Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Treehouse of Horror XII With Eric Szyszka

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

Season 13 has begun, so it's a perfect time to welcome back returning pal Eric Szyszka from the We Hate Movies podcast onto the podcast! Initially, we reflect on the first ep of Simpsons to air after 9/11, and then we chat about the episode itself. Part one is about a bunch of weird curses, followed by the voice of James Bond lusting after Marge, then ending with the oddity of a Harry Potter parody made before the first film adaptation. Protect your vulnerable shinbones as you listen to this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

this podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more i heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that hasn't caused a single murder-suicide. I'm your host, Cybertronic UltraBot Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always.

Henry Gilbert, and I am missing the back of my head. I think you could cut me some slack, okay? And who do we have on the line, our special guest today? Hey, Cha-Cha, I got more features than a NASA relief map of Turkmenistan. Eric Siska. I'm a cousin of Dennis Miller. That's why I can say that. And this week's episode is Treehouse of Horror 12.

Hey, Flanners gave us toothpaste. Mini toothpaste. This episode originally aired on November 6, 2001. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh boy bobby happy week after halloween the first episode of 24 debuts right after this cartoon the diamondbacks beat the yankees in game seven of the world series and britney spears's third album britney is released and of course this also just to give you uh an update of where we are in the world in november of 2001 the invasion of afghanistan is going strong we're really taking it to the taliban the patriot act was passed two weeks ago so it's a

great time in america they made all of our man right after 9-11 you know i think i've got a specific sort of 9-11 story for you guys that I feel like ties in with The Simpsons. I grew up like two hours outside of New York City, and my father always hated the city. It always reminded me of Homer versus New York City because he thought it was a cesspool full of chuds and whatnot. But eventually he gets a job interview, right? And he's going to go down there for the job interview.

He was running a little late, but you know, whatever. And he gets there and it's the Deutsche Bank building right next to the World Trade Center on 9-11. And he's down on the ground during 9-11. Wow. Oh my God. Yeah. It's just so funny of all people for that to happen to the one guy that already didn't

like New York. But he was fine. He survived. And yeah, 9-11 was a monumental day. happened to the one guy that already didn't like new york um but he was fine he survived and uh yeah it shows uh 9-11 was a monumental day we yeah we wanted boy i didn't realize we were getting such a perfect guest for our first simpsons after 9-11 episode boy uh wow yes yes i mean we're talking about all the stuff that happened boy you know that patriot act if anything in your life is three times more complicated and confusing than it has to be, it's because of the Patriot Act.

Like, why does this need a form? Why do I need three forms of ID? Why does this form of ID not count? It's because of the Patriot Act. And one clause of the Patriot Act was no creepy credits for an entire year. George W. Bush kicked creepy credits to the curb. I was going to ask about that because I thought it was really distracting how they weren't there. But I guess after 9-11, they didn't blood and scream and yeah shit like that in the names

yeah they uh on the commentary they joked that it's like they said they they were doing it out of like respect but they also said like oh if we had had it we'd have all had jokes about like the twin towers or whatever it's like no you would not nobody joked about that in november like every tv channel uh like i remember and people were because we hit the 20th anniversary recently people were sharing it but those like nbc for example had the like tinkly music and they're like your friends they're back too we're all back and we're gonna make it and it's all the sitcom characters hugging each other it's a lot of hugs a lot of they should have done the like matt graining's name in the credit should have just had like the two towers falling as the two t's and prove we're past it we'd have to wait for

like wonder shows and to get 9-11 jokes on tv that's true yeah they i felt like they were the first on like american tv obviously if you were on the Internet, in the most, you know, black-pilled edgelord parts of the Internet, on 9-11 the day, you were probably seeing jokes about it. I think the next day, like, on Something Awful, you could watch people running away from the smoldering tower set to Benny Hill music. Right. Yeah, yeah. And in that world, you know, the planes didn't hit the towers. A couple of rofflecopters did.

