Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Treehouse of Horror VIII With Dan Ryckert

Episode Date: February 13, 2019

It's Halloween time again on Talking Simpsons, and we've got returning guest Dan Ryckert (from Giant Bomb and Panning the Stream podcast)! He joins us to chat about Omega Man, The Fly, the Crucible and all the classic media that inspired 1997's Treehouse of Horror! Listen now to learn all about Edgar Winter AND French neutron bombs! Support this podcast and get hundreds of bonus ad-free episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron!

hey everybody right before the show wanted to let you know we have an update to our patreon a brand new monthly movie podcast is available now for ten dollar and up patrons at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you want to hear me and bob talk all about mask of the phantasm the best batman movie of all time you can hear all about that in our long, almost three hours long podcast, patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. I heartily endorse this event or product. it. Ahoy, hoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that's full of senseless CBS-style violence. I'm your host, chalk-faced goon Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today.

Henry Gilbert, and I think we can do without the crack pipe. And who do we have on the line? I'm Dan Reichert, and I'm ready to steal some Ferraris. Excellent. And today's episode is Treehouse of Horror 8. Good morning, ma'am. Good afternoon, sir. It passed noon while I was speaking, so that was technically accurate. He's crazy. Today's episode aired on October 26, 1997,

and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real-world history. Oh, my God! Happy Halloween, Bobby! The U.S. Mint releases a heavily redesigned $50 bill, the Deftones Around the fur arrives in record stores, and the voice acting legend Don Messick passes away at 71.

The voice of Scooby-Doo himself. Scooby-Doo, Muttley, Bam Bam, Boo Boo, Papa Smurf, and a million others. Hampton J. Pig, too. He died as Tiny Toons was still airing. Oh, no. Tiny Toons was waiting. It was dead. It was Animaniacs time for all of us in America. But on the $50 bill, the redesigned one, one is that done with all the presidents and jimmy carter's

passed out on the couch that's only for this secret thousand dollar okay got it uh now it was when they made they made grant bigger and off center yeah they had like a giant 50 on the back and then a little blue 50 in the corner and they they made the back of it a lot bigger, too. It was all these things to prevent counterfeiting, which it's gone through two more redesigns since then. But this was the biggest one. It was like night and day from the previous one. I like the more exciting blank or emptier spaces on dollar bills than the classic overly designed ones. It's all Bitcoin for me.

Now, was this the kind of test run for the redesign? Were they doing the 50 first and then they eventually got around to other ones, right? Like I'm trying to picture what money looks like and I'm totally blanking for some reason. I think it was the 50 before the 100. I feel like the new 100 just started showing up when i started working in retail which would have been 2001 so yeah i think it was i think that's around when the two the new 100 showed up and then the 20 came a little after that i want them to put more two dollar bills in circulation just to screw people's heads what is this uh yes poor don messick uh yeah you see just

71 not not that old for a voice actor i think frank welker is older than that now and he is What is this? Yes, poor Don Messick. Just 71. Not that old for a voice actor. I think Frank Welker is older than that now. He's even more than Don Messick at this point. He's been Scooby-Doo for a while. He took over for poor old Don Messick. Just like he did for Garth. Is there an active Scooby-Doo cartoon right now?

I'm kind of out of the loop with Scooby-Doo. I figured you guys would know. If not, there's at least those WWE crossover weird period of months. There's at least one new Scooby-Doo movie a year. Well, they just cast well, not just, but recently

they recast Velma with Kate Micucci. They're still being pretty active with Scooby-Doo. It is. It really is. Henry, have you seen the scooby-doo goes to wrestlemania oh certainly and i've seen the um the drag race one they did too the penguins one though that's the big question i've only seen clips from that the undertaker better v in that scooby-doo wwe thing is it yeah there's got to be a major player in that i think

it's the ms is a big part of it and maybe Kane. I don't remember Undertaker. Undertaker definitely has an analog in the Surf's Up movie. I remember Vince builds a WWE City in the Scooby-Doo one and that's a big part of it. I should re-watch it. It's WrestleMania season. I should watch it. I believe Triple H and Big

Show are in the main event in that one. And yeah, it's WWE City as I recall a friend joked that oh no this isn't uh friends of the show osw review they joked that in the end of that movie scooby-doo wins the wwe championship from triple h without beating triple h they're like uh triple h not putting somebody over that's how it is don messick did not live to see those days Unfortunately But this episode So this is technically the first episode Of the Mike Scully seasons to air

But not the first one produced So the next episode in the airing order Is the Cartridge Family And that is his first production episode So we'll talk all about Mike Scully then In that episode in case you're wondering We usually do an overview of the showrunner or a new writer When they pop up so we'll do that next time

So yeah sorry folks who want the mike scully biography that you're gonna have to wait until next week everybody more of an expose on the crime i'm just kidding we like mike scully so much yes go back to our interview it's on the patreon from last year actually uh december of 2017 oh and also in housekeeping before we get into the treehouse eight yes i forgot last week in our episode of alex navarro that five ish finkel was our was the guest voice he had passed away and i did not play the death jingle so i will now play the death jingle belatedly for five ish real quick here okay there we've properly celebrated Five-ish Finkel. That was souls at peace.

But okay, yes. Yeah, so it is Treehouse of Horror, and our guest Dan, well, actually, why don't we let Dan introduce himself to new listeners? Yes, Dan. Who are you? My name is Dan Reichert. I work for a video game website called GiantBomb.com. What we do is we do a lot of podcasts and videos about old games, new games, all that stuff. I think that's ostensibly what we do. Our podcast, I think some books out there and everything but haven't put one out in in a couple years i do some independent wrestling stuff here on the east coast but giant bomb is the big one for sure uh you guys just did i complimented

alex about this but you guys just did uh well now just a month ago published all your game of the year stuff for 2018 all really great i especially enjoyed the the return of Mario Party Party. It was as soon as I saw it at E3 that they were making a new one. And like instantly I knew it's like, okay, I have to text Drew Scanlan. I have to lock this in now. I know this game isn't out for another like six months, but I'm going to make this happen come hell or high water. And sure enough, we did it. And it was another four hours of hell.

I got physically injured, miming, whacking off at one point during a minigame uh but it was all worth it i think it'd be a tragedy if we did not mention all systems goku before you stop your introduction oh yes yeah ah yes that is a podcast we do uh through giant bomb it's me and jeff gerstmann and uh we are not noted anime experts or we weren't prior to 2018 uh but if you remember that Dragon Ball Z fighting game came out and we thought it seemed really cool and we jumped into Dragon Ball Z Kai and started the podcast where we're watching all of it. We're actually at the

Majin Buu saga right now. It feels like it's been going on for 40 episodes, but we are still pushing through. We are absolutely going to finish Dragon Ball Z and then we will see what we discuss from there. If you look up All Systems Goku on all the major podcast apps, you should be able to find us. It's a whole lot of fun.

You're deep into Boo Town. Yeah, it's a... I mean, the show kind of peaks itself for me. It's quite a slog, the Boo arc. It is. It's definitely got its moments. I really like Mr. Satan and the dog living with Majin Boo. That has been a major highlight for me.

But yeah, there are long stretches of not a whole lot going on. Yeah, I know when we last had you on for King Size Homer, you were just getting into Dragon Ball. And like what, I mean, briefly, how have things changed for you and your views on just anime in general since becoming a Dragon Ball expert? Way, way more open-minded, which is just something I'm trying to do

kind of across the board. And anime is just one of those things. And, oh, actually, that kind of goes right into one other quick plug I can do. I do a podcast with my wife called Panning the Stream, where we watch a bunch of stuff

on streaming services on like Hulu and Netflix, and then we discuss it. And there's a lot of anime on there. So we've watched Case Closed. We've done, I don't know, the Castlevania Netflix series counts as anime,

but we discussed that. Close enough. Yeah, so I've done some stuff outside of nothing quite as extensive as the Dragon Ball Z stuff I've done, but I'm definitely excited once I'm done with DBZ to just kind of see

what else is out there. Like, is this Evangelion? Am I saying that right? Close enough. Oh, boy. You should, you, I would love to hear you and Jeff talk about Evangelion.

Again, that thing hitting Netflix is going to cause so many think pieces to explode. Oh yeah. Too many think pieces. I think we have decided we are going to do that for Panning the Stream. So we will be... I don't know what I'm stepping into. I know there are robots or mechs involved.

I don't really know anything beyond that. I heard it gets real weird by the end, and that is the extent of my knowledge of that show. That's the best way to get into Ava, just knowing nothing, going in with no advanced knowledge. I got that covered. Oh, well, and Dan,

how do you feel about Halloween episodes of The Simpsons like this one? You know, I always had very, very fond memories of these because, for one, it always kind of signified that the season was starting. Because, you know, it was typically around October that you would start seeing. Like sometimes, you guys would certainly know, weren't there times where it was the first episode of the season? A few times, yeah. And I think next year is the last year for a while that it actually happens before Halloween.

Okay, yeah. I do remember it was usually when that TV season was starting. And I distinctly remember going to my friend John's house and I want to say it was 95 because we wanted to watch the debut of Mad TV. And I was always a huge SNL fan and I was also a huge Mad Magazine fan. And so I had very high hopes for Mad TV. They fell very quickly. I never actually got into it, but I remember watching the debut

of it. It must've been like mid-October 95. And I saw a commercial for that Treehouse of Horror. And I've always been very into video games. And I saw this like 3D rendered Homer and I was like, oh my God, they're doing like a 3d virtual Homer thing or Homer in the real world. And, uh, that was always one of my favorites because of that. I was probably 11 years old. So, you know, the exact right age for that. But yeah, I liked the little bite-sized stories. I liked that they always had these three things and I didn't always know the references or, you know, I hadn't always seen 2001, a space odyssey or the shining at the time, but then I would always see these movies as I got older and I'd be like oh okay i saw what they were doing there and i need to go back and watch

that simpsons episode now so yeah just really fond memories overall for these this is a good one i think this is a pretty good one it's one of the more violent ones at least the beginning it is and this first scene was pitched by former showrunner david merkin when he was still consulting with the show and it's very of the time oh and there's a couple interesting behind the scenes notes about this too is that there is a new writer alert right uh though if we're going out uh if we're going by production order it's really weird so he was working he was a writer for season eight but his season eight production episode was lisa the simpson which won't air for like six months in Simpsons time. So he also, the only other Simpsons script he wrote was the third segment of this. So Ned Goldrider is the name.

