no, no, no. Homer can't read all correctly. Does he need glasses like Mr. Magoo? This is where there's also a very strange cut of like when Homer starts screaming,

just hard cut to black. This is not normal Simpsons editing. Yeah, it's a bit odd. And as Homer awakens the next day, this is when he asks Lisa what day it is. It's only December 6th, which Homer thinks means there's only four days left till Christmas. And yesterday was truly Margaret Cho's birthday. You know, in season 15 sometimes the Simpsons doesn't do something accurate like that, but they did it this time.

I'm very appreciative as a pedant. I'm pleased. But this is where Homer tells the family about what he saw, and Homer, for the first time in his life, learns about Charles Dickens. I just saw the greatest cartoon of all time. It was about a miser who was visited by three ghosts at Christmas. And get this, he learns a lesson. Dad, what you saw was a Christmas Carol.

It was written by Charles Dickens 160 years ago. Yeah, TV writers have been milking that goat for years. Reform, Ebenezer Urkel. You have alienated everyone who loved you. Did I do that? Report, Mr. Sillom. Captain, there appears to be some sort of spirit from an Earth holiday past. Mr. Scott, fire photon torpedoes. That's no use, Mr. Sillom. Captain, there appears to be some sort of spirit from an Earth holiday past.

Mr. Scott, fire photon torpedoes. That's no use, Captain. He's showing visions of me future. God, I'm so fat. I set fire. That last one looked kind of good. March, TV and nightmares have joined forces to teach me a lesson. From now on, I will stop being selfish and start being good.

In fact, I'll be being selfish and start being good. In fact, I'll be the nicest man in town. You've made that promise before. Yes, but this time I'm sober-ish. I really love Marge's comment. I did laugh out loud while watching this when she's like, that one looked kind of good. That's such a great line. I love that line too. Rarely do they comment on the things they see on TV. Marge wanted to keep watching that episode of Star Trek. And I will say, I think you'll both agree with me, if there was a Family Matters Christmas Carol parody,

Carl Winslow would be the Ebenezer figure, but that parody wouldn't read as immediately as making Urkel the figure, so I understand. I get it. Urkel could have been the Jacob Marley character. Yeah. Oh, by the way, the 1995 Christmas special for Family Matters seems slightly similar. They're not doing a parody, but the synopsis is Carl's bah humbug attitude puts a damper on Urkel's plans to decorate

the house for Christmas until the nerd announces that there's a contest for Best Light Display and that there are prizes. Oh, the old Best light display contest, man. That's so many stories about that best light display contest, but in my mom and stepfather's neighborhood, my stepdad is the judge of best light display contest, though there's no prize for it, so it's a real thing. I was gonna say, that doesn't sound real,

but I guess it does happen. I would have doubted it too, if, I mean, my stepdad loves to decorate Christmas. Like, I did not think I would end up with a Stepdad who is a Christmas lover who has an entire Huge shed in his backyard to hold only Christmas decorations. I Did see that the season four family matters Christmas episode is that gets more mystical but it's a wonderful life parody where Laura switches with Urkel and she becomes the nerd. Yeah I started looking into this until I realized they did one for every season. I did not want to do that much Family Matters research although I'm sure I saw all of these except for the CBS season

which I did not watch. You've watched more recent Family Matters than me so yeah I think I only watched them TGIF. Greg, much of a Family Matters watcher? Uh, here and there. I am surprised that there appears to have never been a Family Matters Christmas Carol. It seems this was a show that had a Halloween episode with a demonic ventriloquist dummy so it seems like exactly something they would do in like season six. Yeah, like when they were shrinking themselves and becoming pirates and wrestling in the WWF, I feel like they missed the train by not doing this Christmas Carol thing. Marge saying she thought the Star Trek one is very good is especially funny because that's the most ridiculous The Star Trek one is very good, especially funny, because that's the most ridiculous place

you would see a Christmas Carol parody. You'd expect it from Family Matters. You expect it from cartoons, but Star Trek's never done anything close to that. The line by Scotty there, like, it's a worse version of I cannot reach the controls. Yeah. 10 years later, their go-to Scotty joke is still the fat joke.

Again, another joke that's being put into mothballs. Is this before or after the Futurama Star Trek episode? Oh, it's right after, I believe. Maybe a year after. Okay. Yeah. Production-wise, more probably closer to two years, but close to it. That one, James Dewan, I can see why. He wasn't in the best mood then.

That's why Wellshe is in the Futurama episode, because he's the one guy who said no. He wasn't long for this world. I think he was unable to act towards the end of his life, because he passed away in 2005. I was trying to think what's the closest to a Christmas Carol and Star Trek. I'm hardly the biggest Trekkie,

though I've seen my fair share. I do think the finale to the next generation, it is a past, present, and future vision that Picard has while being kind of bah humbug about things. And I think it does follow structurally a little bit A Christmas Carol, though bigger Trek fans out there, tell me if you think I'm wrong there about all good things. One thing I discovered though, Vancouver's own James DeWin, where is his you think I'm wrong there about all good things. One thing I discovered, though, Vancouver's own James Dewan. Where is his statue? I'm petitioning whoever the mayor is. Come on, Bob, that's going to take too much brass to make that.