It's true. That was the Internet's 9-11. Oh, but, yeah i think you know that patriarch thing also makes me think like if bin laden's plan was to inconvenience every american for the rest of their lives and he won they've been line one and yeah our lives worse you know like everything kind of i feel i still feel like american culture is just it's been stagnant since. Absolutely, yeah. It was a terrible time to become an adult. And yeah, that Patriot Act, I think recently in California,

they recently said, okay, everybody needs to get a new driver's license or a new photo ID to fly by this date. And that has to be Patriot Act related. It's got like a special sticker on it or something. With a star on it? Yeah. The real ID? Yeah, I had the option to

upgrade to that and i just did with my new york license i just renewed so you know just getting ready for the next line and procedure and form and checkpoint yeah it's like homer's not insane sticker or stamp it's like not a terrorist see i've got I've got the star on mine. You can't even see it. No. Now, the, well, and also, like, the news for this one, like, is so, this is after 9-11. Like, 24, you would think it was an inside job and the people on 24 knew because they were so ready for, like, oh, yeah, this is a show about torturing terrorists. The terrorist torturing show is great, but it seriously was produced before 9-11 because the villain in it is like a Slobodan Milosevic stand-in of the first year.

I only watched the first two seasons of 24. And in the second season, that's when they're like, no, it's Muslims. The Muslims are the bad guys, but not in season one. I somehow watched almost all of 24. I think I fell off by the final seasons, maybe the final two or whatever.

But I was just a Kiefer head, you know? It was a hard time for a Kiefer head because you're like, well, he shouldn't be breaking there next, but he's breaking next. Yeah. Well, we, you know, it was a weird time. We were all like, yeah, this fictional guy, he's, this fictional guy, I know that it's fine for him to cut this guy's head off and present it a decapitated head to somebody. To give that show the slightest amount of credit, they did eventually have a storyline where the president was evil. Yes.

So they were a little ahead of something. That's true. Sorry, I'll take that back. All presidents have been evil. My bad. Yeah. Well, that was actually actually i remember working at a video store here in berkeley when i first moved here and some people there were like i i feel bad

rating 24 but it's such a fun show and and then i said well it does have the then mythical idea of a black president which was very progressive then so i was like well you know it's good it's kind of both sides you know they got a black president in it and but no it's the though at the end of the second season they also the spoilers for season 2 of uh 24 the actual villains who were manipulating the um jihadists were an oil company and white guys okay so they but it really felt but again that was like dick cheney's favorite tv show that and then famously but and and episode that debuted, it actually has a terrorist crash a plane in the first episode. I cannot believe it. And also, yes, this episode was debuted by the other news story, the Game 7 thing, which is 9-11 related as well.

You're like, oh, why waslloween episode four days after halloween uh and it's because the world series was delayed by uh that as and it was everybody thought the yankees were gonna win the world series after 9-11 it's like yeah coming back new york strong and in game seven the arizona diamondbacks a new team a relatively new team beats them and it was kind of uh the fairy tale ending was snatched away as well uh dark times for all of us but hey britney spears third album if she did what every one of these singers does her third album is like i've grown up and i'm even sexier now which is why this one has i'm a slave for you on it the one yes yeah and i read a shocking uh shocking quote about this album from Slant Magazine's review.

And the reviewer says, quote, It's time for Spears to quit being such a cock tease and cook something up that will satisfy the ever vacillating hype machine. Jesus. Yeah. This slut. Yeah, that's the trajectory of pop singers, right? It's like, I'm a baby. I'm a sexy baby.

I'm an even sexier baby i'm an old sexy baby i mean i think usually the cycle is i'm a baby i'm a sexy baby i'm dead oh yes britney avoided that but no that man i i mean that was how every people were writing back then you just i can't believe it's insane that that was calling calling britney spears a cocktease in the the review of her album is insane to me but that also i mean the yeah her again mixed in with my 9-11 experience day which i was in florida so it was just a thing i saw on tv but uh working at a uh an airstrip. You were training people how to fly. But mixed in with it was, so the night before, I remember watching like E! News and they're like, yeah, the Emmys tomorrow night. Is Sopranos going to win?

