Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Treehouse Of Horror II

Episode Date: May 4, 2016

Halloween is here once more in one of the greatest episodes of all time. And it’s good that Bart does that, it’s very, very good…

Hello, everyone. Before last year's Halloween show, I warned you not to let your children watch. But you did anyway. Well, this year's episode is even worse. It's scarier, more violent, and I think they snuck in some bad language, too. So please, tuck in your children and...

Well, if you didn't listen to me last time, you're not going to now. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons. This is the Lazer Time Podcast Network's chronological exploration of The Simpsons. I am your host, Bob Mackie. Who else is here today? Henry Gilbert. Christopher Antiston. I'm Dave Rudden,

and I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt, and my butt smells, and I like to kiss my own butt. Finally, you came out and said it. Yeah, and that's exactly how I'd label you

after your last performance on a Treehouse of Horror episode. Oh, man. Spoiler, I like this one more. Yeah. Because they didn't dedicate one-third of it to a stupid poem. There's nothing artsy-fartsy

in this episode. In fact, it's almost too good to be in season three, which is still good. It feels so advanced, but again, we're talking about Treehouse of Horror 2, aired on October 31st, 1991.

Chris. What happened on Halloween in 1991? Oh my God! Well, Bobby! The first ever Planet Hollywood opens up and all the star investors

are there. Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, all that stuff. Pee Wee Herman is offered a plea deal by a Sarasota court for exposing himself in a pornographic theater and the Turner Broadcasting System closes a deal

to acquire the Hanna-Barbera Library for $320 million. Wow. Content is king. Way too much money for that garbage. They got a good 10 years out of it. I guess so. Space Ghosts, which beget Adult Swim, so there.

They got their money's worth. I mean, in 91, I'd say Scooby was worth that much. Scooby and the gang. Did you read about how a Hanna-Barbera cinematic universe is about to begin, starting with a Scooby-Doo animated movie? Called Agents of Scoob? Yep. This is all happening.

Wait, before we get started, I wanted to get a quick plug out. Bobby, we were on a show, the It's Eric Nagel Show a while back. Yeah, great guy. Eric Nagel, E-Rock Radio. He hosts the It's Eric Nagel Show, coincidentally. Wow. XM Sirius, what is that, Sirius 206, XM 103. That's a good SEO. He sent us some Simpsons

gifts! What? Including a bucket. It's a bucket, oh my god. A paint bucket of... Can you tell us what those are, Bobby? These are creepy classics. They are Burger King toys from the Treehouse of Horror. Where did you get these? They're one of the best Simpsons toys, period. Why McFarlane, who had the license, didn't

make Simpsons Halloween themed toys out the asses? I'm looking at Homer Kong from this episode. It's our next year's episode. 15 distinct toys from the Simpsons Halloween. All the Simpsons Halloween specials. There's our next year's episode. 15 distinct toys from all the Simpsons Halloween specials. There's so many good ones. Han, Chewie, they're all there.

All my favorites. I'll pass this around. There's so many great things. Thanks so much, Eric. That's awesome. That bucket is beautiful. I've got to raid that after the show's done recording.

He should be on a future episode soon. He also got some t-shirts that we would like to give away to you guys because they fall just out of our size range. Even me? Yeah, even you. Large and extra large, which none of us can wear.

I'm a medium at best. Exactly. So we want to give them to you and we're going to ask you to tweet out a link to one of our shows with the hashtag TalkingSimpsons. Oh yeah, please do. And we will try and figure it out.

Please, maybe live in the U.S. That would be awesome. Yeah, that would be way easier if you did, man. We've got mad shipping problems. We want to make sure we get these shirts to someone who can wear them. Eric has a Burger King connection. I want to meet the king. That's my next goal.

Yeah, they are in a themed paint bucket, mind you. I have no idea where these came from, but this is awesome. I've got to take at least three of those. Well, you can see from the art, it must have came out in the episode where they met their old selves. That's maybe two years ago, I think. Yeah, I think I killed these three of those. Well, you can see from the art, it must have came out in the episode where they met their old selves. That's maybe two years ago, I think. Yeah, I think so. That was a good, that was a nice little Halloween episode.

I still check in on the Halloween ones. I know this show is often us hating on anything made after 1999. There's still enough Twilight Zone episodes for them to watch. I know it can be a broken record record but the Simpsons Halloween of Horror from last year, an absolutely amazing Simpsons, new Simpsons episode I hope you watched it Bobby, I shared it with you on Google Drive You sent it to me and I did like it

So I have a story to tell about this episode It aired on Halloween, how great is that? How amazing is that? That's the other thing I wanted to mention We gave the Christmas special out even though it's for patrons only because we'll never ever hit another holiday ever again We gave the Christmas special out, even though it's for patrons only, because we'll never, ever hit another holiday ever again.

We were so lucky to hit Halloween on Halloween last year and Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving. Let's try and hit Christmas and it'll never happen again. I think in a certain number of years it might align itself in some way. It has to. It will, like a bad leap year, but it might happen. Well, it's going to be, what, like five seasons until another Christmas episode appears? Yeah. So let's not have Halloween in late April or early May. So this could be the only episode of the Treehouse of Horror series that ran on Halloween.