Ned Goldrider, yes. Was he a freelancer or something? It seemed like that was his role. I think freelance. Yeah. I don't think he was staff. Yeah. But he's, as far as I could tell from checking his wiki and IMDb page, he's not one of the

Harvard mafias. That's probably why he's not. Was not allowed in you must be this smart to ride uh and after writing these two episodes of simpsons well before he came from late night tv he had worked on conan for example then he would go on to work on shows such as dilbert and uh grounded for life dilbert cartoon is way better than dilbert comic i gotta say well only. Well, only one of them had Stone Cold Steve Austin. That's true. Perfect match. Actually, speaking of that, weird, I can turn something into a wrestling thing.

This opening segment here with the Fox sensor, it just so reminded me of this whole, like, late 90s kind of, like, anti-censorship, like, South Park and Attitude Era of wrestling. You know, they were doing stuff in wrestling where it's like, oh, we got this right sensor group. That's very much like, hey, fuck the censors. And it very much struck me as a product of that time. I wanted to talk about this is very much ripped from the headlines because on January 1st of 97, the official TV content guidelines were put into effect in which every TV show was rated. This was meant to act in tandem with the V chip, which was now going to be a mandatory thing in TV. So parents could say,

okay, everything under TV PG you can watch, but nothing above it. So it was a way for parents to do across the board, you know, blocking of certain kinds of content. It wasn't government censorship or anything like that, but I think that's what people feared about it. I mean, it empowered parents just to flip a switch if they were going to but it wasn't that the government would have it always be on yeah though i mean if you you know you have a 1984 fear of your television you figure like well one day the government's just gonna flip it on and they'll get to control it all through that v-chip and if you remember the south park movie one of the major plot catalysts was the v-chip it gave cartman magic powers because he swore and he made electricity appear and stuff. Yes. Yeah. So

yes, the V-chip really stoked all of our fears for some reason in 1997, 1998. Dan mentioned the RTC, the Right to Censor Group in WWF at the time. They were a direct mockery of the Parents Television Council, the ptc who also did not like the simpsons the simpsons was on their list along with monday night raw and smackdown as uh enemies of good as destroying children through television which it's funny too because one of the meat lead spokespeople for the ptc was steve allen who had appeared both in the simpsons and at wrestlemania's and on the critic and on the critic oh wow i feel like this was uh this came on the heels maybe like a couple years after all of the like mortal combat hysteria with like you

know tipper gore and was that really at a fever pitch like maybe 93 94 and then tv kind of took up that mantle a few years later yeah i think they they all work in tandem and it's actually this is pretty similar to the esrb2 of just like tv channels choosing to self-censor or self-mandated guidelines just like the esrb is not a government one it's something kids need to learn is that like technically the esrb is not enforced in any way there's no you're not breaking a law by playing GTA if you're under 13. And I think just the internet, the very widespread use of the internet, has broken any notion of being able to keep things from children's eyes.

It's never going to happen again. Never again. Oh, and also behind the scenes, this is the only Halloween episode directed by Mark Kirkland. Wow. Which, if you guys haven't, you should listen to our mark kirkland interview on the patreon he has directed more episodes than anybody of the simpsons and he

still works on the show he works from season 2 to season 30 and yet he had only done one treehouse ever and it's this one wow it's a lot of work so i don't blame him for only doing one and as kirkland says on the commentary this was the last simpsons that brad bird consulted on before he left for iron giant wow and he took a lot of great simpsons artists with them so if you wonder like hey did the art did the animation get a little worse after this like there there was a little brain drain when uh brad bird left as well as taking with him like jeff lyn Jeff Lynch and others. He talked all around this opening

gag, but let's give it a listen. No. No. No. No. No. I think we can do do without the crack pipe. Oh, hi.

As the Fox censor, it's my job to protect you from reality. And thanks to my prudent editing, tonight's special Halloween show has been rated TVG. This means there will be no raunchy NBC-style sex or senseless CBS-style violence. So sit back and enjoy a night of worry-free... What the fudge? Overfeed zinc!

Gemini Christmas! Darn it! So the real censors had a lot to say about that scene. Yeah, I can't imagine. Less blood. He doesn't bleed until the very end. I remembered it is bloodier. Yeah, me too.

It's like a pirate sword that he gets stabbed with, too. A real cutlass. Yes, yeah. That's another rule. I wonder if it falls under the repeatable axe thing. Yeah. They had apparently a dagger beforehand, so I think they're like, oh, a kid can imitate that with a knife around the house and so if you have like this ridiculous looking cut list that i guess nobody would own then they're

like well a kid can't pretend to do that he doesn't own that sword and david merkin is very much about attacking institutions for the simpsons yes and it's a very mercenary joke where the guy laughs a lot at a joke and he goes no that voice is definitely like operating at a 90 kent brockman level yeah yeah we were talking before the show i think harry sheer is doing a little bit of lauren michaels i think you're right i think he worked on snl and he was probably told no a lot no i mean harry sheer uh harry sheer in in interviews has a lot of targets but uh he is especially not a fan of lauren michaels he thought he thinks he's uh a bit overblown i think now was he on snl i for some reason when i think of harry sheer's tenure on snl in my head it was always during those like five years that lauren was gone

in the late 80s was did he overlap with lauren a bit i think he was the last year or two because yeah he talks about how he was kind of kept to the side. He's like, well, he's the movie. He makes the short films. He's not working with you guys. And he said, like, this was from his WTF interview. Folks want to look it up. He talks about how he didn't really pal around with the original Not Ready for Primetime players because he felt that Lorne purposely separated him from them

so that Lorne could keep his control over them. That's, I believe, how Shearer felt about it. SNL is a weird cult that happens to make a TV show every week. The TV show is secondary to it. I get why guys like Dave Merkin hate network censors because they do just see them as like, they tell them they can't do a joke. And you're a professional joke teller. You don't want to be told that you can't tell a joke.

That is frustrating. I get that. Wasn't Oakley telling us that a lot of the censorship is because people might want to advertise and you don't want to make jokes about certain things? Oh, yeah. Censors step in for that stuff more often than for content reasons i i was always a big fan of how open they would be about fox though on the simpsons because it seemed like it was just open season on the fox network yeah they they never really seemed to pull their punches with fox and they even i mean they did fox kind of got into it they will later in the scully years the mike scully years will have rupert murdoch playing himself

and calling himself a billionaire tyrant. I mean, they made Fox. They have special permission to make fun of Fox. That's true. Yeah. But also, I think, you know, the censors, too, is how they, Josh, no, Bill talked about how with the gay episode, Homer's Phobia, that because they don't take network notes, one of the few ways that Fox can get control over the simpsons and their content is through sensors yes that's right so that's that's i think too another way the sensors the network sensors can be extra frustrating for for creative people and simpsons because that's how that's the way

they're exercising their control over the simpsons as best they can. And after a quick little opening gag with the family getting electrocuted, it's a cute gag. Then we get... One thing I always notice in these couch gags for the Halloween shows, they always have to find a way to kill Maggie. Oh, yes. It's kind of weird if you think about it. Every time you watch one of these, they kill a baby in the opening. That's a good point. They gotta find

a new way to get... The censor didn't stop that. Yeah, it's like we've seen her hanging. We've seen her as a skeleton. And the TV rating joke is also funny because you don't see this when you're watching on the DVDs. But when they aired on TV, there was the TV rating right there.

And even though it says it goes up to 666, this was is rated TV PG. Ah, not if TV 14. And again, not to bring this back to wrestling one more time but but no this is a big thing in wwe right now is it like the though i think the a big way parental guide ratings uh affect the content you see on tv is that like by being classified as your rating that you then get certain ads or certain ad deals like the big controversial thing with wwe has been for the last decade they've been tvpg and that's means they can't

do certain things they used to do that everybody loved when uh women got you know cut open and beat up but uh but they do it because they want to work with mattel or Coca-Cola or all these brands that won't work with something that's above TVPG. Okay. I'm more a fan of video game ratings because I love comic mischief. I want to know if it's in the game I'm playing. What about use of tobacco? That's my favorite. I like alcohol reference.

Oh, yes, yes. Just one. So we get into the first of the segments here. I think I agree with Bob. It's the strongest of the episode. And it's written by Mike Scully, the showrunner. Mike Scully has more written by credits in his seasons than most showrunners have. This one comes from him being a kid and loving the 70s classic B movie, The Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston, which was one of many adaptations of I Am Legend.

Have we seen this before? Oh, have I seen the movie? Yeah, The Omega Man. Yeah, it's all right. It's great. I watched it about 10 years ago for the first time, and I had no idea it was actually kind of about civil rights. Oh.

It's about an interracial relationship and breaking the status quo. There's all this 60s stuff wrapped into this 1971 movie, but it's great. I've never seen the Will Smith I Am Legend. I heard it's not that great. Well, there's two different cuts of it, and one cut's definitely better than the other. It's good. I mean, Will Smith can hold a movie.

He's interesting enough that you're like, I care about this guy, and I like watching him. But the first one was called Last Man on Earth, and that's, I think, with Vincent Price. Yeah, yeah that's right so is uh i'm going to show my ignorance here uh it was i am legend like a really old book that uh spawned a lot of adaptations it's more of a novella so richard matheson was a great sci-fi horror writer of the time he wrote a lot of tv too like the twilight zone and i am legend is one of his novellas it's usually in a compilation with other things he wrote if you want to buy it but it's novellas it's usually in a compilation with other things he

wrote if you want to buy it but it's a short read it's like 100 pages i think maybe a little more but it's a great one of the first early zombie stories and actually i believe night of the living dead is loosely inspired or based on it or just ripped it off i think that's what roger corman even said it was like one of the seminal modern zombie stories definitely worth checking out just about every zombie story you see in america is somehow influenced by its times and that's definitely omega man there i mean part of it is showing you know um moses himself kissing a black woman was more shocking to america in the early 70s than it was for him to like shoot people in the face yeah in the movie and i mean despite

how the end of his life uh was charlton heston was a huge civil rights advocate when it was for him to shoot people in the face in the movie. And I mean, despite how the end of his life was, Charlton Heston was a huge civil rights advocate when it was not super popular to be that in a white person in Hollywood. So props to him for that. And if you like Charlton Heston holding a bunch of guns, you get that in the movie too. You get it from all ends.

A peek of his future. And it was one of Scully's favorite films too. I mean, it's also fun and just like there's, it has a real campness to it, too, especially with how all the mutants are played, too, in their cloaks, all their designs, their cloaky designs, as Homer calls them. Cloaky. They're all copied over from this, too. So the episode, though, begins with the unbelievable idea that a politician wouldn't apologize for being racist. And that's how an heroic hippo became a deputy. Stupid hippo.