They're going to run out of brass. I voted for young Scotty. Excuse me. Yes, it's such a great line. TV and nightmares have joined forces to teach me a lesson like another great line. That's why I chose it for the intro. So there's another cut that's in the original script and in Peter Avinzino's storyboards, which is one of the first nice things Homer does.

He buys a squishy for Apu. He goes like, you know, you're always giving people squishies. Let me buy one for you. And then Apu says, oh, you know, I've never even tried one before. He takes one sip and spits it out and says it's disgusting. That would have been a first for the show. I definitely can't think of a previous time off

who has tasted a squishy, though you would think he would have taste tested the chutney squishy that he invented, right? Yeah, I guess he must have assumed all squishies were that delicious. As Homer is doing other things to help, this is where Ned starts to become jealous. This is a little bit of Homer loves Flanders,

I'd say here. As he is jealous of Homer giving all of his clothes to the unhoused, who remarked that, these pants smell worse than my old pants. You're welcome. Homer's back to being the smelliest man alive on top of being a huge fat monster, and drunk all the time too.

A grand return of the Lenny eye injury jokes, which I think took a season or two off. The last time I can remember it was in the prank monkey episode with not supposed to get pudding in it. I think it was Homer versus Dignity. That's the prank monkey episode. And the Panda Love episode, we covered it.

But the photo cube, I just love the way, actually maybe in this clip can you hear Lenny's eye being touched? Listen Lenny I know I was a pretty bad secret Santa so I wanted to make it up to you. Wow a photo cube with pictures of us! And I filed down all the sharp corners see your eye is completely safe! Oh wow it just stings a little. Oop. Marge, do you want this last pork chop? I dreamed of the day you'd say that!

Oh, your thoughtfulness tastes so good! And tears are the sweetest sauce! Alright, now you're starting to creep me out. Very good drawings there. Oh, it is creepy. Her chewing and crying. The way the cube keeps touching Lenny's eye, and he's like, oh, it's a little, like,

it only stings a little. There's so many back to back, very funny jokes. There's the Lenny thing, the March thing, and then I love the Burns joke, to the point where it seems like Burns is getting tired of all of the stock jokes about himself. That his blood is just dust that flies out of him, or air out of a balloon.

It's more his remark where the dust comes out and he goes, yes, I'm old. Yep. We're on season 15. That's the joke with me. That's every joke about Mr. Burns. Yes, I'm old. That photo cube Homer gets him.

These things are still around. You can get them for like 30 bucks on Amazon, but let me say the better thing is a custom 3D crystal photo thingy. My stepfather got that as a gift from my mom a couple Christmases ago and my mom was in tears. It was a pet dog of theirs that was getting on in years and he got her a crystal like basically it's a clear crystal and then etched into it as you send them a photo and they etch it into it. Oh so it's a hologram. It's like yeah I'd say that yeah, Holly Graham just like Hank Aaron would say yeah Homer is able to get a ton of money out of Burns, which this is Burns's fault for going to the church at all

What's he doing there? he seems like one of the types who only goes there around Christmas time and This is where after Burns gives money Homer is out doing Ned Which I blame lovejoy for this clearly making it a competition instead of like, the charity is the point in of itself. Why is he rubbing it in on Ned? But I guess Lovejoy does hate Ned. Yeah, yeah.

And Homer says he's gonna do this by the stairway to heaven that Jesus is singing about, which. Even Ned knows it was Led Zeppelin who sung that. Homer's like, get back to your bong hippie, another great line. And then, so Homer like skips away almost with love joy. And then Ned is stewing and this is where Rod and Todd are talking and it's Rod who says, I'm jealous of girls because they get to wear dresses.

And Ned, just his reaction of like, he's upset, but he doesn't want to deal with it. And it's the joke is on Ned. I don't take this. There's a lot of transphobic jokes back in 2003, but I feel like this is a joke on Ned, not about Rod wanting to wear dresses. Yeah. To me, it feels like despite what the writer's intentions

might be, this is the last person who wants to hear that information. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, Greg, you did a great video recently on a Rugrats that's about boys wearing dresses. And in that know, Greg, you did a great video recently on a rugrats that's about boys wearing dresses and in that commentary. I wonder how do you view this joke now with 2024 eyes?

Oh, well this specific joke, I think it's one of those jokes where what you take from is what you bring into it. So if you're a particularly like homobic, transphobic viewer watching The Simpsons around that time. You kind of laugh. Oh, this kid, this awful, awful child. That poor man. Yeah. Just another problem for Ned Flanders. And if you're coming in from a more progressive stance, yeah, you can totally read it as like

Ned's in the wrong here. It's kind of a can-go-anyway joke, and those are on a topic like this, I would prefer not to have vague jokes like that, but it is what it is. Yeah, it's 2003, we have to remind everybody, and this could have went much worse in terms of iffy jokes from this era. Simpsons have done worse jokes on the topic in future seasons so yes absolutely. I mean soon after this within a few years of this I think is the joke of that like Smithers is looking to transition which is this is at the era

where they think like well a gay man is also trans or wants to be it's like if they had the words for that even then. When I say they, I mean ignorant comedy writers, not people actually part of the community. But yeah, I laughed at it. I am trying to read the best out of it. Yeah. Yeah. It can either be a joke at the expense of the boys being too feminine or a joke at the expense of Ned being the last person who wants to hear this information So take from it what you will then we get back to margin Homer in bed now Marge loves Homer after just like two days of him being nice