On the day. And I remember, okay, I was nine years old. It was 91. I remember doing all my trick-or-treating, coming back and being like, Oh, New Simpsons, how great is this? I could eat my candy and watch the Simpsons new Halloween special with my parents. We'd watch every episode up until maybe season four magic time the funny story is uh my parents uh they invited some of their work friends over and they had kids and we all went

trick-or-treating together and they were a little uh flandersy you would say so we were all sitting here the show is cursing exactly chris we were all sitting and watching the show together all the kids were laughing uproariously along with my parents at all the jokes, especially the Mr. Burns segment, which we'll get to soon. And, like, the parents of the kind of Flanders-y parents were just kind of sitting back in horror. And they made a few comments like, you let your kids watch this? Oh, my freaking ears. Immediately I knew my parents have to be cool. Like, they were laughing at this.

They were watching this with me. And they were letting me watch this. So I have cool parents. Thank you, Lord, for giving me cool parents. No, I remember this, too, that I was going trick-or-treating i was also nine on that night and yeah that we were i was in a rush like i i like trick-or-treating all right i believe i was dressed as robin i think i was but um but anyway yeah we were just like we gotta end like it's gonna start soon i remember like probably being the kind of like anxiety ridden child i was that intensely telling my mom like we gotta walk faster it's gonna start if i

can't miss the beginning we won't even hit record will dad hit record in time will he will he oh yeah i was 30 minutes ahead of time in front of the tv waiting for this to air yeah we wish i had this memory i wanted to get all the candy i could before it started, but so I was doing it up to the last minute, and I think, you know, now I think about it more. I bet I did miss the first part and didn't see it until, but then immediately watched it again on the tape. I think that's what happened to me. My parents might have been taping it.

I don't have a good memory about anything else, but it's because this aired on Halloween that I associate it with trick-or-treating and that family who didn't like it and just eating candy and watching it and laughing with my parents. In just three years, this will be pushed back to like mid-November because of baseball. It's the pre-Christmas episode, everybody. Yeah, the only other episode that I...

It's the seventh episode, too. It's so often the first or third. Yeah. Yeah. There's only one other episode I can really attach to a specific date, and you'll hear that story on Lisa, Beauty Queen next season four. You're great in that pageant. I love those pictures.

I really fear we're going to talk for 90 minutes because there are so many jokes. This episode is, again, season three is great. I think this is above par for season three. This is beautiful. It's the writer's unleash. I thought all of these were like later trials and horrors. Me too. I totally forgot.

Yeah, I think my mom had a good chuckle at Marge's thing of her accepting, like, yeah, you were bad parents then, you're going to be bad parents this time. And she was really addressing the parents in the room with me, I think, who were like, oh, no, what are we about to see? As insane as things are in this episode and how I'm guessing that the animation staff had to make some of these things, they do open and close the episode with recycled animation. They do. In the end, some pretty

bad recycled animation. I think it wasn't until the season 5-1 when they really got violent. Oh yeah, they killed a sensor on the air? No, that's like season 9 when they... But no, I mean Ned's severed head. Oh right, Hadley Homer.

That's some heavy stuff. It's also one of the last ones where there's a framing device to all the stories. Tell children you can have one piece of candy tonight and save the rest for... If you eat too much, you'll have nightmares. Oh, yeah. Everybody in the family's going to have a bad nightmare tonight. Oh, yeah. Three bad nightmares.

I'd like to see that. Nine calamities. I'd like to see that. From the second annual Simpsons Christmas, Halloween special, of which there are now 25. Yes.

There is no treehouse. No. It's been abandoned from the second episode. No, it's kind of like Resident Evil isn't even in residences anymore. No, it's your globetrotting. But yeah, uh season four would have the halloween party season five would have

the night gallery parody and then season six is just like no no no framing device you know what this is well i think it's different from an intro than a framing device exactly as in like all the simpsons are having nightmares here yeah it's contained within the context of a normal episode i guess yeah i love the night gallery intro so much having never seen night gallery when i saw that episode so the net next year is like the last chance they have for like 20 years to actually like kind of dip their toes into what you know halloween is like for kids and adults and all that is one of my favorite things in this episode that i didn't even really realize until this time is lisa dressing up as that totem pole bar pushes her over and the fully work is just a lot.

I meant to get that, because it's the exact sound a kid's cardboard costume would make. There was amazing foley in this episode, down to the candy necklace being eaten. It's beautiful. Did you guys, in the beginning with the graveyard, Cajun cooking isn't dead. I think it's more alive than ever. But some of these aren't even jokes. It's Bambi's mom, Cajun cooking, Walt Disney, and Jim Morrison, who is undisputably dead.

I think it's a joke about how people go to his grave and, like, fuck on it and stuff like that. I was trying to write down what was on the grave, and Mr. Mojo rises, and I'm like, I give up. They're not jokes. They're actually, like, real statements by people. Did the first one have tombstones? No.

No, this was the first tombstone one. Do they get better with the tombstones? Yes. Yeah, that's right. Did they first one have tombstones? No. No, this was the first tombstone one. They get better with the tombstones. Yeah, that's what I see. Did they do the Halloween naming themes? Yeah. This is the first year they did it, actually. But I also like the Peanuts characters running by at the very opening, which episode directed by

Jim Reardon, which I bet we talked about in a previous Reardon episode, but Jim Reardon's student film at CalArts was Bring Me the Head of charlie brown which was an amazingly animated hyper violent charlie brown it's on youtube please watch it yeah you've been watching jim reardon does the voice is on it you have to jump into that first the first episode so good like i i noticed how much elston and i use this to describe describe companies bringing our wishes to life yeah what is this thing? It is a monkey's paw

dating back to Alal bin Avdali has the power to grant wishes to its owner. Oh yeah? How much? Sir, I must strongly advise you to not purchase this. Behind every wish lurks grave misfortune. I myself was once president of Algeria. Come on, pal. I don't want to hear your life story.