This just in, tensions continue to mount between Springfield and France over Mayor Quimby's now famous frog's legs joke. The French president has threatened swift and massive retaliation if he doesn't receive an immediate apology. Stupid fraud. We now go live to City Hall for Mayor Quimby's response. I stand by my ethnic slur. Do your worst, you filthy, pretentious savages. Filthy, pretentious savages. When I heard that, like him on the steps, I feel like nowadays that would just be like a tweet from a politician.

Like in all caps, I stand by my ethics. Yes. Hashtag. But yes, uh, there was reference to French atomic bombing and I believe the itchy and scratchy and poochy show or something like that. Yes.

There, there was a joke about the bomb testing that is very, uh, in France is one of a few countries that has nuclear weapons and they were doing atomic testings a lot later than most countries were. Yes. And it took like a global ban by NATO to get them to stop.

Yeah, 95 and 96 were the last years they were testing, and I believe their last test was on January 27th, 1996. So this is kind of also ripped from the headlines. And I was looking this up, just information about it. Apparently, they are now facing charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court because they bombed French Polynesia a lot as fun tests. And I'm sure that didn't hurt anybody. So who knows what's going to happen to France, but I imagine nothing because they could be like, well, America's nuclear tests were so far in the past. How can we say that a nuclear bomb woke up Godzilla now? And they're like, well, okay, the French test. That'll do it.

But yeah, they've stopped. It's been a good 20 plus years. So we're safe from the French. Well, I mean, just because they're not testing it doesn't mean they still don't have them. And I looked up the frogs thing i mean it's it's mostly just related to frog legs it's like they it started with english people making fun of the french for eating frog legs because that was disgusting to them that was oh i was confused by that because like i didn't know what the origin of that was

and then in the animation they drew all all of the French people with these giant things underneath their chins. And I was like, what, is that a thing? I've never heard that comparison, but I guess it's just the legs thing, right? Yeah.

I mean, it all grew from there. And Americans call them frogs without even knowing the ethnic slur. I didn't really hear about it until the sort of anti-French blowback from the beginning of the first, the most recent war in the Middle East, right? That's when it happened, the sort sort of anti-French blowback from the beginning of the most recent war in the Middle East, right?

That's when it happened, the sort of anti-French? Was that after 9-11? The freedom prize stuff? Yeah, that was after 9-11, the whole freedom prize, all that crap, yeah. Well, they foolishly didn't want to go to the very successful Iraq invasion we had planned, and what a bunch of dicks they were. Yeah, but I think this kind of – i mean the the simpsons regretted the not this joke but the cheese eating surrender monkeys joke they didn't like that that got reused by uh angry political right-leaning political folks against france because they're like

in that case and in this case the joke is about people being racist to france and that being bad not that it's good to be mean to French people. They kind of ignored the context that he was saying it. But so as this bomb is coming to town, Homer is taking a look at some possible bomb shelters. Now this baby is called the Withstandinator. It can take a six megaton blast, no more, no less. Ooh!

Blankets, radio. Oh, a Gary Larson calendar. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. Sacre bleu.

We will show the stupid Americans who look like the frog, eh? Ready. Am. So I really want to know why Homer didn't say a Farsight calendar. It feels like a legal thing. I knew who Gary Larson was. Most people back then, didn't say a Farsight calendar. Yeah. It feels like a legal thing. I know who Gary Larson was.

Most people back then, if you said the Farsight, they'd know. If you said Gary Larson, maybe, probably not. Maybe. Yeah. I love this joke because I was always a big Farsight fan, even as a kid. I always had the 365-day calendars and all that. And that was the running joke even in other humor, like in Mad and Cracked magazine. It was always like, oh, the Farsight never makes sense.

It was always this one panel thing. It was always very absurd and everything, but it wasn't abstract, I thought. Because of its one panel nature, I think everybody had those daily calendars. They probably still make them too. Unfortunately, now there are maybe like 43 Farsight ripoffs in its absence. It's been gone for over 20 years. So now all of those things have surpassed the Farside ripoffs in its absence. It's been gone for over 20 years. So now all of those things have surpassed the Farside in terms of length. Well, as Farside page day calendars,

it's kind of perfect because he made, you know, he, in the grand scheme of lengths of comic strips, Farside didn't last that long. It had about a good decade, but that gives you thousands of Farside comics and you can just cycle through them on those page day calendars. I used to buy the gallery books. They had tons of those big, wide comic books filled with Farside stuff. And the address was always, I remember it always said Kansas City. I can't remember if it was on the liner or on the back of the book. And for some reason, as a child,

I thought that meant that Gary Larson lived in Kansas City, which honestly I have no idea if he did. but i used to write to that address being like oh mr larson i'm a huge fan like you know i would try to get an autograph or something i think i got like press kits back in the mail but it certainly was not like gary larson's home address like my young brain thought was so the comic ran from january 1st 1980 to January 1st, 1995. So this is more than two years after it ended. Wow. Okay. I mean, it lasts forever. Those Farside jokes were great.

As a dorky kid, I loved me some Farside. One of my top fashion choices in middle school were T-shirts featuring a full Farside comic on it. Oh, man. That's so great. I've seen in play a lot on the internet an old Farside joke from like 1990, an old Farside comic in which parents are looking at their gamer son

and thinking about his future and in their thought bubble is a want ad for gamers like, we need somebody to rescue the princess. Things like that. But that came true. Now people get paid for playing video games on streams and stuff. So, gary dad sent me yeah i think my dad sent me that thing as a joke like pictures like oh well huh i guess they hadn't met you because i found a way to make that happen my uh my mom's favorite farsight joke was because she she had this one

like in malt she clipped it out of the newspaper, and then when she could get a... I think she had a poster of it, too. But it was the cat F-U-D one. It's called Cat Fud, but cat food. And it's the dog trying to trick the cat into going into the dryer, I believe. And the dog's going like, come on, come on. Oh, yeah. I can see that in my head.

Actually, all my cool teachers in school would often put a Fars Side comic on the test. And very often it was the school for the gifted where the kid is pushing on the pool door. Oh, yeah. Classic. Yeah. Man. There is.

They tried to make a Far Side animated series that actually aired on the same night as a Treehouse of Horror for Simpsons. And it just didn't work in animation i think it was just too weird they're really good though and super dark but i think like middle america was not ready for a farsight cartoon the simpsons will be right back. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care.

Did I mention that we care? Hope you all are enjoying this early Halloween or on or on time halloween depending on when you listen to this and we thank you very much for listening and we especially thank dan reichert for being our guest this week he's such a cool dude you should definitely be following him on twitter checking out all the cool stuff he does all systems goku especially is one of my favorite podcasts i love hearing him and jeff gerstmann talk all about their new impressions on classic dragon ball anime and if you're enjoying this episode of talking simpsons there's so many cool ways to support us but most importantly you should check us out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons the subscribers there help me

and bob do this full-time as our real ass jobs and we thank all of you supporters at patreon.com talking simpsons but what else do you give when you join up in the talking simpsons network so many things not only will you get episodes a week ahead of time and ad free you could be listening to cartridge family right now you'll also get the same for our sister podcast what a cartoon in case you didn't know me and Bob do another weekly podcast called What a Cartoon, where we go through a different animated series each week in the same Talking Simpsons style. You can hear that podcast a week ahead of time and ad-free as well. Not to mention, if you support us at patreon.com slash talking simpsons for $5 a month,

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slash talking shirt to check out both of them they're 1999 they ship somewhat internationally and they're really good i have one of each and they fit great so please check them out tiny.cc slash talking shirt yeah the so the depiction of the french here obviously very insulting to them the uh the frog the bullfrog chin that pops out which uh you know that's that's quite a comical idea and though the way they draw the french president is interesting because he's not he doesn't look like any french president jacques chiroque was the uh due to the time right yes yeah he. He had been president for two years at this point. And when I looked at like Mitterrand

and the guy before him, they all kind of look the same. Now I'm making a statement about the French. So all French presidents look the same, Henry. These three did. They were all like skinny, balding, older men who just all, I mean, they all did look a little similar, at least in their Wikipedia

pictures, which means they always look that way. But yeah, no, this guy is drawn more like how you'd cast a French president in a movie, kind of like how when you'd watch an old cartoon or a current day cartoon then they wouldn't draw whoever the current president is because it would hurt it in reruns.

So they just draw the vague like, yeah, president guy. He's got a nice little French mustache. It works. And he holds a cigarette the French way through the three fingers. And his little, like, hand motion to his mouth. That's cute, too. So the bomb is coming to Springfield.

Just so you know, it's 1997. We have an Intel Inside joke, which we're all the rage then. I think it's just a reference for the sake of it being a reference because, I mean, we had the Intel Inside commercials and Pentiums were all the rage. Everyone knew what clock speed their computer was. I don't know what mine is anymore, but it's like, I got a Pentium 150. I got a Pentium 200. Weren't they just really aggressive with the ads back then? I seem to remember all the guys in the hazmat suits suits or i'm sure that's not what they're called but all the like different colored things and tons of super bowl commercials and stuff oh yeah no they they were heavily selling it as like this amazing like almost alien piece of technology that would increase the power of your machine like yeah now these days i mean i just i have a computer i, does this work? Or I also just settle for a Mac.

I'm just like, well, I know this Mac's going to work. This was the era in which computers were finally affordable for middle America. And this is the explosion of Dell and Gateway. So Pentiums are all the talk of the town. And Weird Al wrote a song about it. Oh, that's right. It's all about the Pentiums, baby. It's such a specific thing because, like, I can't imagine a processor getting advertised like during

the super bowl or in any mainstream way thing for people that are building their own computers you know yeah i think it's uh it's real holdover from the time well i mean intel did a great job of like if you bought a new tower for your home pc setup it would say Intel on inside on it in that same style. It advertised itself very well. We had a quick Kang and Kodos gag just to make sure they're in here. I like seeing Rigel 4. It's the first time we've ever seen their home planet.

I forgot about that. It's the first. And that the home planet aliens think they're crazy. Kang and Kodos are a joke to them, which I like that a lot. Was it a couple years before this that they did the Kang and Kodos are a joke to them, which I like that a lot. Was it a couple years before this that they did the Kang and Kodos Treehouse of Horror with the, well, it must have been,

with the Dole and Clinton 96 election, right? Right, previous year. Yeah, just a year ago. And yeah, this was them kind of getting back into their cameo position for Halloween episodes. I think on the commentary,

Cohen says he worked hard to make sure this wasn't cut when they were cutting stuff. And so as the cigar-shaped object is launched, it arrives in Springfield and we get, I think, a new catchphrase for comic book guy here. I'll bet I get blamed for this.

But Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills. You're from two different worlds. Oh, I've wasted my life. So has Aquaman now, is he now cool? I think so. They've been trying so hard to make him cool, but he was the joke character for so long. But the project to make Aquaman cool i think is complete

the movie believe it or not globally total has made more money than any other dc film aquaman has made more money than a single batman movie which is pretty wait even more than like the nolan trilogy even more yeah it's it's insane but it did But not the entire Nolan trilogy, but the highest grossing Nolan trilogy film did not make more than Aquaman. It really was the global thing. Like, it did good in America, but it did great in the overseas market,

which is more important than ever these days. They love water over there. I mean, it's a gorgeous movie to look at. It's also too fucking long, and it's like... Oh, like every superhero movie. Yep, yeah. Overstuffed with plot. And by the end of it, you're kind of confused.

Like, did we need five of these villains in this movie? And did it need to be Indiana Jones for 20 minutes in here? I don't think so. That's my review of Aquaman. But also, though, if I may be extra nitpicky over the comic book guy joke here, Aquaman doesn't have gills. He doesn't. And he's married lots of women who don't have gills either.

Does he say Aquaman has gills? Has he been divorced numerous times then? No, but in different universes he's had different wives. Oh, isn't there a whole thing in DC where there's like 95 different universes or something crazy i mean it's now an infinite number it would one time was 52 but yeah okay sorry bob you're i was gonna say um so in the clip he's saying the woman didn't have gills but he's not saying aquaman has gills but he should marry a woman with gills who can be underwater with him i suppose so but so he's not he's not totally wrong when he says there are two different worlds that would seem to imply that he thinks aquaman a woman with gills who can be underwater with him. I suppose so. He's not totally wrong.

When he says there are two different worlds, that would seem to imply that he thinks Aquaman has gills. I don't know, Henry. I just don't know. Aquaman got married way before the other Justice Leaguers. Superman got married, but Aquaman got married like 20 years before Superman did. And he had a kid, and that kid got murdered.

Oh, man. By Black Manta. It was dark stuff. 20 years before Superman did. And he had a kid, and that kid got murdered by Black Manta. It was dark stuff. That's how long they've been trying to make Aquaman cool, but all it took was hiring Jason Momoa. That's what did it. I mean, what Comic Book Guy is saying there before he

gets exploded is basically a podcast. Yeah, we're doing it now. And the animation on the zoom to i've wasted my life is really good there's a lot of really good camera moves in this episode then we go back to homer getting out of uh he is the only survivor because he was uh eating three cans of uh food in the bunker a can of rib. And that Herman dies like he's the guy who has all this preparedness, but he couldn't. What a great irony that even Herman couldn't save himself

as a survivalist. It's important to point out this is a neutron bomb, which was a quote-unquote safer kind of nuclear bomb, where it's like it won't cause as much collateral damage. It's still a weapon from hell. So that's why the city is intact. Yes.

I like the idea that the shelter could do no more and no less than a very specific megaton boss. He chose the right one. Yeah, Homer is a very lucky guy. Or is he unlucky to be the last man on Earth? Maybe a little friendly punching will move your ass. You got it. Jeez. What's with all the dust?

Oh, my God. Everyone's gone. Little Bart. Little Lisa. Little Marge. And the rest. Oh, I've lost everything. I can't go on.

No, no, no! I can't just wallow in sadness. It's time to laugh again! I'm the last man alive! And I can do everything I've always wanted! Oh, God. That joke of all the family members playing baseball on his memories, it is so good.

If you say season nine is bad i will show you that joke because every time i laugh i i know what's gonna happen too every part of it also the ghost of the tv being the rest with like the baby and the pets yeah just floating in a void maggie's on the same level as the tv and the cat yeah i know the yeah the marge with thinging. That's line of the episode. Yeah, let's do it. That's the joke. It's one of those jokes where I get excited knowing it's coming. And that should be the anti-humor. Like, I know what's going to happen.

I know the punchline, but it's funny every time. I'm getting kind of dizzy. I'm sorry. And also, the And the Rest is a reference to the classic Gilligan's Island theme song. Before, I believe, Bob Denver lobbied for those actors to be mentioned in the credits. That's good. Their characters. Yeah.

I mean, because the way the song goes like, And the Rest versus And the Professor and Marianne. It's a little clumsy the second time, but they need it. They need it. It's a difference of like two seconds. It was really embarrassing to uh the professor and marianne i mean also behind the scenes on gilligan's island they all got screwed on residuals all those reruns they didn't get a dime off of it so that's sad uh but yeah that's where is this is this a period in the show where

homer like i felt like there was a turn around this point. I know we're past the Skinner episode, the infamous one. But there's a point where Homer starts becoming almost a parody of himself. Because he was always stupid and dim-witted. But he was never the type that would just walk up and punch Milhouse's dad right in the face. Because he was stuck behind him in traffic or something. So is this just because this is a Treehouse episode and it's not canon? Or are they starting to make Homer more of a ridiculous character at this point?

Definitely in Scully's seasons, he's a little more quick to violence and anger. But I also think he is heightened a lot for this episode because it's a Halloween episode. Halloween episodes let them break that rule more but i also think this is the the door opening more to as he's known in the fan community jerk ass homer i mean well this is also he's obscenely unobservant then that's the joke but that he he's surrounded by skeletons and it takes him like hours to realize it i mean i'm not a huge i mean i think we'll get to it when we get to the joy of mean i'm not a huge i mean i think we'll get to it when we get to the joy of sec i'm not a huge fan of the jerk ass narrative uh anymore

after doing this podcast because as we saw in the merkin years he was jerk ass like to a huge extent then bill and bill oakley and josh weinstein softened him a lot now he's back up to where he was so i feel like there was a there was like a two-year period where he was much more softer and much more cuddlier and goofier. And now he's back to where Merkin had him, I think. And the rest also is a part of the running gag that Homer kind of hates his children. Especially Maggie. He forgets Maggie's name a lot.

Yeah, she does not exist to him or barely does. And I like when he says like, no, I'm going to laugh again, that he just does his girly yeah that it's time to laugh again a clip was used a lot in a local commercial for the simpsons so i heard it a billion times wow yeah with him surrounded by corpses they just use that clip yeah also there's a great headline gag of a hippo promoted to detective all right there's just that opening drawing of wiggin with that hippo is really funny. I like that. It just is a one-off drawing.

Was this the thing? Did they allude to this at the beginning with the Fox sensor? Oh, no, I don't think so. The allude to what? I seem to remember at the very beginning before, or maybe it wasn't the Fox sensor. I felt like there was some allusion to the hippo at the very beginning. In Kent Brockman's report on Quimby, that was the first thing that we see yeah yeah that's that's what i'm thinking of yeah totally and it like briefly preceded it just to get you into like a nice

this was when there was the runner of haha which means death to us all anyway yeah uh that's always fun to cut in and then we we get to see this is one of the best parts of the Will Smith movie, I Am Legend, which is the first hour of the movie is just him and a dog. And he's doing, in the nighttime, it's dangerous. But in the daytime, he's doing all of the cool stuff. He's like, well, I want to play golf off of an aircraft carrier. I want to do all these things that, as the last man alive, only I could do. This is a parody of a scene

in The Omega Man where Charlton Heston is watching a movie alone in a theater and it's Woodstock, the documentary from 1970. Oh, okay. He's not watching,

I'm guessing, Black Sheep or whatever. Or like the sub-Black Sheep movie. Yeah. Like the thing they'd make after Black Sheep. It was pretty accurate for the farley

spade era of the time them just getting stung by bees and running in circles why did you leave farley in charge of the bees that's uh poor chris farley only had a month and a half left on this planet good thing they made that joke in time yeah yeah uh boy that's that's sad well i mean the thing yeah the critic had the same joke about like the sweaty guy it was just the idea that uh chris farley i think is one of the funniest guys who ever was on snl but he at the time his comedy was just seen as like just so broad and stupid kind of and i mean it didn't help that like black sheep's not a good movie yeah but he's he was a funny guy it's sad everyone should read the chris farley

show the book about him written by his brother and there's lots of great interviews about it and a lot of it is people like bob odenkirk saying why are you making this guy do the fat man fall down funny scenes he's way better than that he's way more talented than that but he was mad he was being misused so much dan if you haven't read that book i would definitely as an snl fan i think you'd really like it one other yeah you know what specifically with the farley stories uh one of my favorite books i've read a couple times is uh live from new york and it's all the kind of like oral history of snl and hearing the stories from like odin kirk rooming with him and and how hilarious he was but also how much kind of a train wreck he was i i had no idea this other book by his brother existed i

would love to read that oh it's so good it's a quick read too and also so bob own court quick facts about him, you might not know. He created the motivational speaker Matt Foley character and he played him originally. And also, he is one of four credited writers on Lunch Ladyland.

Wow. So I wonder if he gets Lunch Ladyland bucks. I hope so. He deserves it. It took four people to write that song. And yeah, I also just feel,

I do feel bad for farley that the way they drew farley in this is like he's he's so huge yeah like though i mean that is kind of what he was looking like at the end well at the time i remember dirty work probably came out right around this time and he is very big and very sweaty and does not seem healthy in that movie no he's not yeah well i mean like his final SNL appearance, he looks so bad and it's just sad. And they're making jokes about like, well, he really cleaned up, huh?

It's like... Once you read that book, once you read that book, you'll know they should not let him, they should not have let him on TV. He was on drugs. He was messed up. He was drunk. He should have been taken somewhere

and not put in front of a camera. Isn't the cold open? Isn't it Tim Meadows trying to explain to Lauren that like, oh no, it's going to be fine, man. It's fine. I think so. Yeah, I think so. RIP Chris Farley.

We love you. Yes. So then we get Homer's nude church dance after that, which that was another censor note. Yeah, he couldn't dance on the altar. But apparently it's not too profane if he dances in the aisles uh to war what is it good for i just love his just he's marching in place yeah that's not not much of a dance homer uh and this is though when he is confronted by the freaks as they choose to be called I still want to go. Good God, y'all. What is it good for?

I didn't do nothing. Say it again. Okay. Hey, what happened to the tunes? Hey, what the hell's going on? Where'd you get those cloaks? Silence. You're talking too loud.