So maybe this is just part of her waiting for him to get content again and start with the jabbing as she said she's going to do There's some more anger to parcel out This is where Homer also reveals that somehow after belching into his mouth, he was able to build an entire skating rink in their backyard that Marge did not notice all the way up until they get into bed. It's a lot of work. And we see back there that the comic book guy, you know what, I've given it to him that

he got out of the house, is trying something new, and then, you know, when he tries ice skating, he splits his pants, but he's at least he's trying. Though him eating a candy bar, sadly, like this is hardly the first joke of a person sadly eating candy, but I wonder if it was on the script or Azaria ad-libbing, but the way he goes, thank you, as he eats it, that's a great- Yeah, it does feel like an ad-lib to me me that just adds a little something more to the joke. Also speaking of Comic Book Guy, when he was licking the card clean,

I definitely felt like that had to have awakened something in one or two viewers watching the meticulousness of Comic Book Guy licking that card. They wrote their Comic Book Guy and Joe DiMaggio slash Vic. This is where Ned learns that he is in a position he is not happy about. Here come sandwiches, here come sandwiches, right down boozy bum lane.

Brother Ned's got cheese on bread and a side order of shame. Well, where the H-E-C-K is everybody? What? Here's your skates. Where the H-E-C-K is, everybody. What? It's the skates. Oh, you'll have to take off those boots. Those are my feet. Oh, for the love of puppies.

Tell me you're the nicest guy in town. Ha ha! Your position has been usurped. Usurped! You heard me. Ha ha! Your sad at Christmas. You know, we learn about the soiled mattresses in Bart's Inner Child. Here we find out where they come from. We finally go to the Springfield Men's Shelter.

Oh wow, you're right. The loop has been closed. Yeah. I like hearing Ned talk about that his Christian charity always comes with a pile of shame. Like that was his plan. And I mean, food is food. Free food is great if you're hungry, but it's just cheese sandwiches. Oh yeah, they're not spending big money on that. I mean, it sucks for the unhoused that sometimes if they want a free meal, they then have to like get proselytized to the entire time as they eat it. So that's a starting point of Tokyo Godfathers.

Another great Christmas thing we've covered. It's not too late to watch it. Yeah, it actually goes up until New Year's. Up till New Year's you're good to watch Tokyo Godfathers and then listen to our great podcast about it. After that, do not watch it. Repeat, do not watch it. January 2nd, you can't do it.

And hey, that has the new dub for it or the newish dub for it. Repeat, do not watch it. January 2nd, you can't do it. And hey, that has the new dub for it, or the newish dub for it, really good, and they got a trans actor to play the role of Hana. I tell everybody it's a really great dub they made for it. Yeah, I recommend the dub. You'll catch a lot more things when you're not reading. Also Dan Casanetta, he's the one, I don't think it's the same character design as in Bart vs Thanksgiving, but he's doing his Bill I don't think it's the same character design as in Bart versus Thanksgiving, but he's doing his Bill Murray voice for this specific unhoused guy that he did

in the Thanksgiving episode too. Oh, you're right, yeah. I forgot that was this kind of default voice for that kind of character. Yeah, he's like, oh, an unhoused gentleman, he has to sound like Bill Murray in Caddyshack. There are so many good little lines here that only in like second or third viewing do I catch of like, and here's another act of Christian charity I pulled out of my butt

by Homer. That's another good line. And also the Ned censors heck to spell it out too. Yeah, there's lots of like little great lines in this one that make it stand out. I love the, we come back from the break, Kent reports about Homer holding people at nice point instead of knife point. And then the pain is the Cleanser thing I have seen memes before where Ned is yanking on his mustache saying pain is the cleanser pain is the cleanser That's almost too dark for Ned, but I do like it. Also. I love I forgot this awesome Photoshop Joke a 2003 Photoshop joke of that the digitally altered image of Homer strangling Bart turned into him holding up a bouquet of flowers.

Though I don't like that Bart and Lisa believe in Santa Claus. They react like Santa Claus is dead like they think Santa Claus is real. I feel like they're old enough to know better. Yeah, Bart was a Santa disbeliever in the first aired episode. I also like the gill after trying to kill himself. He still kept the new son just in case Those can be used for other purposes Kill two birds with them. Yeah, that's true And oh boy