Pommy! Pommy's paw. It's become shorthand for like when we say you get a wish and it's granted the wrong way. The Transformers movies come to mind. Yes. And this is based on a Twilight Zone episode. It's not called The Monkey's Paw. That's actually a short story. The episode is based on.

Yeah, it's based on a short story. Right. W.W. Jacobs from 1902. Oh, that guy. I love him. That's his URL. What's his name? He's wwjacobs.com.

All right. We know he wrest He's www.jacobs.com. All right. We know he wrestled for WW Jacobs. So there is a joke in here that Google failed me on. It's Lisa's T-shirt. Barely legible in like three shots. Her T-shirt says, I kissed the Balmulajud. I kissed the Balmulajud. If you know what that is, let me know.

I think it's a parody of the Blarney Stone, but I don know what the balm sorry balmula jude is google gave me nothing i was gonna try and look up where he said the monkey's paw was from but i'm pretty sure it's gibberish yeah but i i don't know morocco that well either but the algeria let me let me speak for a second you know morocco mole very i do casablanca and that is it our commenters have bailed us out before so please bail me out of this what is that thing that's on Lisa's shirt You can barely read it I feel like it could be even a typo But Jesus I don't know what that is

It's bothering me Also the joke about Princess Grace He's talking about Princess Grace Kelly The 50s movie star who quit film in 26 To marry the Prince of Monaco One of the most beautiful starlets way too culture to uh joke for for homer to make but again it wasn't in 1990 from an old person yeah it's also not canon because it's a halloween thing but uh actually my quote of the episode happened before he even

reached the monkey paw dealer where the yogi he kind of like ties himself into crazy knots and like do that but i don't want i can do that but i don't want to i say that so many times when you definitely say it a lot when people do like extraordinary things on tv i just say i can do that but i don't want to i think of that quite often though i also love i feel like they've done this joke eight million times but that shop right over there oh no way it was over there i do like the customs officer with uh like searching hom, you must pay a fine of two American dollars. I was happy to get that reference.

I only get it now. Midnight Express. That's what it is. And the music too. You know, famously parodied, more famously parodied in The Cable Guy. Oh, Billy. That is Billy masturbating to his girlfriend's

tits after being trapped in a Turkish jail. Midnight Express is a fucked up movie, Billy. Oh, right. Yeah. That is Billy masturbating to his girlfriend's tits after being trapped in a Turkish jail. Midnight Express is a fucked up movie, man. There's like seven movies like that, by the way. Yeah, I guess. Broke Down Palace. But this is specifically about a dude who gets arrested for drugs in a place where, like, oh, this is bad jail. This isn't American jail.

This is really bad jail. There's a Tiny Toons episode that references Midnight Express. I'm horrified now. And, of course, it involves a lot of uh sexual assault and but also of course make sure to let you know that as a white man you are better than the people who run it well thank god i don't think that's the point of the film is just he yells at them and says you're all pigs you're all like you're just animals like he fucking does that but that the idea that like the reason why you take those risks involving drugs because you know what your jail time will look like as a white dude.

Yeah. And then you're in another country and like, yeah, all bets are off and nothing you thought of applies and you will go to jail for 45 years. That is true. So then when they get back, they got the monkey's paw and a new pacifier joke. I wasn't into that joke. Yeah. Like I have it written down. Let me see if I can get it.

It's only funny if you don't know it. Yeah. It's funny the first time. There's four wishes. Maggie wishes for a new pacifier. It's a good visual gag. It doesn't make good for sound, but I do love this one because this brings in this segment's

outrageous parody of The Simpsons fame. I love this, even now. Yeah, they've never done this on the nose, but again, please listen to our season wrap-up on Patreon and how we talk about the phenomenon that was The Simpsons. The phoenix that rose within like three episodes. Bart wishes that The Simpsons will be rich and famous. And the comments from the people around in this restaurant are pretty much the publics.

The people who aren't interested in The Simpsons. By the start of season three, what people are saying about it. I do love Marge's. My purse just exploded. I wanted that to be my line of the show. I have like 50 lines of the show, so yeah. Simpsons, right this way, please. Homer, maybe fame and

fortune aren't as bad as they say. If I hear one more thing about the Simpsons, I swear I'm going to scream. At first they were cute and funny, but now they're just annoying. 18 bucks for this? It's a t-shirt. What a rip-off.

Man smart. A woman is. Smart. Man smart. A woman is. Man, this thing's really getting out of hand. That is the greatest. That made me laugh so hard.

I do think about it and say, this is really getting out of hand. When I see a Minecraft thing somewhere. But it's only been like a year since simpsons sing the blues yeah and they're acknowledging how shitty and they wrote that album i know they make the march as generic as possible like what does it say high man or something yeah but also that she is man that's man smart woman smarter is the song popularized by harabella fonte i knew it i'd also say despite what the wikipedia says the simpsons wiki says this is the first appearance of the gilded truffle that's where they go to

they think it's a couple episodes later yeah i think this shows that they knew this is why they weren't going to end up being the next urkel or the next other flash in the pan they were all they had self-awareness and were already ahead of the turn on them. I do love Get a Mammogram Man. Every time I watch one of these, I'm like, this looks like my Instagram like three years ago. It is such a clever monkey's paw, too, of like, oh, you're rich and famous, but people hate you. It is the monkey's paw of the writers and the producers. We're not famous and people hate us already.