Not everyone died in the blast, Homer. Some of us were merely horribly mutated. You're mutants? We don't like the word mutants, Homer. We prefer freaks or monsters. We're creating a new perfect society in which the mistakes of the past will be eliminated. And now, you must die

you want me come and get me get up they chose a fun group to be the mutants i have to say they chose all the right characters yeah all i mean seeing ned skinner moe monty burns oh yeah all of them hanging out yeah hibbert too it's great the the mutants are fun collective or sorry freaks freaks yeah they're a fun collective of guys and just homers i do love the the line where'd you get those clothes such a funny line i overlooked that line that is very funny also that's it feels like a dan castellaneta ad-lib or just improv when he's singing along to war he says say it again okay like he says okay like you told me to say it again i'm about to say it sounds like an ad-lib and also silence you're

talking too loud reminds me of the robot elders from futurama Anyone in a cloak screaming silence. They're very similar. Silence. And when Homer runs away from them too, him knocking around all these corpses, but then he sees the coffin. He's like, ah, the coffin. And he does murder Johnny and Edgar Winter, who apparently survived the blast.

Yeah. Well, they were outside of town and they came to town to do the show. But yes, they do. What do you call them? Like chalk-faced goons? Chalk-faced goons. Yes. Yeah.

But in case you don't know, they are, I don't know if you call it suffering albinism, but they are albinos. Is that the word to say it? Yes. Let me know if that's wrong. But yeah, the Winter Brothers and the edgar winter group they are a really awesome band like they had some really great songs in the 70s i mean to let you know this is scully time it's time for jokes about 70s bands like he loves 70s rock quite a lot

i mean uh only mike scully would have nrbq be guests so many appearances and i still don't know who they are outside of mike Scully liking them a lot. I mean, they're taking care of business. That's all you need to know. That's all they do. The Edgar Winters group is really, I mean, Freeride, I think, is their biggest hit. Come on and take a freeride.

Did they do Frankenstein, too? That's their greatest song. That Otto sings, or at least sings the riffs to. Yeah. If you can look it up, there's a great live performance of them doing Frankenstein on this British music show. And it's just amazing to see.

Edgar Winter just runs from musical instrument to musical instrument, just playing it all live. He's like, now I'm on the keyboard. Now to pick up the saxophone. Now the guitar. Awesome. He's really showing off his instrumentation.

Does Frankenstein show up at any point? Nah, no. Now the guitar. Awesome. He's really showing off his instrumentation. Does Frankenstein show up at any point? Nah, no. No sale. No sale. I also like that all the druids just jumped on

Rob Zombie's Dragula car from Twisted Metal 4. Ah, yeah. Yeah, you're right. We're entering the reign of Dragula across the pop charts.

We're post-Matrix at this point. Or no, we might be pre-Matrix but post-Dragula. This episode isn't really about burning all the witches It's true, yes Is there any ditch digging though?

I don't think so That's in the second Halloween special Where Homer, well Homer's a grave digger Not a ditch digger, that's true What is a grave but a ditch? A deeper ditch A ditch without a body So Homer races home Says go to hell, Cloaky What is a grave but a ditch? A deeper ditch. A ditch without a body.

So Homer races home, says go to hell, Clokey. And then when he gets home, the house is fine, as we'd find out later, thanks to all the lead paint. And then the reveal of the family here is kind of weird. They're just like standing there. Yeah. I mean, it's for an upcoming reveal. Do they all have to be hiding shotguns is that why yeah stage so weirdly yeah i thought it's very strange here's the finale to the home mega man tape at last that better not be the mutants homie is that you march kids, kids, you're alive!

All the layers of lead paint in this house made it the perfect bomb shelter. Oh, come here. Kind of brings a tear to your eye socket. In the midst of all the killing and skin eating, somehow we forgot the love. Ain't that always the way you get nuts with the skin-eating? You know, I don't see any reason why freaks and norms can't get along.

Yeah. We can all work together to build a utopian society free of violence, hate, and prejudice. That sounds beautiful, Ned. And let me just say, my family and I share your vision for a better... Now!

Ow! Friends with mutants, right. Now that's the Marge I married. So, who wants to steal some Ferraris? Oh, let's do it. I do. Aw, even Lisa's into it. I mean, I think they've had a mental break since the nuclear apocalypse.

That's another thing I like about these Treehouse ones, is seeing those different sides of characters that you would never see, like, Marge pull out a shotgun. Or even, like, later in the episode episode there's a part where marge belches and it just seems so not a marge thing to do but in treehouse episodes it seems fine that is true and how one you see lisa hold a shotgun is this pretty rare i guess uh when push comes to shove marge and lisa are willing to kill well i mean the end of the world does a lot to a lot of people like you never know what you're gonna decide there i uh i also i i love the gag of home like i better not be the mutants yes

answering the door and uh they they bring it up on the commentary but it is a really funny underrated joke that they they use the term freaks and norms as if they're like they just introduced like well you know your norms we're freaks this is what we call ourselves it's just accepted and also how wigum doesn't even like react to his eyeball falling out are they just all blind i don't know they can drive but it's great designs like the pink line around their eyes is really yeah they're really cool designs for the freaks they're not sores and stuff all over their face. And the way all their bodies are just, when they get blasted with shotguns, they do fall into an entertaining pile of corpses, too. So are we on Fly vs. Fly now?

Yes. So Fly vs. Fly, obviously the title, parody of Spy vs. Spy, classic Mad Magazine segment, even got the font. And it's also a parody of both the 50s The Fly and the Jeff Goldblum The Fly from the 80s. So it's got a mix of those two elements in it. This is totally one of those things where it's like I've seen this episode a million times, but I've never seen the actual Fly movie. And I bet if I wound up watching it, I'd be like, oh, okay, I've seen a million references to this. Oh, yeah.

If you saw the Goldblum Fly, everything would fall into place. They're both good. Don't watch the newer one while you're eating. No. Oh, I've heard a lot of body horror stuff. Yeah. It's pretty much body horror, the movie. I mean, it's Cronenberg. It's how it is. Because in the old fly,

the guy turns into a small fly-like creature. In the newer fly, by newer I mean like 37 years ago, he turns into a man-sized fly creature. And all the horrible stuff that entails he slowly loses pieces of his body which he just like keeps because he's like well i still gotta keep this it could get put back on the science of it with a teleporter is a little more modern and by modern

you get 37 years ago modern fly as opposed to the design of bart with of a human head on a fly is much more classic the fly but he goes out the same way i want to go out murdered by gina davis oh this is written by david x cohen future developer of futurama which could be why it starts with the whole frank set piece he is frank professor frank yeah he's just professor and farnsworth yeah they're they're the same guy i mean when he says the opening line, I played at the start here, of like, good morning, good afternoon. Yeah, that's a Futurama joke.

It is the nerdiest fucking joke that I definitely made as a kid of like, well, technically, I am correct. He's being like swindled at this mad scientist garage sale, too. I mean, he's undervaluing his things, for sure. That is really true. And there's one shot you might find odd of Lisa looking at a brown object on a solid brown

background. It is the Devil's Tuning Fork, a classic impossible object or optical illusion. So you notice she doesn't move it. It's on the same color as the object. So the background is brown and the object is brown because it can't work any other way. Is that an MC Escher thing or is that just

a really famous one because I've seen that before? I don't know if it's credited to anybody, but it's one of the more famous optical illusions. Right. Yeah.

I'm not sure where it comes into. It's a good, that is, actually, yeah, when you say Futurama, this whole thing is a Futurama episode. Yeah, this could have been Fry.

The way Homer, Fry and a fly. The way Homer treats that machine is how Fry treated all science. As a toilet. Yeah, and with a real disregard for his life and well-being as Homer has here.

But yes, Homer is stupid as he seems sometimes. He's actually a pretty good negotiator. I take it from that little impressed noise that you are interested in purchasing that matter transporter, sir. Two bucks. It only transports matter. Well, I'll give you 35 cents.

Solved. But I must warn you, this device carries a frighteningly high risk of catastrophic... I said I'll take it. Great acting on Dan with his bad haggling. Only transports matter. And impressed noise, I feel like that had to be the stage direction. I think so. The lesser known equivalent

of annoyed grunt. Which, as we all know, is dough. That's what annoyed grunt is. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our

clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? That's like the Doki Doki Panic trivia of The Simpsons. And so Homer installs the teleporter in the house. It's funny. He thinks it makes everything easier when, if you deconstruct it more, the ability, him having to move those teleporters around must be very hard. For a permanent installation i think it

would be worth it but it seems like he is moving it to like fulfill like six different tasks that would make it a huge pain in the ass which yeah why not it it would seem harder to to lug that up the stairs than walk up the stairs uh but but homer enjoying his teleporter is uh is a real funny series of jokes. This mountain of stairs used to make bedtime a grueling chore. But not anymore, baby. Good night, losers. Man, how do I ever live without this thing?

He reaches in the fridge. Gets the cat ear medicine can. Oh, man, that's good. Oh, that joke would not work without that reading. Dan does such a great job of misleading you into thinking he's disgusted. There are a couple of things I really love here. One of my favorite Homer things is when he is supremely confident and cocky about something while he doesn't know he looks like an idiot.

Yeah. So his ass being literally on fire while he's like, Oh suckers. That's great. But my favorite joke and probably this entire tree house is the, for some reason, the cat ear medicine can being the exact same size and sitting right next to all the beers is so supremely stupid. I think that makes it my favorite gag in this whole one.

Just the name on it, too. Like the idea of Homer, the idea of Homer drinking anything disgusting without looking. That's a funny idea. The joke is set up in such an obvious way. Like, you know, he's going to take that on accident. But the fun twist is he likes it. And the specifics of cat ear medicine of all things to drink, that's pretty great. Oh, that's good.

You know, maybe it's because he drank all that crab juice. It just shows he doesn't really have taste buds. I think he's just, or he has a very specific palate. Was that the New York one this season? Yeah, it was just a couple episodes ago. Right, right. I remember liking that one a lot back then What do you think now as a native New Yorker, Dan? Oh, yes

As a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker I would have to watch it again for inaccuracies Now that I know everything about this city After two years And also Homer's ultimate plan Is that he's going to pee through the teleporter, too. The little song he sings to himself is like, do-do-do-do.