They are so that they have the gill self-harm joke in two different acts and then They still are keeping one in the back pocket for the end of the episode too. Yeah, don't forget about Moe I also like the drawing of all the reindeer holding as Paul bears for Santa That's a good drawing too And so Ned decides that he's going to prove that he is nicer than Homer almost as nice as Jesus himself Which him and like feeling judged by a photo of Jesus this does feel like more of the like Oh, this is the jokes you do with Ned Flanders when George W. Bush is president We've talked about this before like there's a darker edge to his Christianity these days. Yeah, he's a little more sinister. He's not the

man full of endless love, even if he is a little corny. Yeah, Greg, where do you stand on niceness of Ned versus like mocking, you know, Christianity or hypocritical Christians at the very least? Well, in 2003, I was definitely all for the mockery. I had my internet atheist phase. Yeah, it's definitely very, it kind of rises and falls with the cultural stock of Christianity, because definitely in the height of post 9-11, this is God's country, stick a boot up your ass kind of devilness. This was when mainstream Christianity was kind of at its most obnoxious, I would say. That's not a commentary on any individual person, but just kind of the Christian culture really took a rise into just

absolute in-your-face obnoxiousness. That's a good way to put it. It was the most in-your-face, and if you're wondering why there was that rise of internet atheism, it just because it was unavoidable. People were overreacting because they were just irritated by it infiltrating like every element of their life. And now, unfortunately, it's the internet atheists and the conservative Christians are just like pals now. They're hand in hand.

Yeah, they like each other. They're hand in hand. Yeah. They like each other. Or really, now you'll see, certainly I've seen people bring up the like guys and gals who used to be like, you know, the internet atheist type, like they are getting baptized now. They are like, you know what? I'm into this now. Obviously, I mean, Russell Brand is specifically, but there's been others.

There's been others. New Catholics, like who becomes a Catholic? That's insanity. I don't understand the new wave of Catholics. It baffles me. And I went to Catholic school for like eight years. So Homer, he gets to witness on the other side, Ned deciding that he's going to nice it up so much that he'll outdo Homer, which this leads to just a, another great light of him.

He's handing out presents. This is after he fails to save a pregnant woman on Christmas Eve, which that feels like them almost pitching a different third act of like helping a pregnant woman alone on Christmas Eve, like Mary herself. We are kind of at a point where it feels like a very different episode from where we started at. Like Bob was saying earlier, Ned shows up just past the halfway mark. This whole conflict is entirely sequestered to the final 11 minutes. And it feels very... Was this supposed to be something longer kind of feeling? Yeah, I feel like it was maybe two pitches that were just smashed into each other.

And I really wish there was at least one line about Ned in the first half where Homer's being selfish and Marge is like, you should be more like Ned Flanders. And that's really all we need to establish that there's something on the way there's a later story involving Ned that we need to think about as Homer is getting more and more selfish. Yeah, maybe cut one of the two musical montages to a licensed song and just have a scene of like Ned saying,

oh, well, I'm giving to charity for Christmas like usual. Like also it's certainly at this point, they know everybody knows who Ned Flanders is, but if they cared a lot about a new viewer, they would actually establish Ned in the first act as a selfless Christian who is very into charity. Yeah. And even if you've seen it before, just include him in the story before the 12-minute mark, I guess. Yeah. If he's gonna be so heavily featured later. Also, I feel like Ned, this gets to the end,

but as Ned starts giving away all of the presents, it does feel like he... It's leading him to the lesson of, oh, I wasn't doing charity for God's work, I was doing charity selfishly. So he can even be charitable in a selfish way. Like he comes to no realization of why he's giving away all of these presents. And he dresses up like Santa to do it, which feels like this gets away from the

Bush era Christianity of like putting the Christ in Christmas. Yes. He's doing it on a widower's salary, which that's a great line too. Yeah. This third act, I mean, I think I'm excusing that net out of nowhere because there's so many great lines where, because Ned shows up at Skinner's house and Skinner's there with Agnes and her line is what's your angle pervert. That's a great thing to shout at somebody who's handing you a free president.

And another side story that could have been a whole episode, a fraternity has moved into the Flanders house. It's sort of an Animal House riff there, I guess. It's just about frat boys terrorizing Rod and Todd. Then we also see that she doesn't get any lines, but we do get to see Ruth Powers again. She won't talk for a while, but they at least show her on screen. I think the writers or animators, somebody realized, oh, if Homer is looking at a neighbor get something from Ned Well, then it has to be the neighbor who isn't Ned getting it, right? Yeah, I guess so

And this is where Homer now starts to feel in competition He sees that they have gifted operation crusty style Which did you guys know there is a Simpsons operation? Of course there is. There's a Simpsons everything. And it's Homer though, right? Yes. Yeah. I wish it was Krusty but it's Homer. I have definitely been gifted a copy of Operation as a kid and I play it for about 5 seconds and like I think we finished two games ever of it. Yeah, I think it's Al Jean or Matt Snellman on the

commentary. They point out no one actually enjoys playing the game. It's more like it. Yeah. I think it's Al Jean Armet-Sulman on the commentary. They point out no one actually enjoys playing the game. It's more like the concept is fun enough that it's parodied. The same with the game Mouse Trap. I think it's the, it's been running on the art design for this long. Like the patient you're pulling stuff out of is like, it's a funny design with a big red nose, which fits better for Krusty than Homer being the guy you're operating on in Operation The Simpsons parenthetical talking Homer edition, the official name

of it. Which hey, if you're doing last-minute Christmas shopping, $10 on eBay right now if you want to get a vintage Milton Bradley edition of that. Vintage disappointing gift. Sorry Craig. I just say that's a deal. 10 bucks? I expected more for an old copy of Operation The Simpsons. Oh, I didn't check if it was complete. That was the other annoying thing with Operation. It's full of tiny things that you can't possibly expect an eight-year old to keep track of. They're just made to go down a toddler's windpipe, all those little pieces. And then they're getting a real operation. Yes, not as fun. More than