So Lisa wishes for world peace, and I love the exchange of the UN between, was it Argentina and England? The Falklands. Sorry about the Falklands, old boy. Oh, forget it. We kind of knew they were yours. One of two great Falklands jokes in The Simpsons.

The Falklands have been invaded. The Falklands have been invaded. There's really good sound mixing when everyone's in the big peace symbol and they're singing Everybody Get Together, Love One Another. And it merges right into the classic Simpsons alien theme. So anytime I hear that

song, Everybody Get Together, I almost always just pipe into the aliens theme. That's right, but Lisa's wish for world peace paves the way for King and Kodas' return bringing a tradition though without Sarek the Preparer too expensive

people of earth we come to you in the spirit of hostility and menace now let's be reasonable we can resolve our differences peacefully your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapon. You've got to do something. What do you want me to do? I'm a baker now.

That's my line of the show. Who is Gordon? I'm a baker now. Just some random background character. My line of the show is your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapon. That's my line of the segment to be fair. Sadly, I am arbiter of line of the show because these all count. Okay.

I should all get the jingle. He's got a board with an alien. And again, this is all the Simpsons' fault, according to the townspeople of Springfield, or the world. This is all the Simpsons' fault. Before, I was just bored with their antics and their merchandise. Now, I wish they were dead. Oh, it's so great.

God damn it. This is going to be such a long episode. It really is. But it's a treehouse of horror. I watch these every Halloween now because I bought a bunch. Amazon Video, the streaming service, doesn't have the first three seasons and then the last three. Who cares? But they have all the Halloween episodes packed together.

And Kang and Kodos, this was also, as they say on the commentary, the first time they realized, if they need to fill time, Kang and Kodos can laugh as long as you need them to. Yeah. Had to cut it out. Though this episode, also this segment, is full of ADR. Like, so many things where the animators, perhaps in Korea, just were like, oh, I guess their mouths should be open here. And then when they get back, they're like, well, shit, somebody needs to say something. I did notice that, yeah.

Their mouth is open. But it leads to funny lines. It does. It does. Here's another classic line. So we have the wishes. What do we have? Pacifier, world peace, rich and famous, and Homer has to make the final wish.

I could not get this clip. Oh, the whole thing is fake. I'll make a wish that can't backfire. I wish for a turkey sandwich on rye bread with lettuce and mustard. And I don't want any zombie turkeys. I don't want to turn into a turkey, and, I don't want any zombie turkeys. I don't want to turn into a turkey myself. And I don't want any other weird surprises. You got it?

Hey! Not bad. Nice hot mustard. Good bread. Turkey's a little dry. The turkey's a little dry. Oh, foul and cursed thing! What demon from the depths of hell created thee?

That is such a great joke, because I feel it's kind of like the movie Scream, in which the characters figure out the rules of what they're trapped in. And so Homer is understanding the ironic punishment of Twilight Zone episodes, and trying to get around it, but he still can't. Yeah, if he's turned into a turkey by himself. Smarter than Homer. I give Homer credit for being like, I shouldn't whisk for a sandwich

restaurant. I can only be pain. I just want this one sandwich with nothing else attached to it. It still sounds like a good sandwich, though. Sorry, I apologize. I like dry turkey. Again, I apologize, guys. I hate that because I capture the sounds, I get to be the arbiter of the line of the show. Oh, go for for it it's more like the entire sequence makes me laugh this is my line of the show that's the joke nail before my slingshot puny earthling well i guess

my first wish is to get rid of those awful aliens he's got a board with a nail in it And slave humanity, will ya? On todos The video I do like that Throwing a moe running with the board Is never not funny When Flanders comes out It's like, hey fellow slave Like, wow

They're very casual about their slavery I was wondering what you were saying About ADR work But a lot of this Harkens back to some of my favorite Popeye cartoons Where there's a lot of action happening And people are

There's just a mouth open and someone's yelling. It is weird how everyone is so blasé about being slaves. Like Bart's reading the newspaper saying, we're slaves now. This sucks. And it's like I guess like humanity wouldn't know what it's like to be enslaved. And then Ned just wishes himself a castle and it's – there's no irony for Ned's wishes. Yeah. Though going into the next

section, I don't know why that ending... I have to finish the board segment. Please do. I have a comment about this. It seems the Earthling won, did they? That board with the nail in it may have defeated us, but the humans won't stop there. They'll make bigger boards and bigger nails. Soon they will

make a board with a nail so big it will destroy them all. Cut out 40 seconds of laughing. They're really mixing up the Twilight Zone episodes. That's a reference to the Monsters Are Due

on Maple Street. I love that episode. That's a great episode. I watched that in school. Oh, me too. I actually read the screenplay in school or whatever.

Yeah, same here. We acted it out in class. It was weird. We have Netflix. Watch that shit. I'm the only one who didn't do that. For as smart as the Twilight Zone is, Rotsloan can be a bit ham-fisted with

delivering the message, so the end of that episode's like, look at the humans fighting amongst themselves. They'll soon destroy themselves because they're paranoid about communism or whatever. All they had to do was turn the power out for an evening. Exactly. So that is the underlining just how blunt the message can be in the Twilight Zone.

Speaking of Twilight Zone. I love when Kang does his, when he's saying that, he shakes a bigger bowl, bigger nails. The head shake is great there. But why does that happy ending make Lisa scared? Every other one has a scary ending that would scare Bart or Homer. Why is Lisa scared? I think they're going to get rid of the conceit after a while.