I love a dance song. And for the setup of this joke, though, so the teleporter is at the toilet. So for this next bit where he accidentally punches Lisa, he's punching her while she's on the toilet. Keep that in mind, too. He's also punching his daughter in the face. Yes, yeah. I like how she says, someone punched me in the face when it clearly must have been a giant adult man

like Harry Hand hitting her. It's clearly in. And then Homer's the only person who would use it, too. And had Marge not stopped him, would he pee? Would he have peed on Lisa when she was on the toilet? I don't want to know about this.

What's even happening on this podcast? I'm just saying this adds more dimensions to this. It makes the joke more vulgar. You're right. I'm sorry. As Homer cavalierly is using his teleporter, he lets Bart know it's not for everybody. Hey, Dad, can I use a transporter sometime?

Please, I swear I'll be careful. Sorry, but this is a highly sophisticated do-wacky. If you don't use it responsibly, kablamo! Ow, someone just punched me in the face. It's your mother. I love the word kablamo, and I like how he references this later, our little kablamo talk. Our little kablamo talk.

God, the sound of that punch in the face i'm like ow that sounds like a pretty bad punch to an eight-year-old girl and a very indignant lisa somebody just punched me in the face uh there's so many great lines in this one but bart doesn't listen he decides to work on some stuff first he thinks he's going to teleport the cat to a bank and then accidentally combines the cat and the dog so we get a cat dog a year before the actual cat dog wow i figured it was first wow damn take that nickelodeon you ripped off the simpsons though they never did a well actually i can't say this for sure but on a cat dog i don't think they did a double butt that could have been a side character we don't know i feel so bad and. We love Jim Cummings on this podcast. I feel bad for him that he got stuck in a cat dog.

It was him and Tom Kenny, right? Before SpongeBob. Yeah, that's right. Bart first sees how it creates a cat dog, and then he then sees a fly, and so clearly has never seen any of the fly films. He just thinks it's going to be a great idea. I love the part of his imagination that thinks for some reason, it's not just going to be a great idea yeah and i love the part of his imagination that thinks for some reason it's not just going to be like okay obviously it's not going to be the fly head on

his body like he imagines but he also imagines it's going to be like he's going to be jacked like he's suddenly super muscular i don't know why the strength of the fly dna would get you there the strength of a fly yeah i mean so he has this fantasy where he just flying through the sky as his fly boy and saying look out of of the way, it's Superfly. And then the fantasy ends. It feels like something's missing because there is. I kept accessing the deleted scenes on this episode on accident when I was pausing to take notes. So after he says, look out of the way, it's Superfly or whatever he says.

So he sees Skinner and Skinner is being tormented by bullies. And he lifts up Skinner to take him away from the bullies. And Skinner's like, thank you. And then he drops Skinner into a volcano volcano and that's the end of that fantasy so that's one of two deleted scenes i accessed on accident just by pausing the episode i like that uh it ends pretty fast though it's great bart's line of like i'd be stupid not to do it yeah so he goes in there and when he comes out he and the fly are transformed. What's going on down there?

What's all this mist? Uh-oh. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Mark, are you in there? Have you forgotten our little kablamo talk? Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. That and our little kablamo talk. Mom, stop! According to this, it says Bart mixed up his DNA with the flies. I think that's Bart.

I think she's right. Pants are a dead giveaway. Well, he may be a horrible freak, but he's still my son. I'm sure we'll grow to accept him in time. So then Lenny says, as if. Don't even go there, sister. Good one, Dad. Yeah, well, Lenny says as if don't even go there sister that's gotta be another ad lib I love that ad lib

Lenny said it Homer's being nice and crediting his friend for the joke like no it wasn't me it was Lenny he said that is

also doesn't sound anything like Lenny at all no no it's like Homer remembering a bad sitcom or something like that yeah yeah but uh that's kind of like hank azaria is doing like a tasmanian devil voice for the fly yeah yeah and i love that marge joke what's with all this mist i love that

because it's just like in the fly remake you're like yeah why is all this mist being created when he teleports things it doesn't make any sense it's very cool looking but why and it's a great marge line questioning the mist yeah you know hank is area's voice for the fly head it it reminds me a little of uh the doodle bob character like you know i mean it just is like and like the sound he makes when he tries to fly is so funny too and homer's like the pants are dead giveaway uh and it really only takes them one hour to accept uh fly bart now and they'll just feed him all the sugar he wants which probably isn't that different from how bart normally eats he is as we know crusty uh crusty o's have more sugar than sugar well later homer's trying to

steal some of that sugar that That's true, yeah. Right out of the bag. Is that the, have we already had the pile of sugar in the backyard? Oh, yes. Okay, right. And then we cut to whatever Bart's doing, and we get a, I have seen a million help me gags in my time watching television. And that's the ending to the original Fly, in which the main character is killed. That's the end of the movie?

Yes. And you're waiting that long for that? Jeez, it takes forever. Well, actually, he's not killed by the spider. Before the spider can kill him, another character crushes

both of them with a rock. It's like, this should not be on this planet. Let's just destroy all of this. Okay. But in Bart's case,

it's just him doing a classic Bart prank. I love the spider shaking all of its fists. Oh, so good. Like, I don't think a spider could move that way but just the the angry spider good the impotent rage of that spider is so great but when they go back to bart going through the house there's a great first person flying

scene really cool looking too yeah you know it's it's probably because we just did akira for a podcast oh yeah i was thinking of that yeah yeah i was i was thinking of akira so much there i was like oh everything's moving on screen this is really hard and here's the simpsons doing it for the halloween special only they're doing it for about seven seconds and akira is doing it for like a solid minute sometimes so so as bart approaches fly bart fly approaches fly bart this scene is so great of the battle between them because it could never possibly occur to homer or marge that this is not a normal fly mom dad i'm the real bart that's just some overgrown fly with my body. Somebody listen to me.

Shoo! Shoo, fly! Listen, buddy, this is all a mistake. If you'll just go through the transporter with me again, we'll have you back eating garbage in no time. Get him, boy! Smash that fly! Mush him up good! Nice work, son. That trail of the trail is spent as he kisses his fly.

They linger on it, too. Mush him up good is a great line, too. They're just so proud of him. They should also think it's weird that a fly-headed Bart wants to squish a fly. That alone is odd to see. They're just rooting for him, though.

Homer is never supportive of Bart, except now that he's a fly. It's actually pretty rare he kisses him on the forehead, but in fly form... Bart became a food monster. You can identify with that. Ah, you're right. The real Bart is able to contact Lisa.

It's a clever use of the saxophone that's how she's able to hear him i like it and uh there's a weird line too of lisa saying like i let him borrow my toothbrush it's like he doesn't have teeth yeah it's disgusting what's he using this for it's time they really speed fast to the uh the finale here of Lisa battling the fly. Trying to kill me! Nobody likes a tattletale, honey. They're like this every rainy day. Get my filthy hands off my sister!

Don't eat me! You don't know where I've been. You just made a big mistake, fly boy. Hey, it worked! Well, we were lucky this time. But it's all too clear that some things in this universe aren't meant to be trifled with. Homer, what are you doing? Something I should have done a long time ago. I'll teach you to mess with my machine! I'm gonna chop you good!

That cost me 35 cents! Just making it worse. I promise I won't hurt you. So, yes, amplifying Homer's rage in the Halloween episode. You mentioned how they kind of speeded the finale here, and that reminds me that even in a standard 21, 22-minute episode of The Simpsons, it always impressed me that it would have a full beginning, middle, and end self-contained in that period of time with frequently B and C stories going on.

And then you take these Treehouse episodes and yes, they have to speed along, but the fact that they have to establish all this, get their jokes in and get out three times in a little over 20 minutes is nuts to me. And they also kill a minute with that intro with the censor too. Yeah.

When they're having to make all these cuts, I'm kind of surprised they kept the censor thing. I mean, it's very funny and a great opening gag that also is very much of the time. And Lisa knocks the flying portal with the microwave door. It's very cute. It's cute, yeah. And it's a great, it's actually a really good action movie moment of, you think Bart is dead because he just got eaten.

But by being inside of the fly they are now back together again which can let them reset in a new teleportation clever it's it's really smart and and how they set up homer's teleporter in the background in the kitchen too right right that's right yeah and uh it's also you know homer obviously is being a murderous with his axe at Bart, but Marge is so blasé too about it that it also, she's just as humorously guilty of child abuse here. Yeah, but I mean, he's all bark, no bite. When it comes time, he won't be chopping anything. He says he's not going to hurt him.

I believe Homer. The next segment is Easy Bait Coven. I like it, but it's just a collection of witch jokes. Sort of like how Bart Simpson's Dracula is just a bunch of witch jokes sort of like how bart simpsons dracula is just a bunch of dracula jokes or vampire jokes or dial z for zombie yeah it's just a bunch of zombies it's like just a pastiche of different kinds of jokes about one subject it's fine i like the twist that i did not see coming upon my first viewing of this oh me too yeah yeah like that i well i mean it starts sort of as a Crucible parody. Yeah. But it really forgets that after about a minute. Like, The Crucible is always popular,

but I think there had just been a recent remake of The Crucible back then. Yeah, I believe 96. Yeah, yeah, with Daniel Day-Lewis in it, I believe. I know Winona Ryder was in it. But there was a terrible remake of The Crucible. Sorry, there was a terrible remake of The Scarlet Letter around the same time with Demi Moore. Oh, yes. Famously awful. Don't watch it. But there was a terrible remake of the Crucible, sorry, there was a terrible remake of the Scarlet Letter around the same time with Demi Moore. Famously

awful. Don't watch it, just listen to podcasts about it, you'll love it. Isn't there a character in this that is wearing a Scarlet Letter? Yep, that's Edna. Edna Krabappel. That's right, yeah. And the A stands for awesome. Adultery. Adultery. Yeah, I remember that Scarlet Letter remake that

it got a lot of flack because they like added nude scenes to it or whatever for demi more i believe and that they're like we gotta sex up this nathaniel hawthorne here it can't just all be about like perdicitude to open on a witch burning is a great just start to it and i really do love all the character designs to be made to colonial era i think all work, especially I love the constable kind of outfits for Wiggum and Eddie and Lou. There's a good Marge hair cover bit, too, with just the giant white thing on her hair. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I do love that, that she still can have giant hair back then.

And yeah, so we get to the opening here of a witch burning. You are all hereby found guilty of the crime of witchcraft. I sentence you hags to be burned at the stake until you are deemed fit to reenter society. Fire it up, boys. See you in hell, Seymour. Goodbye, mother. How horrible. If they're really witches, why don't they use their powers to escape?