$10, especially in America. Selmer then decides he needs to figure out a way to counteract this, and this is when they also were pulling in continuity from just the year before. They remember that Lisa's a Buddhist now! Mmm. Yeah, I was thinking, did Al Jean do a holiday special before this? And yeah, it was She of Little Faith that we pointed out. That is barely a Christmas episode. Like it featured in a very minor, minor way. Honestly, I think the episode Dude Where's My Ranch

has more Christmas in it than this one. Oh, yeah, you're right. There's at least six minutes in the first, sorry, three minutes in the first act. That was the first episode of season 14 in production with She of Little Face where Richard Gere gets her into Buddhism, which he still is in this episode, leading Homer to have a very sacrilegious vision of Buddha

being arrested while racing in a stolen car, seemingly. I would assume that's why he's arrested in that scene. Yeah, I think so. They're just profiling, they're planning something on him, they're finding some way to arrest him. I like the connective tissue where this fantasy about Buddha is what gives Homer the idea of to be the Grinch. Tim Cynova That he first, he thought of car plus Christmas

sweater plus Buddha becomes Buddha in a Christmas sweater in a fancy car, telling him that you don't need possessions. Though it being a dream, thought bubble and everything feels so old school on Simpsons and at this point in 2003 Family Guy has been canceled but it reads as Family Guy even though Family Guy ripped it off but read as Family Guy to me. I was just thinking that in I believe it was Grift of the Magi they did a Grinch thing but they didn't lean as hard into it where Homer had to go into the homes and steal all the funsos All right, this is the second time Homer specifically has broken into homes to steal gifts.

Was, damn. I can't help but feel the episode missed a trick here. Like the Buddhist thing is funny, but not to workshop the professional Simpsons writers, but I feel like Homer should have watched a Grinch parody and sort of this continued theme of Homer taking bad advice from all of these modeling Christmas specials. You know, that's true, though.

Him watching a Grinch parody, that would then like, that's another minute of the episode probably. Yeah. Yeah. Probably about the same time as this Lisa segment, but yeah, probably. Yeah, it's true. It feels like they're so reverent to that special, they kind of don't want to make fun of it.

Yeah, no, they just love it. Clearly, David Silverman was so excited. They credit him as figuring out the drawing for Homer as the snake and making it work physically without breaking, you know, the rules of Simpsons on model back then. I guess the one way they make fun of the special, and this had to be pointed out to me on the commentary, is the joke that if you take everyone's presence the special, and this had to be pointed out to me on the commentary, is the joke that if you take everyone's presents on Christmas, they're going to want to kill you.

They're not going to find the spirit of Christmas within them. They're going to want to kill you on Christmas. That was the plot problem they take an extra two hours to deal with in the Ron Howard version. Saw it once, not going back. And yet, I'd rather watch it than the Benedict Cumberbatch one, I think, than the illumination one.

Greg, have you seen both or either? Yeah, I've seen both. Just progressively worse Grinches with every attempt. Didn't they give him normal teeth in that animated one, Greg? Yeah. I thought so. Ooh.

No thanks. Man, what's with all this Grinch softening here? Grinch is supposed to be mean. That's why when he becomes good, it's impressive. Yeah, the Jim Carrey Grinch has got a lot of ick factor, I guess, but there's so much technical live action skill in that that I can't be mad at it. And this Grinch gets to go to the bone zone,

unlike the Chuck Jones Grinch. He gets to fall in love with Christine Baranski. Again, I saw the film. You could just be making all of this up for all I know, Henry. I think we saw Grinch cars when we went to the Universal Lot tour this summer. I think they took them out of the mothballs.

I thought they discontinued that whole part of the tour because everything was just so decayed. They got rid of that, but they did put the cars back out for it at the same place where he took a picture with the Norman Bates car at the Bates Motel thing. I think right next to that was like, they had a couple Grinch cars or Whoville cars. And while also speaking of things that they don't do or that were controversial then let's hear a little bit of the song.

You're a hero, Homer J. song. Burger and just a little drug Now to hear the joyous sound of people waking up on Christmas to discover they have no presents. Homer chloroforming a child could be a new low, although he uses a tiny rag for one of Apu's children. I'm sorry I forget which one this is. Chloroforming a baby, which it does get their names, as Matt Selman calls them, the eight little monies because he gets a character payment every time. But they even say on the commentary specifically that James L. Brooks and Matt Gray told them to stop doing chloroform jokes. They don't like Homer chloroforming people and knocking them out. It is a form of violence. And then they bring it back with him doing it to a baby that is

canonically younger than Maggie. I guess it softens it that he does it to a teddy bear next. I don't know, Greg, how do you feel about Homer chloroforming babies on Christmas? I think 95% of people do not understand chloroform. I think people think it's like just an off switch. So it doesn't really read as violent in most media. Chloroform can really burn your skin. Boy, Apu really should never forgive Homer for this thing. Yeah, I feel like they want it to work like the magic movie device. It's like quicksand or whatever,

where it doesn't really work like it does in movies, but it's just fun to see. It's the equivalent of a Vulcan nerve pinch or whatever, although it also is just like how in old movies you'd see like, oh bonk, we knocked the guards unconscious. Let's drag them away instead of like, you just caused brain damage. You might've killed this guy

from knocking this guard unconscious. So Homer has stolen everything. And I also did laugh at the gag that if Homer had heard what he wanted to hear from the people, he would have burned all of the toys, the gifts that are on top of his car, that would have almost certainly burned his car too and destroyed it.