Did she wake up screaming? She said, I had a bad dream and she goes to sleep. Borders with a candy necklace to sleep with Bart. That sounded bad. The Simpsons will be right back. You like Lazer Time shows? Then you might like Bonus Time, Lazer Time's weekly bonus show exclusively on patreon.com slash Lazer Time.

Here's a taste of what you've been missing. Man, do we all get cut at April? Is that just when companies are like, oh, we get our taxes, we don't want people anymore? Which I have not even done yet, and I'm terrified. I can't wait to see how that goes. We'll see where I end up on that. Like, whether I end up with a gun in my mouth at the end of this week or not depends on how that goes.

Do you have money for a gun? Shit. I mean, there's always... I have to stab myself? I have to fucking Elliot Smith myself? Can you stab yourself with that Uncharted 2 limited edition? Do you still have that? You could sell that and pay your bills.

File down that hoverboard and make the ultimate statement. That'd be just like Chris Benoit hanging himself on his workout equipment. Oh, God, I thought you were going to say his fucking championship belt. That would have been better. Given the Nobel Peace Prize you can pay yourself for. As a matter of fact, I do. Threw away all those pea bodies. Had to make space.

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You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. I wanted to segue from Twilight Zone into the Rod Serling. It couldn't be more on the nose.

Oh, yeah. Almost every one of these Simpsons Halloween specials have been Twilight Zone parodies. Presented for your consideration, Springfield, an average little town with a not-so-average monster. The people of Springfield have to make sure they think happy thoughts and say happy things, because this particular monster can read minds, and if displeased, can turn people into grotesque walking terrors. And did I mention that the monster is a ten-year- quite a twist god damn it god damn it's so cool so this is a parody of it's a good life a twilight zone episode

one of the best you probably seen if not please see it it's it's lit it's legitimately scary because it is about a little boy torturing five people in a house and it's inferred that they are the last people on earth essentially it's kind of like the short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, where one malevolent character is torturing people because that's all that he has left. But it's really about the terror of amorality. It's like, what if a child with no developed sense of morals

has ultimate power? And it's just horrifying. So this was dubbed on both on the show and in the movie. I was going to say, if you don't know what the reference material is, I don't want to ever hear from you again. And Nancy Cartwright is in the movie. You have to know about this.

Please do. On the episode of the show, Bill Mooney of Lost in Space. And he is in the segment in the 1983 movie. But, yeah, pertaining to this show, Nancy Cartwright is one of the characters who's being tortured by the boy with ultimate power. She's like a teenage daughter, I think. I feel like they must have cast her because they knew she was doing cartoon voices because she gets trapped

in a cartoon. Joe Dante's version of this for the movie is to infuse it with Looney Tunes. It's Joe Dante showing that all he wants to do is Looney Tunes stuff. Sorry, I don't mean to get off track but I love Joe Dante. He did Gremlins. He eventually is Looney Tunes stuff. Sorry, I don't mean to get off track, but I love Joe Dante. Well, then a year later, he did Gremlins.

He did Gremlins, and he eventually did Looney Tunes back in action. And don't worry, this is not... The better Looney Tunes movie than Space Jam. Don't worry, this is the segment of the Twilight Zone movie where nobody died. Yeah, so the Twilight Zone stuff is good, but it's like Rod Serling is just too on the nose. I feel like they didn't do that with Future Twilight. Again, we just had that argument with Brett over Citizen Kane. Think about what was on television at the time.

This is fucking mind-blowing, and it's still great. It's black and white. He only really shows up at the beginning and the end to sort of underline things like, what if this happened? Wouldn't that be weird? And it's like, wow, that sure happened, didn't it? It doesn't happen a lot in the first three seasons. They force him on camera, and he's like, I'll do it, but only if I can smoke.

I love the pop when Bart does. The pop sound effect when he uses his powers is great. Oh, good! The curse of the little fire! It's good that you made that awful thing, Bart. It's really good. This is Shudder. This is so great. This should have been

my line of the show because... Oh, good! I just love this. It's good that Bart did that. It's great but the the one where he miss krabappel knows instinctually she has to change the results uh how she grades a test based on bart's answers on it well class the history of our country has been changed again to correspond with bart's answers on yesterday's test america was now discovered in 1942 by some guy. And our country isn't called America anymore. It's Bonerland. I like the contempt in her voice.

Like, Bonerland. It's the best read of the word boner I've ever heard. Thanks, Marshall Wallace, RIP. There's two jokes in a row here that don't, if I must be overly analytical about it, I will. Bart wouldn't like Skinner singing? Okay, one, why would Bart be pleased that Skinner is singing that song? I feel like he'd want him to debase himself more. Two, so when he calls Moe, Moe does get mad.

But is Moe saying the stuff because he knows? Is he all just doing that because he knows Bart even wants him to be mad about it? Yeah. I think so, yeah. I don't know what you're talking about. Moe's Tavern. Hold on, I'll check. Hey, everybody.

I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and a big butt, and my butt smells, and I like to kiss my own butt. That's a new one. Wait a minute. That, to me, makes the joke funnier, the wait a minute. I think, yeah, even in this universe, Moe is still clueless, even though it's happening every day, and he kind of knows why he's doing it. The only weird thing is that this is included in the best of 138 Spectacular as canon.