That sounds like witch talk to me, Lisa. Never mind. Well, that's 75 witches we've processed. That ought to show God whose side we're on, eh, Pastor? Yes, Nedwyn, but we have many more strumpets to incinerate. One of the funniest things to me is that, in this case, witch burnings are not a metaphor in this. It's like, no, the witches are real.

There are witches here. Yeah, it's weird when, I'm not saying The Simpsons is doing this because it's a comedy, of course, but it's weird when they do historical things about witch burnings in a fictional way where it's like, no, witches are real. So you're saying, oh, so all the women that were tortured historically were tortured for a reason then? Is that what you're saying oh so all the women that were tortured historically were tortured for a reason then is that what you're saying i know they're not saying this but it's a weird it's a weird baggage because this really happened it was just a way of controlling women uh it you know that kind of reminds me of how there's so many really cool action and horror films but part of

it is that like therapy in them has to be treated as like or psychiatry has to be treated as evil or holy because like Sarah Connor tells people, no, the world's gonna end. I met a giant robot. Everyone's like, cuckoo, cuckoo. But she's correct. So if someone tells you that on a bus, you follow them. You believe them. Yeah, and then we're always rooting

for like, she puts a thing of bleach into the guy's neck. It's like, yeah, fucking kill him. We're finally gonna teach this guy yeah uh that guy is earl bowen the voice of uh ghost pirate le chuck oh my god that's right he's uh i thought you should know that by the way uh but so they we leave uh the burning i like to how uh satisfied skinner is with killing his mother goodbye mother but yeah there's a lot of constantly trying to sell out Lisa in this segment as being a witch. Homer does it twice. Bart does it once. Homer wants to kill Lisa. And Bart only just learned from Homer to blame Lisa as well. And I mean, this is the date Lisa would have been burned by a witch by the time she was 16 anyway,

because she questions society too much. So that's witch burning material right there. And in case if you were wondering, the title of Goody, as in Goody Flanders and my favorite Goody bad wife, Goody was a title given to usually elderly women of Humble Station, according to the dictionary. Oh, okay. I did not know that.

Yeah, as we find out, as they try to name some more people, Homer is very excited to name somebody, but is too stupid to name anybody but the most chaste of all the women in town. Like, nobody's biting at Goody Flanders. But yes, then Marge accidentally makes herself the enemy. I accuse Goody Bad Wife. We killed her on Sunday.

Well, there must be someone here we can accuse. Lisa Simpson. Bart, quit it. She put a spell on Sunday. Well, there must be someone here we can accuse. Lisa Simpson. Bart, quit it. She put a spell on me. Must drop pantaloons. Let's come to our senses, everyone. This witch hunt is turning into a circus. She's the witch.

Yeah, she's the witch. I was just about to accuse her. This is crazy. I'm not a witch. Then how come your laundry is always much whiter than mine? Oh, I've heard enough. Burn her! People, let us not turn into an angry mob.

Goody Simpson is entitled to due process. Okay, here's how the process works. You sit on the broom and we shove you off the cliff. What? Well, hear me out. If you're innocent, you will fall to an honorable Christian death. If, however, you are the bride of Satan, you will surely fly your broom to safety. At that point, you will report back here for torture and beheading.

Tough, but fair. Stop! Doesn't the Bible say, judge not lest ye be judged? The Bible says a lot of things. Shove her! I love that the Bible says a lot of things. I like how Moe is so chomping at the bit to burn someone.

He's like, I've heard enough, let's do it. Yeah. He's just bloodthirsty. I'm pretty sure that's regular Moe, too. He's usually the front of a springfield mob when they're talking about who to accuse in the courtroom or whatever there's a great like just drawing of wiggum looking extra huge and super self-satisfied like his hand is on his stomach and he's just leaning back yeah it's like he just ate a full meal or something and i also this uh this was the time i really caught the, like, Mel is there, and that Sideshow Mel still has a bone in his hair, even in Colonial Time.

Through his pilgrim hat or whatever that is. He buckles his hat over the bone in his hair. And yes, this witch hunt has turned into a circus, another amazing line. This episode is full of great lines like that. The Scarlet Letter on Edna, it honestly makes me wonder how Edna hasn't been like burned at the stake yet already. If they already label her an adulterer, they may like,

why not just call her a witch? Save yourself some time. Though maybe that's why she accuses other women of being witches to protect herself. Shift the blame. And this time was when I caught, I think an extra gag that he says like,

without due process. Well, the process, and then it's just, it's Wiggum explaining the process. That is the due process. Smash cut to her being executed. And I think many people's reaction when they're told the Bible contradicts something is like

the Bible says a lot of things. I wish more people would just say that and be honest with themselves. Like, I don't have an answer for this. I don't care. I like Skinner convincing himself that this is a fair proposal about shoving her off the cliff. Yeah, it don't have an answer for this. I don't care. I like Skinner convincing himself that this is a fair proposal about shoving her off the cliff. Yeah, it's tough, but it's fair. You know, when you're that deep into it,

you got to convince yourself that's tough. And I do feel pretty bad. There's a slight moment of like, boy, I feel real bad for these children watching their mother murdered. That's pretty dark for just a second. And yeah, you don't know, when you don't know the twist that's coming,

probably some commercials ruined it ahead of time. But if you don't know that twist is coming, you're like, oh, did they just kill Marge in this? This is a Halloween episode. They could do that. The characters can die and usually do. But Marge is safe and scary. Okay, now, let's not jump to conclusions, everyone.

We'll all be a son of a witch. That's right. I'm a witch. And I'm the one who withered your livestock, soured your sheep's milk, and made your shirts itchy. Hey, you destroyed my turnip crop. No, that was gophers. Impossible. We burned all the gophers. Not

all of them. And this is for pushing me off the cliff. Alright, people. Nothing to see here. The show's over, alright? Move along. As for the rest of you it's really just a great excuse to have marge say things she would never say

like we're here to eat your kids julia has a lot of fun having uh bats explode out of her hair like she's some cool castlevania boss yeah that. That's a really cool scene, too. It's really well animated, just her hair exploding into a, like, tunnel of bats. Like, there's so many great animation moments here. You know, Kirkland and his team did a really great job. Marge's witch redesign

is so great, too. Just, he has the green skin of the Wizard of Oz witch, too. There's so much work done in this episode. Everybody needs a new design. Every character they show needs a new design. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. March has, like, two. And that's after, in the first part of the episode, you have all these

mutant redesigns, as well, for so many of the characters. Plus, designing skeleton versions of your favorite Springfield regulars, as well. And then all the characters in Halloween costumes at the end of the segment. Oh Oh my gosh, yeah. You're asking them to do a lot of work. But hey, they pulled it off brilliantly.

Though I can see why Kirkland, after probably the work of this episode, is like, I'm going to stick to regular episodes after this. So Marge flies away and visits her sisters, which you don't have to change too much of Patty and Selma to make them look like witches. No, just add a warts. Add some green skin and uh there's there's a joke in here that they're actually pretty negative on on the commentary the uh if you knew you were coming i'd have baked you a cat they seem to think was like we could have done better than that but do you know the reference henry if i knew you were coming i'd have baked a cake yes is that an old song yes i just know

it from commercial i have a clip of it in the slack channel so it was i believe a 1951 or 50 song from eileen barton called if i knew you're coming i'd have baked a cake that was back when a woman baking a cake for you was the most erotic thing she could do and this song was number one it will tell you just how self-medicated we were after world war two. If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cake. Baked a cake. Baked a cake. If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cake. Hot you do, hot you do, hot you do. Had you dropped me a letter.

Okay. I can listen to that with my best gal. It's funny because I knew this song from a girl's toy, like the Mic-bake. Oh, yeah. It was like, in my micro-bake, in my micro-bake. That's right.

And it's funny because the title of this episode is Easy Bake Coven, based on the Easy Bake Oven, another thing where you bake the thing with light bulbs. It didn't taste very good. Okay. That's even funnier, the baked a cat thing. Boy, I've never heard that original. I've only heard it in commercials or references and other stuff. That was the first time I heard it it just looking it up for this episode.

I like the hotchadoo, hotchadoo, hotchadoo. That's a cute nonsense word. It's very playful. Let's hear what Marge's sisters are like in which form. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs.

Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? This needs more eye of newt. You always want more eye of newt. If it were up to you, the brew would be nothing but newt eyes. Well, look who's here.

If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cat. What a day. They found out I was a witch, so I had to leave my family. Really? So you finally left Durwood. His name is Homer. Oh, Nettie, look at them up there plotting our doom. They could force us to commit wanton acts of carnality.

Yeah, that'll be the day. What's that, Ned? We shouldn't fear the witches, Maude. We're both 35. We've already gone way past our life expectancy. But think of the children. I've heard that witches come to your house and take your children away to eat them. Eat their children? Jeez, we were just going to swipe their shoes.

But a good idea is a good idea. I like that Goody Flanders gives her the idea to eat the children. Yes, yeah. And also they give her Helen Lovejoy's catchphrase. Sorry, Dan. Oh, yeah. I was just going to say the Flanders are only 35 for this episode, right? Yes.

That is actually, canonically, Ned is 60, kind of, but I'd say he's more in his late 30s or early 40s. Yeah, I mean, that's coming next season. Well, again, this is not Ned and Maude. This is Nedwyn and Goody Flanders. Yeah. Okay, because I was about to feel very old because I'm turning 35 this year and I always pictured Flanders as like a 50s

or, you know, it'd be 60 canonically. It's like, oh God, don't tell me I'm as old as Flanders now. I think as of season 8 or so, Marge and Homer were both aged up to 38. But back in season 1 in the episode the not the crepes of wrath life on the fast lane we see marge turning 34 that's right yes yeah so for first season marge we are older we're all older than them now as the writers got older they

aged up the characters because they were feeling too old they tried to create some distance there but yeah the well i also like that this ned win really wishes he was getting some acts of carnality with maude the flanders got less horny over time uh yeah this this flanders oh i mean that'll be the day i think the amount of sex that current day ned has is would be quite enough for a chaste ned win but back then it's uh it's not enough i think and that uh well they have the same number of kids too yeah they just fly off to to greet them also the joke about derwood versus homer like even his witches they still hate homer i like that a lot derwood's a great name yeah i for for a second i thought his name was Durwood in this one, and then she corrects her.

So they head into town. They're going to kidnap the Flanders kids, and after laughing off of a crucifix, like, eh, come on. They then grab the kids, and the Flanders just give up. They're just like, well, and they just slowly put them into bags. But then they have a clever idea. Don't blame yourself, Daddy. You did everything you could. Maude, do something.