That's true. Where is Santa's little helper? Is he still tied up? He's still in the car, so he's gonna die too. You're right. Homer standing on top of his car and splashing gas on the giant sack is pretty funny. Homer listens just like the Grinch does

to hear everybody and he actually is hearing what the Grinch wanted to hear, which is everybody sad. And this is where we get some deep Nelson lore, which our pal, The Real Jims on YouTube has, I think cataloged all the different phases of his father, but in this era of the Mr. Months, he's run off to get Pop Tarts and never came back. Yeah, they're doing a lot with Nelson's dad around this era in particular.

Yeah, this is only a few episodes after when Marge reacts to him crying about his missing father and he's hugging Atreus. He's like, I understand why he left. Soon we'll have a really good episode where he lives with the family and he sings Papa Can You Hear Me from Yentl, I believe. Right. And I failed to watch Yentl the last time when we covered the episode where Homer gets sick and watches Yentl.

I'm going to have to watch Yentl this time to prepare for that podcast. We also see that Snake has been robbed too, and he's going to rob his shrink when he talks about it to him. And when we get to the crowd of people approaching, I like the oddballs we hear from because we hear both Cookie Kwan and Dredric Tatum's point of view. These two voices you won't be not hearing after the year 2020, but it's just fun to see.

Why them? Okay, sure. Dredric Tatum has been recast. He's appeared a few times with a new voice. I want to say Kevin Michael Richardson because he's a utility player like that for them, but I'm not totally sure. What do you think the odds are that they're going to do a Logan Paul bit in future episodes? You know, that is the first thing I thought of when that fight was announced. Like, oh,

they could totally do a Dredric Tatum episode because I don't think they've just done one about him as a character. Yeah. I'm just taking what eye patch wolf on blue sky said so perfectly, but I've been thinking as to just like I can't believe that it's been like six of these Paul brother fights both Jake and Logan where they say like oh I'm gonna fight some old guy or some UFC fighter in boxing it's always a bad fight it's not entertaining everybody hates the Paul brothers so you want to see him get knocked out I get it but these guys aren't gonna take a fight where they could lose they're not going to do that so you're to see him get knocked out. I get it, but these guys aren't going to take a fight where they could lose. They're not going to do that. So you're not going

to get, you know that you're never going to see them get their ass beat like you want to see. The only good thing that came of it was that interview where a little girl asked Mike Tyson about his legacy and you got the darkest answer possible in about 20 seconds. Oh, I didn't see this clip. Yep. Yep. It's nihilist Mike Tyson. It's worth watching. Okay. I'll look that up. At least there's Nihilist Mike Tyson. It's worth watching. Okay, I'll look that up. At least there's something that came out of it that's funny.

This is where it is funny that out of this giant crowd that shows up, the only two people that threaten Homer are Cookie Kwan and Dredric Tatum. There's so many other characters who are being drawn in their winter Christmas morning outfits. So it's not just from a pencil mileage standpoint. It's not just a giant mob They have to draw but also all of them in different outfits than they are normally drawn in Homer is getting cornered They're all smashing him with snowballs then Ned says he apologizes, but they just start throwing snowballs at him too and This is where then it becomes the Charlie Brown Christmas special all of a sudden Homer pointing to what seems to be the North Star

But it's actually mole man sending out a flare This has to be the third time all man has been eaten by wolves, right? This is one of the funniest jokes in the episode another laugh out loud one where it turns out the North Star is the flare He's like that was my last flare and then wolf show up and he goes. Oh good rescue dogs And my last flair and then wolves show up and he goes oh good rescue dogs and this is where we cut back and Ned is playing Linus from the peanuts and the angel said unto them fear not for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people stop that you can't pray on city property. Let's just say that on this day, a million years ago, a dude was born who most of us think was magic.

But others don't, and that's cool. But we're probably right. Amen. And now I think the only thing left to do is return all your gifts, Ned. It'd be my pleasure, Homer. I situated this one separate from the other ending clip because I didn't want to mention that in 2012 for an article talking to a bunch of Simpsons writers, Michael Price was one of them and was asked, what is your favorite contribution to the show? And Michael Price's answer was that line.