And then they're also saying like Britney Spears, she's trying a little too hard with this snake routine. It was her like two days before 9-11. She's on the MTVtv awards thing dancing with like a giant python wrapped around her i remember osama said that's enough send him in he made the final order like my two uh very minor 9-11 stories are uh i had class that morning i was in college it was like a telecommunications class and i think on the way into the class professor heard well yeah a plane hit a building or something so he used that like as a metaphor like oh uh let's say It was like a telecommunications class. And I think on the way into the class, the professor heard, well, yeah,

a plane hit a building or something. So he used that as a metaphor, like, Oh, uh, let's say you're covering an emergency situation and a plane hits a building. And he's talked about like what the news does. And he,

I don't think he knew the severity of the situation. So yeah, some, some plane hit a building. And then once I leave class, I find out, and then all classes are canceled. But most importantly,

my anime night was canceled that night again no creepy credits no anime night that osama bin laden all of his dreams came true we're living in hell you know like i on i did not go to school on 9 11 morning because i was helping plant no i'm my grandmother went to see there was such a lot happened to me on 9 11 uh my grandmother went to see there was such a lot happened to me on 9-11. My grandmother went to the hospital, we have very extended family, you know, kind of ethnic town to bring it. So like, I lived with my grandparents, great grandparents, in addition to my parents, and she goes to the hospital, I, you know, I wake up my mother's like, you were not going to school today, we're gonna go visit her in the hospital, and it's gonna be a whole thing. then i turn on the tv and i i kind of just start laughing at seeing a hole in a building because you don't see a hole

in a building every day and the theory was even on those newscasts were like oh like maybe a small plane uh hit this so you're just imagining some some you know setting a pilot drunk out of his mind or something and it's you know it's a little little something and then uh then i i tell my mother and she's like oh uh you know your father's down going down there uh and but everything was fine but you know i mean my grandmother made it through the day i was watching all the footage in the hospital where i spent most of the day and it was pretty surreal didn't see pops on the screen so that was that's good. But yeah, everyone turned out OK. My grandmother would later die at another date. Well, you know, that that's something also on this show that we when somebody died, when we find out a famous person like died in 2001, we're like and then we always ask ourselves, was it before or after?

Did they see 9-11 or did they not? Yeah uh jack lemon he missed it well that's good he did a blessed life uh but but i envy him so much but yeah i do i uh i don't want to blame 9-11 but for for my falling interest in simpsons but i do think there was like it didn't help i don't think that in in 2000 in late 2001 i i remember not liking this treehouse as much uh as previous ones though now when i watched i'm like yeah it's fine it's a good it's fine little treehouse i've seen worse but i think too it was like we had to go before this treehouse aired we ran through like seven weeks of his satire dead or jokes dead like his simpsons can a show like simpsons even be funny and i wasn't even thinking about how we had how this show, this cartoon was finished for like months

before this episode would have aired. I think we even had like a more somber daily show theme. Yes. Oh, I mean, we all saw Jon Stewart cry. For all the younger listeners out there or people from far flung lands that may or may not have helped plan the events of that day. It was quite chilling in america afterwards everything was somber for week for weeks for months american flags everywhere

people started putting them on their cars like everyone's just driving around with american flags which i have i wouldn't see again until uh these trump rallies yes yeah the america it was it was like oh everybody holds up the flag now kind of thing. Yes. One, one last thing I remember just now is that, uh, the day after nine 11,

my local newspaper just, uh, printed one big American flag on one page. So like, if you need a flag, here's a flag. And people left those up until I left Ohio in 2010. So I feel like that's kind of desecrating the flag to have some just shitty print out from

a newspaper yellowing in your window but what's gonna do burn it you know did you burn it i didn't i didn't actually have the paper but i just saw the yellowed flags everywhere all over town oh man yeah the american flag it just it it it went on to new objects folks that that it wasn't previously on and they're still there like new york city subway cars have a big fat american flag on some of them and it's like all right how retro now is what you think like yeah no at at my florida airport like at the tsa which is where you suffer the most because of 9-11 these days seriously have like a flag that's like this is a flag that was burned at the trade center something or it's it's it's like a tattered

flag that was supposedly uh damaged on 9-11 i was like but we're in florida why are we putting this here like this has nothing to do i mean i guess it happened to all america but well i mean so people in power uh i think they can't play the 9-11 card anymore because uh it's been said on this podcast before but a 9-11's worth of people dies every day of omicron and covid and every variant so just like yeah we're having 9-11 every day buddy since 2020 it's like you can't play this card anymore it's expired well and and also i think another thing that helped is that uh or uh hastened to that lack of caring rudy giuliani like um just is nothing like he is a horrifying mummy now who embarrasses everybody he's just leaking oil god if you just shut up