Oh, yeah, that bothered me more. I was like, no, don't show it in the thing. That's a non-canonical phone call. I had forgotten about it by the time that aired. And so that makes a clip show with the greatest joke of all time in it, if you've forgotten this happened. And that wait a minute really adds a lot, because it's inferred that Mo has done this a lot before,

but he's still, again, too stupid to understand it's Bart. It's the game. I love the mumbling of happy thoughts. I had noticed that before, weirdly. What, the mumbling of happy thoughts? Yeah, noticed that before, weirdly. What, the mumbling of happy thoughts? Yeah, because I guess I was so, like, I was so focused on that great joke that Mo says that, like, I forgot that.

In the defense of the writers, I love this Twilight Zone episode. I love the segment in the film. It is basically a play that takes place in one portion. It's like a bottle episode almost. It allows the Simpsons to bring all of Springfield into Bart being the Bill Mooney character. And then the Homer football thing is also one of the greatest moments of the show ever.

I love this answer. I want to watch Christian. Not a boy. If they make this field goal, I win 50 bucks. The kick is up. It's looking good. The ball is turning into a fat ball, guys. It's no good.

And you know what we say every time something strange happens? It's good that Bart did that. It's very good. The only thing I love more than a blue-collar Hank Azaria worker doing Charles Bronson impressions is Harry Shearer doing sportscaster. Yeah, and it's a good thing is right from the Twilight Zone episode where a bunch of

very stagey actors like, it's good you did that, son. It's real, real good. Why is Homer so, like, obsessed about 50 bucks when he's the father of the most powerful being in the universe?

But just Homer, well, Homer's so stupid he doesn't know to not be nice. Yeah, just the way he's yelling, and then it goes right into more great Dan acting of the

exhausted Krusty. It's just like, who won't let me die? That is definitely Brad Bird. I mean, we saw a similar scene in Father Like Clown, where he's just downtrodden and just like, you know, just torn apart. I like that the conceit of the episode

they're having a nightmare. It ends with Homer reconciling with Bart, getting his body back, and them hugging him, waking up, screaming. Did we get to the Jack in the Box thing, though? So him turning Homer into the Jack in the Box is what happens to the father in the original Twilight Zone as well. It's sort of like the last thing that happens, like the last horrifying thing. And the guy does not live. He just turns into a horrifying abomination. It's like, oh, my God.

It's not a talking head on the top of a Jack in the Box. But then the thing takes the turn they go to marvin monroe which is like feels like late marvin monroe because he could be one of his very last appearances and i and then it turns into a commercial that like i forgot about yes but you shared with us out of the thing it is a 1967 anti-smoking psa called like father like son where it's a father and son doing a bunch of things together, and the father starts smoking, and the kid takes a cigarette out of the package, and it's like, Like Father, Like Son? Think about it, won't you?

That's a joke they made on MST3K like 500 times. That's where it comes from. Because Henry showed that to me after you sent it, and I wish this worked better in audio because this is such a spot-on parody. Exactly. Yeah, but I'm glad we're letting people know that. It's the same music. This is a parody of a commercial that you've never seen.

If you want to watch it, look up 1967 Anti-Smoking PSA. It'll be the Like Father, Like Son one. I also did love the lines like, I'm not nodding, it's just air conditioning. And also, maybe even love him. I know, I wanted to capture it, but it's so visual at this point. It is very visual, yeah. I love this because all of a sudden this Halloween episode becomes the perfect cartoon.

And The Simpsons isn't always a great cartoon. It's a great show. It's very funny. But it doesn't, especially now, does not use animation to its benefit at all. And this is everything about this. If I have not expressed that, if you can't see this room and it's filled with animation stuff this episode is a perfect cartoon it's beautiful jim reardon did a really amazing job i love homer tucking him in with his teeth that is just great animation of the effort involved yeah and and the waves on bart's lips when he is screaming at the

camera just like that all of it such great extra effort I think they're only like, fuck the source material, fuck the reference sheets, this is a Halloween episode. Yeah, let's make it as crazy as possible. It's like they realize like, oh, we have a person whose head is on a coil.

Let's figure out some fun animation things to do with that. He gets hit in the head with a baseball, it makes it rock back and forth. He's on a roller coaster, it kind of like,

it is almost like a Looney Tunes character, like, boing, downwards, super fast. It pulls it straight because it's yeah it only gets better fishing too i believe it only gets better in in homer's nightmare that's true great animation i it's one of my avatars actually but yeah just the fact that

like a screencast that bart is the bart's worst nightmare is loving his father i love you son the conceit shouldn't exist and then i'm like well that's funny and this is the only reason this should have a framing device at all for the second part too i so it does it does once i got a job i came to under well actually no even at school like i feel like middle school or high school is when i started having to wake up at like six in the morning to go to club to go to school and i would do the thing homer did on the show of seeing like oh it's 4 a.m like that immediate like sleepy math of oh i have two more hours of sleep. Go back to sleep.

Something greater about this job than I get to get out of bed at 9 to 9.30 and walk four seconds to my office. Ooh la la. This is great, great burns already. Look at them smithers. Gold breakers. Layabouts. Slugger beds. Little do they realize their days of suckling at my

teat are numbered. Oh, in the meantime, sir, may I suggest a random firing just to throw the fear of God into them? Very well. Slugabeds. Slugabeds. Is that an actual term? This is peak Burns. This is the Burnsiest Burns to this point. Anything they were holding back in a regular episode. Homer is knocked out for most of this. Just so they can do more Burns lines.

I think they realize, like, now we can finally go crazy with Burns. And there's no repercussions because it's a dream. So Burns will just do whatever he feels like. It's like peak evil Burns. I have a vision that they were at a writer's retreat in pitching this. And, like, I can't not love it, but it has to go into a Halloween episode. Exactly.