Oh, well, excuse me. Are you sure you ladies wouldn't prefer some gingerbread children instead? They're boneless. Bye, witchies. Thanks for not eating me. Yeah, you hags are all right. What did you get? Candied apple. I got a caramel con.

You know, scaring people into giving us treats is fun. We should do this every year. I just wish we hadn't filled up on all those kids before we got to the Flanders. That's so great. I love that. You think it's wholesome and nice and they learned a lesson but no they ate a ton of kids before they went to the flanders i don't know if the caramel cod or the idea of bone and gingerbread cookies is gross uh boy i don't know i uh well yeah so you are you a bony in or boneless on the onings, Dan? I don't know if you remember when the game industry went nuts about that on video game Twitter.

Yes. It started with me and Tim Turi, who we used to work at Game Informer together. He was very much bone in and I was very much boneless. And I started a Google form. I don't know if they still have those. And that just launched this whole fucking thing where we were getting like wrestlers to weigh in everything and the whole gaming industry that all started with me and tim yelling and i was on team boneless and i guess it weirdly coincided with kfc uh launching a boneless chicken campaign and they caught wind of it because it became the

number one trending topic worldwide so they sent the the Game Informer office tons and tons of free chicken, and it just blew up into this thing that I would not have expected. But that's a long answer, too. I am team boneless. I think I asked that question because in the back of my mind, I was like, wait, yeah, wasn't there a thing with Dan and Bones? Yeah, that led to the KFC. The official KFC account had the Colonel endorse Air Force Gator 2, a book I wrote like six years ago.

And so it's like a back cover quote from the colonel. Do you know which colonel it was at that time? I think this might have been between Don Johnson and Norm MacDonald. So not Randy Quaid. No, not Randy Quaid. Oh, man. And that's like one of like five accidental brand interactions you've had on Twitter. Oh, it's a lot.

I think I peaked with getting married at the Taco Bell. I think that was when it was like, all right, I don't think there's any moving past this. That's a good one to go out on. Yeah. I'm retired. I'm team boneless. I mean, it's laziness for me. I'm just like, I just want that chicken meat.

They're both great. When I did eat meat, I liked the bones in them. But I don't know if they had boneless wings back when I still ate meat. Are boneless wings a new thing, a new enhancement in food technology? Buffalo Wild Wings has had them as long as back in junior high, so I'd say late 90s. So when this episode aired i think boneless wings existed you know as the as the anti-boneless crowd will say they're just chicken tenders with with sauce on them yeah that's what bone i like the challenge of getting all the meat

off the bones i just feel after a while i i had bone in wings with you bob recently uh with with ally and julia and by the third wing, I'm just embarrassed. I feel like I look like a savage tearing apart this. Like a plate of bones in front of you? Yeah, it just makes me feel embarrassed. I don't like that. Trick-or-treating is invented. We get a caramel cod,

and then we get the hilarious ending to this episode, too. Yar! And that's the story of the very first caramel con. I mean Halloween. And it wasn't long before this yearly custom became an annual tradition. Come on, give it some candy. Don't pretend you're not home. Dad, that's our house.

She's a witch! Get her! Get her! Poor Lisa. But it's another of my all-time favorite Simpsons lines of the, this yearly custom became an annual tradition and they put it on the commentary mark kirkland is the director and they had to design a bunch of uh halloween costumes that would be appropriate for this period that's right so i think they all mostly work what a fucking challenge that is like almost needlessly so

but this takes place in 1649 so these all have to be period-accurate costumes. You can't be Superman or Spider-Man or Alf or whatever the hell else. What is a Superman of then if not, like, I don't know,

Christ or Moses or somebody else in the Bible? I would think it's only that. You sound like a youth pastor pitching the Bible to comic book readers. Oh, you know, the real Superman

is Jesus. Kids... He died and came back, too. I turn around my baseball cap and the chair I'm is Jesus. Kids. He died and came back too. I turn around my baseball cap and the chair I'm sitting in. Kids. So this episode, we're into the Scully era. It's been a lot of whiplash for us on the podcast because we went from an Oakley and Weinstein episode to an Al Jean episode to Scully. And now we're going to be in Scully, getting used to him and his style. And this is a good sort of inauguration into his world of The Simpsons and the different kind of Homer and the different kind of humor, less Harvard-y. It's going to be a change, but I'm looking forward to the next four years of The Simpsons and the next, what, one and a half years of talking Simpsons?

Close to two years, I had had years ago on this podcast, I had some trepidation about when we finally get to nine, but, uh, this first episode of the Scully era we've seen is really eased me into it well, because there's just a ton of clever lines, a lot of great jokes. And it is, it is definitely a broader comedy than it was in the hyper meta textual world of bill and josh but i really i really enjoy the broadness and kind of almost cruelty of it now i do think the uh the meaner homer jokes definitely work better in treehouse episodes than they do in regular episodes which i'm sure i'll get to when we get to the regular episodes but i I do really, I've just got a cat ear medicine joke. So many great lines.

This is- Little Bart, Little Marge. This gets a big thumbs up from me. One of my favorite tree houses we've done. Awesome. Any final thoughts, Dan? Yeah, I was really curious going into this because in recent years, and I'll say maybe the last seven or eight years, I've only caught just kind of the occasional Simpsons episode. You know,

I used to watch these all obsessively, you know, six, seven times, you know, back to back to back, back in the day. Nowadays, it's more just like, oh, I just saw Cape Fear for the first time. So I'll go back and watch that episode. So I don't have a great sense of when it fell off. And I know everyone points to that Skinner episode as, as the big drop-off point. And I, when I found out I was doing this episode for the podcast, I was like, Oh, that's past the Skinner one. I wonder how this is going to be. And I was pleasantly surprised. Like, you know, I do think the first one is, is the most solid of the three here. Um, but throughout, I think there's plenty of good jokes and everything that

made it clear to me that it's not like it was just this solid drop-off after the Skinner episode. I think they still had a lot of good stuff for a few years afterwards. Good. I think we proved to the world that that episode did not ruin The Simpsons with our last live show. Yeah, I think so, too. So, Dan, thanks so much for being on the show again. We really appreciate it. Of course. Thank you so much for having me, guys.

Oh, yeah. You were great. Do you want to do any plugs on the way out here? You can follow me on Twitter at Dan Reichert, R-Y-C-K-E-e-r-t and then other than that it's just podcasts i mentioned if you want to hear me talk about dragon ball z you can find all systems goku if you want to hear me talk about netflix and hulu and streaming stuff it's panning the stream and if you want to hear me talk about video games it is the giant beast cast awesome thanks so much and then yeah i would again say all the game of the year stuff you guys did was great. I don't want to reopen any fresh wounds, but that Red Dead Redemption, like me and my husband were watching the Red Dead Redemption disappointing game section for so long. We're like, oh my God, that seemed like the rawest you guys got in the whole thing. Yeah, it's just, you know, I go into every one of those things with like, you know, you have to be kind of strategic with what you really stump for.

Because you can't go at every opinion you have with that much fervor. And there have been years where I knew it was something I really liked that I wanted to get on the list. Like, listen, guys, Stardew Valley is incredible, and I will not shut up until we make it on top 10. But this year, I knew the thing I was going to have to fight for was like, okay, I really didn't like Red Dead. And whether it's the most disappointing or, you know, knocking it down the top 10 list, it's like I really needed to say my piece about why that game disappointed me so much. So, yeah, that's where a lot of that stuff came out. But, hey, we're all still friends and everything. So I just didn't like that game as much as everyone else. Game of the year debates are the only debate still worth having in my opinion.

Yeah. Thanks a lot, Dan. Of course. Anytime. So thanks again to Dan record for everything. Again, check him out.

All of his stuff is so great. All of his podcasts, giant bomb. We're big fans of them and him here. So yes, thanks again, Dan. But as for us,

we are part of the talking Simpsons network. All the shows that you hear from us are part of the Talking Simpsons Network. And if you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and subscribe at the $5 level, you'll get every episode of this podcast one week ahead of time and ad-free. And the same goes for our sister podcast, What a Cartoon. We also have on the Patreon dozens of bonus podcasts, including exclusive series like Talking Futurama and Talking Critic and the upcoming Talking of the Hill, where we'll go through the entire first season of King of the Hill with this podcast treatment. And it's only going to be on the Patreon at the $5 level. And there's interviews. There's so many bonus episodes that you haven't heard because we've been doing

this on the Patreon for 18 months. So if you like our voices and you like our podcast, for five bucks a month, you'll get all of that right now and everything in the future if you stay subscribed at the five dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and henry we have a new newer ten dollar level with a new podcast for listeners and they're very long and very good hell yeah that is our premium tier at ten dollars plus a month you can sign up and not only get access to all the classic talking simpsons videos we did like me and Bob going through the entire shorts run of The Simpsons but you can also get our new monthly What a Cartoon Movie podcast where me and Bob go deep deep deep into a different animated film each month we did Mask of the Phantasm the Batman classic we did Kiki's Delivery Service Hayao Miyazaki's Tribute to Art and Earnestness, and most recently, Three Hours. We talk about Akira, and I think we really did the film justice. I mean, I don't mean to boast, and I don't like to boast, but that was the most I've ever worked on a single podcast. I think I spent three solid days between prep, recording, and editing just focused on that one podcast i think it turned out amazing

i think so too you did you did an amazing job with all of the prep for that bob and the edit please give me a shout out on twitter no it was a group effort but boy i really love doing the movie podcast and uh boy yes at ten dollars at the ten dollar level you can find that and the previous episodes that we've done and every future episode is going to be a blast and patrons can vote on which movies that we do if they're on the five dollar level or above and again that is patreon.com slash talking simpsons any amount that you can subscribe at is appreciated as for me i have been one of your hosts bob mackie find me on twitter as bob servo i have another podcast it's a classic gaming podcast known as retronauts maybe you've heard of it it's been happening since 2006 for

crying out loud if you go to retronauts.com or look for Retronauts in your podcast machine, you'll find it. Please subscribe, download an episode, and see if you Cartoon. I tweet about them all and often, as well as talking about how cool I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez currently is. As of this recording. So be sure to check all that out at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Thanks for

joining us, folks. We'll see you next week for Mike Scully's official first episode, The Cartridge Family, and We'll see you next week for Mike Scully's official first episode, The Cartridge Family. And we'll see you then. Oh, Spade. Why did you put Farley in charge of the bees? Hey, buddy. Down in front.