and just like receded into the background he could have had like i don't know a legacy a memory of some kind that wasn't completely embarrassing it's's crazy. He thought he'd get the 2008 nomination. And then after he didn't get that, he's just like, no, buddy. But you were there in the New York area for when he was America's mayor. And everybody hated him before that day, didn't they? Like, yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Everyone hated him. I think that's also just like being New York City mayor as well. I think it's just you hate that guy no matter what they're up to. It happened to de Blasio. It's happening to Eric Adams now. But yeah, nobody likes him. But so I definitely don't remember watching this when it was new. And yeah, it was just maybe I didn't receive it well, just because like we were all in

or I was still in just a level, some level of like shock from September 11th, maybe. I don't know. But it wasn't the right place to receive this episode. I remember someone enjoying it. Now going back to it, I think the middle segment is like one of the all-time funniest ones. I think it's really, really strong. Yeah.

But the house. The house of wax. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. I think that is the strong point. I think the weakest part of this episode is the harry potter spoof absolutely absolutely yeah no that was honestly that was another of those moments where i was like in 2001 i think this sucks because i was like i i didn't know nothing

about harry potter i was not looking forward to those movies were you a johnny come lately to the harry potter franchise well yes this is i this is the most embarrassing arc of all of like so 2001 don't give a crap about harry potter by 2004 the prisoner of azkaban film comes out and i do really like that i'm not gonna lie i enjoyed it and then uh my uh close friend of mine she got super into reading it and she's like no come on read it and then i got into the books i got i read books five through seven i read book seven on release day i was one of those guys and now you know that the jews are goblins that hoard money or whatever is going on in that book series she has lots of opinions yeah as for me well i mean we'll get to it but uh seymour skinner would say i'm a johnny come not lee when

it comes to the uh harry potter series despite watched the first like two movies in the theaters. To me, you know, when you say something like, oh, that's a wizard coming by and he's got magic powers, but then he's standing next to a car. It just just deflates me for some reason. I could never really get into Harry Potter. So I actually I watched Prisoner of Azkaban for the first time like two years ago which is insane and then i still haven't gone through the rest of the series because it exhausted me honestly but we might be doing them as commentaries for we ate movies on our patreon coming up now it's uh yeah there's uh it's so loaded with stuff somebody pointed out a great uh it was that sean

uh just account on twitter who also does cool videos this british guy whose picture is a skull and that's the joke he had never read the harry potter books uh until recently for a project he read all of them uh for a video project he pointed out that the final sentence of the last book that before the epilogue not the final sentence of the epilogue but the final sentence of the last regular chapter is Is Harry wishing that his slave would make him a sandwich? Like Harry Potter had inherited the slave elf. What? So house elves are slaves in that world.

Okay. But they've got a good attitude about it. House elf, okay. They kind of, yeah, like, yes. House elves are owned by people. And, you know, some people want to free them in that world, including the J.K. Rowling stand in Hermione. But a lot of the house elves are kind of too dumb to know they should be free. And they like, no, I like being a house elf, which is like, yeah, that's super loaded. And somehow in the seventh book, Harry inherits a house elf.

And instead of instantly freeing him, he orders him around and tells him to make him a sandwich. Wow. Now, I forget what the movies are. They take place in contemporary times, though, right? Like 19-something, right? They actually take place in the 90s. Because Harry Potter has, like, if you Google Harry Potter birthday, it is a very specific birthday. Like, I believe it's in 1990 or 1980.