You know, Smithers, I've always despised the laziness of the common worker. Then I realized his spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. So I replaced the flesh, which is weak, with steel, which is strong. So good. The emphasis there is so good.

It's the greatest breakthrough in labor relations since the Cat of Nine Tails. I had to look that one. The Cat of Nine Tails. It's, you know, a whip. If you've seen BDSM stuff, people have a multi-whipped whip like you've got the cross. But he's talking about efficiency towards hitting a horse. Or animal. Or beating back, you know, strikers.

I guess. Or slaves. Whatever you say but yeah i i love the animation of him walking through the beakers that was such great like old 50s sci-fi stuff and the scenes in the graveyard are beautiful like i took avatars from that for the last three halloween no reardon is at his best in animation wise in this segment i think oh yeah but the oh god just the emphasis on which is weak, which is strong. He wants to put a human being's brain inside a steel body so it can be a better worker at the plant. So did you guys look up what an ultrasonic lipotryptor is?

No. I know what it is from the commentary, actually. Okay. Well, I looked it up in the first round of it, then it was in the commentary. Put your dicks back in. What is it? It is a tool used to break up. It's my e-pen. But it is a tool used to break up kidney stones internally so they don't rip out of your dick.

How hard could it be? That's the last time Burns read the technology section of a newspaper. And those are want ads, which is where you look for jobs before Craigslist. And I get bored with a nail uh through it the line of the show because i thought that would be the thing we'd argue over the least this is my favorite line or moment i wrote down like 50 lines from this segment i can give any of them line of the show but please i need to set this up a tiny bit that that uh homer is fired and has to

go work as a gravedigger with Willy who's moonlighting who's known as gravedigger Willy in the script he's the master of all turf doesn't matter where and that he falls asleep in a grave

and Burns goes to the graveyard to rob a dead body and steal its brain and make a kid in a candy store and also all of it is great

and the Looney Tunes like transformation when he looks at Smithers and sees his great brain yeah yes like all this is a perfect cartoon the boogerman did you hear that sir no i didn't who is it frankenstein

the boogerman man in the bag sir i think he's alive Bad corpse Stop Bad corpse Stop Scaring Smithers Satisfied? I'm sure I love Smithers too It's like It's the man in the bag sir It's the man in the bag They take Homer

Thinking he's a dead body And oh god It's so good Bad corpse Bad corpse Stop scaring Smithers And the way Homer Just like

Is passing out And they're like Don't Like It's the most movement You'll ever see from Burns I think Outside of his like singing about uh singing about his greyhound vest he could barely give the thumbs up a few episodes ago

a bag with beating him with a shovel very well and the davy crockett line as i recall is the one my mom laughed at oh mine too yeah watched it and just like i think that whole sequence i was like man you actually have to be 50 to get yeah any of these jokes now he just ripped out the hat he rips out the brain puts it on his head and like look at me i'm davy it's important that he's humming if i only had a brain right before that humming a song from 1939 referencing a 1960s song like just seeing that joke and made me think like someone has to realize that having a brain on a stem looks like that like how would you know yeah it's such a weird pre-mortal combat too yeah pre-sub-zero and then right back to that like the bit about radio shack was hilarious too like the man at radio shack thought i was it's it's great lines great animation references to wizard of oz davy

crockett and of course franken Frankenstein. Twitch, it's moving. It's alive. Oh, that fellow at Radio Shack said I was mad. Well, who's mad now? Jesus Christ. Listen to Harry Sheardew Burns now. It's like he's lying down. He's trying so hard in this one.

And then comes the first of, actually, it seems to be a string of Johnny Carson jokes. Oh, right. Al Jean and Mike Reese, who are the executive producers on the show and wrote some of this episode, they're two of the credit writers, they worked for Johnny Carson as writers for his show. As joke writers, they say they rarely ever met him. And I don't think they had a very high opinion of him because this Carnac joke. Back-to-back episodes with Carnac jokes. It's all punctuated with off-screen

Egg McMen. But there's also no punchline. I don't know if that was them being lazy or just saying the punchline doesn't matter. Geraldo Rivera, Madonna, and a diseased yak. I remember listening to a podcast with Mike Reese. He would say they would demand so many jokes from you and they'd be like,

no, no, just ask us for five good jokes because they'll all be good and then they'd write 20 jokes and like 15 of them would be bad and they'd use the bad ones so like just just ask us for five good jokes and we'll give them to you please i remember they said a joke they wrote was uh the the joke the punchline was the stray cats the then current band johnny carson had not heard of them so he changed them to a very old tiny band called the alley cats and then when the joke got no reaction then he looked at the writers like what the hell and they're like but you changed it they also had a joke where they said the karnak joke was saint elsewhere and then open it the message on mother Teresa's answering machine and that was

and they said that that got cut and then they put it in their alph script later yeah i think alph played a karnak style character at some point i remember so uh but yeah they johnny carson technically still on tv at this point he only was for one more year yeah just another year i think he was like the leno joke we all told at the time like he's not funny anymore why why do people care about him i didn't remember it like that just because i i don't remember hearing people talking shit about johnny carson obviously i'm 11 or 10 i remember like my grandma saying oh he used to be funny like oh in the 60s yeah critical uh but that this is how much simpsons changed everything it changed comedy on television completely i believe the joke is like millie vanillie was arrested impersonating tiki mcnuggets that's the next one yeah no it's boy

george oh boy george boy george was scraping the barnacles oh that's right there are two in a row sorry i just can't believe there's this much but the the show the episode ends homer wakes up well wait i'm sorry sorry homer's brain gets put inside the metal body and it's still incredibly lazy it's just a shitty larger worker robot yeah and they give up on it i love the lines first first, like, oh, come on, it's 1145. That's so good. And also that it didn't kill Homer, like, I guess I owe you a Coke. I like Burns' lines when trapped under the giant Homer. Do you have any of those? No, I didn't.