Let's just say that on this day a million years ago he said it pretty much stayed that way through all drafts of the episode. It is what he said is his favorite contribution back in 2012. It is a good way to sum up just the patronizing attitude a lot of people had especially around that time period. But others don't and that's cool but we're probably right. Amen. Yeah I guess again this sums up like Bush era. Greg we've talked to ourselves before about we were also internet atheists then as well like you're not alone in being that back then. Yeah I was reading Sam Harris books that's

where I was. Oh jeez. I was all about that. It was once a cool and smart thing to do I swear. Sorry go ahead. I just said I'm a little. I heard Henry gasp. No, I mean, I was watching Christopher Hitchens interviews like I wasn't even thinking those things. Yeah. But yeah, Ned, I think is even reading at least part of what Linus says at the end of the original Christmas special of Charlie Brown. I bring you tidings of great joy, all that stuff. But this is back when the separation of Church's state was like, that's a joke that it matters. This was around the time all the court cases about having the Ten Commandments outside of government

buildings was happening so topical. Though now obviously a new wedge issue has been found that's horrible and I mean they all end in the same place of course but the Ten Commandments on religion being talked about at government buildings like that is far in the past now. I think we need to put up Mr. T's Ten Commandments instead. We can all agree on that. Mm-hmm. So everybody is loving this, they love getting their presence back even though it is mismatched presence, including a bra that is handed to Frank, who just happily wears it. He's fine with it. Yeah See, this show is positive about experimenting with gender roles, right? Yeah. This leads to like this ending could just work of everybody singing, but it would not be a Simpsons Christmas ending without

Mo who has not had a line this entire episode and has not appeared yet. They've remembered like, wait, we do most suicide jokes every year at Christmas, don't we? So, that's our final clip. What a great Christmas. Not even Moe's annual suicide attempt can ruin it. I ain't got all day, drama queen. Get it over with. I will. And then you'll all wish you was nicer to me. You... yeah, oh my goodness? I ain't gonna jump. Oh!

Heart the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn king Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinner reconciled Today is the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ and singer Barbara Mandrell. Merry Christmas! That's true, Barbara Mandrell turned 76 years fun this year. Happy birthday, Barbara Mandrell.

It also was the late Jimmy Buffett's birthday. I was reminded of that on Podcast the Ride. They did a whole Jimmy Buffett Christmas album discussion. And Matt Sulman wants to believe that Moe is wearing his no funeral sign on his back. We don't get a good look at his back. I want to believe that too. That really is the darkest joke. One of the top three I think. That's my go-to if someone asks me what is the darkest Simpson's joke. It's the drawing of

Moe with his head in the oven and the sign that says no funeral. I'm hard pressed to think of a darker one off the top my head. Yeah it makes this one just seem light by comparison. He's only grievously injured, possibly paralyzed. His leg and arm are pointed in the wrong direction. Like a horrible thing has happened to Old Moe here. Nobody cares though, of course. And they're even all singing the song from the end of the Charlie Brown Christmas special, previously parodied in another episode we covered recently in Treehouse of Horror 4. And that one they did the ooh thing right?

Yeah the lulu lulu. I wonder if that is like a different like Hark the Herald Angels sing is public domain right? Oh yeah it's gotta be. Yes. At this point. Are they specifically allowed to do the Charlie Brown whoo thing? I think if it qualifies as parody But that's for the Supreme Court to decide it with this Supreme Court who knows When judging on that they would then make like Christianity the official religion of America That would be part of the judgment in a double whammy says Futurama would say It's a sweet enough ending that also is just a joke. I don't know why Nelson comes in with a ha ha I mean he yeah had a plot purpose before this just seems like he's laughing at you the viewer for watching this

I don't really get the ha ha. Maybe they just thought they need a little more zing with this ending Yeah, I could see that. I mean my final thought if we're getting to that I think this is better than the Buddha one. It's not built around Richard Gere not being funny and just being informative about his religion, which was fine as like him talking about his religion, but not so funny. Comparatively, this is they're getting back to the basics. It's a Homer story and you're parodying classic cartoons that people like. But it had, I remembered the cartoon parodies, but this had so many good bits of dialogue in it

that I ended up liking it more than I thought. Yeah, I agree, a lot of really solid jokes. The plotting is a little sloppy with the sudden introduction of Ned's story in the end, but I can forgive that because there's so much funny stuff, and I like just kind of the parody retrospective of Christmas specials, and I have to wonder what does a young zoomer think of any of this? I wonder if these are in circulation or are

the millennial parents forcing this on younger generations? I really want to know. Greg, how about you? Yeah, I had a good time with this. I don't think it's quite comes together as a whole. And there's this is this version I kind of made in my head remembering because I remembered all the Christmas parody stuff, too. I barely remembered the actual Homer plot. So in my head, this was like the Simpsons Christmas special parody kind of take on what we later get in like the interdimensional cable episodes of Rick and Morty. But it actually only plays like, like maybe a 25% of the episode.

But yeah, I had some good laughs. Moe Man getting eaten by wolves is my biggest laugh through the episode and it was just fun to come back to. Yeah, and I kind of appreciate when the Christmas episodes were not that frequent. I feel like, especially in the past decade, they've been leaning really hard

into Christmas and Halloween, and it doesn't feel as much of a novelty but I like when there was like oh every three to five years here's a Christmas one and it stands out just because they don't come that often. We're like on the precipice of seeing an hour-long Christmas Simpsons that's gonna be straight to Disney Plus. I don't know how that's gonna be but I don't know it just does not feel quite as special as they used to be sort of like how there were kind of like five specials we watched. And that was it.

Back in the day, I blame Bob's burgers for popularizing the yearly Christmas and Thanksgiving episodes that now the, the Simpsons gets into it and they do it every year and now, yes, we're getting two of them that took them six years or until the seventh season to do their second one. And now there have been so many Christmas ones and then on top of that, Disney plus original shorts too. Those are always good.

I guess they would have shown it by now. They must not have had an album to help sell to do a Christmas short this year. I guess not yet. No Italian man and his children need to sell albums this year so hey, they're talented. But thank you so much for being on the show, Greg. We promise to have you on again before five years have passed.

But I will let everyone know that if you like people talking about TV, going in depth about TV, you will love Greg's YouTube channel, especially the series, Nick Nacks. Greg, please let everyone know about that and how they can support you. Yeah, my YouTube channel is Pop Arena. The main series on that is Knick Knacks, which is a show by show retrospective of Nickelodeon.

Literally every single show that ever aired on Nickelodeon. We're up to 1991. And it's not out yet by the time I'm recording this, but by the time this episode is up, I'll also have begun my Knick Knacks at Night series, which is covering all of the retro television that aired on Nick at Night. That's Pop Arena on YouTube. If you'd like to financially support, I've got a Patreon. If you'd like to follow me for silly nonsense, I've got a Blue Sky.

All that information's on my page. I will let people know that you've done such a great job of covering Nickelodeon in such thorough detail. Every show that aired on the network you have covered from the beginning of the network. And I will let people know that the shows you don't know about, those videos are not like eating your vegetables. You need to know about Rich Hall's comedy special for kids. You need to know about Reggie Jackson's show.

There are so many things you didn't see that are just these anomalies that are almost lost media, some of them. You put so much work into them, no matter the story. And yeah, some of my favorites are when you cover these one season Japanese animation that get turned into a show. I'm looking forward to your Grimm's fairy tale one would have to be coming pretty soon, right?

Yeah, when I get to 1992. Nice, I cannot wait. That's the 92 one I'm looking forward to. I don't know what other things there could possibly be in knickknacks for 1992, but that's what I'm looking for. Greg, it was awesome to have you on. I also co-signed How Great the Knickknacks and all the other content on Popperina is.

And it was great having you. Well, thanks for having me, and thank you for the kind words. And happy holidays. Thanks for helping us get in the holiday spirit with this episode. Yeah, happy holidays. Thanks again to Greg for being on the show.

Please check out their channel on YouTube, Pop Arena, especially like we said, that series Knick Knacks. It's so great and we're big fans of it. But if you want to support our show and get more shows on top of that, head on over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up at the $5 level. And when you do, you'll unlock nearly 200 bonus episodes. They're all full length covering things like Futurama, King of the Hill, Mission Hill, Batman, the animated series, and The Critic.

And that five bucks a month also gets you new regular monthly episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill and also everything we do ad free and one week at a time. If you don't like ads brother, there is one way to get rid of them that's sending five bucks a month to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and there is a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that you get access to all the $5 stuff naturally, but then you can also access one very long podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher.

And what is that Henry? Bob's talking about the What a Cartoon and Movie Podcast, our premium podcast going into an animated feature film as in depth as we do a classic season 15 episode of The Simpsons. And if you are in the holiday mood, we talked about a ton of it here. We have covered so many Christmas and Hanukkah classics on our podcast, including last month,

we covered the Adam Sandler Hanukkah slash Christmas film, eight crazy nights. And this month we are getting into the frigid style of winter with Frozen. We're talking about the huge Disney hit from 2013 Frozen and in the back catalog there are so many including the Christmas ones we have been talking about like Tokyo Godfathers and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and the Muppet Christmas Carol. There is six full years

of what a cartoon movie there. Over 200 hours of exclusive podcasts you have never heard before on top of all the ad free stuff That's at the $5 level sign up today to get access to all of it including our longest whenever six and a half hours About who framed Roger Rabbit. It's all at patreon.com Slash talking Simpsons and as for me, I've been one of your hosts Bob Mackey You can find me on Twitter as Bob servo and my other podcast is called RetroNauts. That's a classic gaming podcast about old video games. You can find that where you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash RetroNauts and sign up there for two full length bonus episodes every month. And Henry, what about you?

You can find me on blue sky and Twitter as H E N E R E Y G. And of course I'm talking Henry on Instagram. I'm always posting up a storm on the social media. And if you're following us on those platforms, also follow at talk Simpsons pod at talk Simpsons pod will keep you up to date whenever new podcasts come out on both the Patreon and on the free feed. Whenever we've got, say, if a live show happens like that we've done in the past, or if something new gets posted on the Patreon, you you stay up to date first if you follow at Talk Simpsons Pod on all the social media platforms. Happy Holidays everybody we'll see you again next time for the latest episode of our community podcast talk to the audience and we will see you then. The hobos sure will appreciate our old clothes and lima beans. No need Flanders, I've already given them my old clothes. Good looking group. Oh gee, looks like this town has a good Sam Logjam.

These pants smell worse than my old pants. You're welcome. Hi, I'm Chris Gaththerd and I'm very excited to tell you about Beautiful Anonymous, a podcast where I talk to random people on the phone. You're welcome. I've talked to people who survived mass shootings, crazy funny ones. I talked to a guy with a goose laugh, somebody who dresses up as a pirate on the weekends. I never know what's going to happen. It's a great show. Subscribe today, beautiful Anonymous.