Like, slight headache, loss of appetite, and going to die. And his thing, like, you cacophonous cags. That's a Wizard of Oz reference as well. We were at 23 sounds. I thought that was a Lost in Space, like Dr. Smith. You should have turned off this episode a long time ago. No, no, listen, listen. Because all it is,

it ends with Homer waking up from the nightmare, his brain is returned by Burns, and he wakes up from the nightmare. Perhaps you're wondering why you have two heads. Well, my body was crushed, so I had my head grafted onto your shall we say ample frame i didn't wake up it's all a dream it's just a dream oh that's right it's all a dream or is it still make music for the simpsons like that is beautiful yeah it feels like there's

less music uh at least up to ten years ago, they used less music. There was so much here. One, as a kid, I totally saw the, even as a nine-year-old, I was like, oh, they're not showing the other half of his body. That's why the real end is even better, because it's the credit screen. And then also, yeah, them laughing, even in the second one,

they're laughing at the idea of like, oh, you think this isn't continuity? I bet it is. Next week on The Simpsons. Don't forget, Dad. Tonight my class is having an all-you-can-eat spaghetti dinner. Mmm, spaghetti. But Homer, tonight's our reception for Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Oh, I hate having two heads.

That could be a reference to The Thing with Two Heads. Well, I know what exactly it is a reference to it is the thing with two heads okay 1970 film starring rosie greer a professional football player and ray maland an actor of the 40s who had to be in this cheeseball 70s film the thing about that movie i sat down to watch like oh time for a bad fun movie it's like 40 minutes of it is a car chase i swear to god like there was an extended car chase that takes up a whole chunk of the movie. It's strange. That'll kill some time.

The headline of it was, they transplanted a white bigot's head onto a soul brother's body. They sure did. And the walking scene of, I mean, if you watch the Venture Brothers, that cartoon, there is a running bit of a guy who is the thing with two heads on that show. But I also did love that was them reusing the USA Today joke scene from Homer Defied. All right, yeah. And they just drew Homer with Burns' head over it. I noticed that. And it was so sloppy.

The spaghetti line is so terribly synced. It doesn't look good. But it feels like they did it a week before the show aired or something. I like the speed of it. It's like one of those last minute gags. They would probably reject it up to the point like, we need 30 more seconds. It is almost like the Everybody Loves Ned Flanders tag. They do that joke again in a regular episode.

It does feel like it was meant to end on Or Is It? And then credits, but they had a little tag at the end. But it's great. Everything about this is perfect to me. I love Halloween episodes. I love The Simpsons. I love the idea that nothing matters in this episode. Let's just be as funny as possible. When unbridled, how great

they can be with no rules. Somebody smarter than me could write an essay about how the Halloween episodes taught writers how to write for The Simpsons. Yeah, you need as many jokes as possible. Tell a story as fast as possible in like eight minutes. Don't relax their cartoon characters.

We can undo this next week. I forgot how good it got even with the second Treehouse of Horror. Like already it's a quantum leap over last year's one. Every time you get mad and you read something like post something political on your Facebook, like remember that treehouse of horror exists and it's evidence that humans are beautiful it's i love i love treehouse it makes me so happy with the universe

i feel like i'm taking acid it's amazing i mean i like number one number two it just like leaps and bounds above everything they're doing even currently currently, like in 91, which is so great. Yeah, I mean, by the next episode, which is a really good one, it still feels like, oh, he slowed it down, like this is not, I'm not at the super high pace of getting a million jokes in a row. Yeah. So that was the Treehouse of 402 episode, hope

you enjoyed it. As always, I've been your host, Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as BobServo. You can also read my writing at USGamer and Something Awful and listen to my classic gaming podcast, Retronauts. Go to retronauts.com to find it or usgamer.net or search for Retronauts in your podcast device. Everybody else, what do you do? Oh, well, Lasertime

podcast.com is the home to all of our great content, like the Lasertime podcast 302010, our exploration of what happened 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and 10 years ago in a given week. Kind of like the history segment on this but in a full 90 minute podcast it's really great uh and of course i do cape crisis the comic book podcast and this is all supported by patreon.com slash laser time which is home to a bunch of exclusive talking simpson stuff including the first 13

episodes the for the first season and the season two wrap up special, which is amazing. And you definitely want to hear it. I'm glad you got the good plugs out because I'm so euphoric. I've had two strong beers and I just want to thank the Simpsons writers and Simpsons fans because these Halloween episodes, I never revisit them anywhere but Halloween. Yeah. And like, I probably should.

These are fucking fantastic. Oh, and don't forget, tweet out an episode of this with the hashtag TalkingSimpsons. Get a t-shirt. And you will be in the running for a t-shirt. One of two t-shirts. We're giving them away. Post some pictures of it on our Facebook. You will see them there at facebook.com slash LazerTimePodcast or LazerTimeShow.

Put it in the search bar. You'll find it. Sounds right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back next time with Lisa's Pony. See you then. © BF-WATCH TV 2021