I mean, Bob, you just look it up. You're typing away. I gotta know. So in the 1990s, you could still have a house elf as your indentured or slave. Yes. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you own them. they're a person you own harry potter born in 1980 1980 i did remember correctly yeah he's so he's a millennial he's a 42 year old

wizard cop now is what he became yeah i'm sorry to spoil all of the end of harry potter for people but well then on top of that jk rowling super transphobe now fucker like that's what i say but um but also like it's funny too that in two years after this episode she'd be a guest on the show uh for the episode with the regina monologues which is their ode to the uk and john swartzwalder's last episode what a shitty last episode that is man that sucks and uh and i guess also i did uh before we start just a little content warning the show uses the term quote unquote gypsy in this that's the one said uh that is you know a slur now we all understand that's a slur for the people we wouldn't say we talked all about this in our hunchback yeah

podcast too it was a different time like that word was on mcdonald's toys yes in 1996 it does it was totally fine like my grandmother i was talking about before like she would always be like oh look out the gypsies might come and take you if you misbehave so it was still definitely prevalent i guess it's sort of like the house elf thing in the 90s you know my mom my mom also when i was a little kid jokingly said we're gonna sell you to the gypsies was like if you're bad you're gonna sell you like she she's apologized since for that she didn't shoot a statement i got that all the time uh being from you know family from uh you know old europe that came over and it was it was less joking it was more sincere and then you you see these old timers from old europe and they're like

i bet they do know a gypsy. But oh, and I guess, yeah, this episode directed by Jim Reardon, the supervising director at the time, which feels like a lot of work. But I think they I have a feeling from the context on the commentary that they say, like, the supervising director probably had to oversee so much on a treehouse episode anyway, with all the new designs and that probably it was just faster like i'll just be the director on it they used to have three directors and three writers for every one of these and now it's just one director and one writer which they gene does gene on the commentary literally say it was to save money or is that just the assumption we're making i think it was just too much work to split it all up and coordinate and everything like that if you give it all to the same, then you also only pay one writer instead of three writers. I feel bad, though, because that, you know, lets only one person write a Halloween episode instead of like everybody gets to take part in it. But maybe it wasn't so special to the writers, the regular writers anymore.

Do you think they just like they help punch it up and then they just give credit to one person? Well, that's every episode. Yeah, I mean, the entire staff works on it, but we've been told that 33% of the original script is what's kept in. Everything else is punched up and deleted and moved around by the room. The Sentence will be right back. Whoa, Milhouse, that frozen black cherry's turned your tongue black. My tongue's black, too. Let me try.

Hey, let me try. Must have black tongue. This Halloween, the Simpsons are at Burger King. Now in every big kid's meal, you can get a Simpsons spooky light-up. They gleam, they scream, and you can collect all 15 at Burger King. Where else? How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know

about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie well patsy you've done it again and welcome to the break for this week's episode it's henry gilbert here and a big thank you to our guest eric sizga of the we hate movies podcast and also the hooked on tj hooker podcast you should check out both those things if you enjoy him and we always enjoy

having eric on the show so thank you again eric and a big thank you to all of our supporters at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because supporters there for just five bucks a month help me and bob do this as our full-time jobs and those five dollar a month subscribers don't just get that kind of satisfaction they also get tons of exclusives each month on patreon.com slash talking simpsons they get a brand new episode of talking futurama and talk king of the hill of us doing the same thing we do for simpsons for futurama and king of the hill we're deep into season three on futurama and we're just in the middle of season two on King of the Hill.

You're going to have a great time hearing those as well as our giant pack catalog of exclusive podcast miniseries covering series like Mission Hill, The Critic, and Batman, the animated series. Check it all out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons but if you want something nicer than various types of eggs then you should sign up at that ten dollar level of patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get all the five dollar things i just mentioned and then once a month you get our awesome what cartoon

movie podcast me and bob have a side podcast we call what a cartoon where we cover an animated series super in-depth just like we do the simpsons and at the end of each month we cover a different animated feature film is super in-depth but you can only hear the often five hour long podcast of us talking about films if you're a ten dollar and up subscriber patreon.com slash talking simpsons this month you're going to hear me and bob talk for over five hours about south park bigger longer and uncut as chosen by our patrons the month before that lion king 2 simba's pride and next month you'll get to hear us talk about the disney golden age classic pinocchio over three years and 230 hours of what a cartoon movie podcasts are at

your fingertips if you are at that ten dollar level and don't forget you get all the five dollar things too check it all out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons uh but this episode begins with a uh cold open i like burns being cruel to smithers and it's funny that it's set in kind of regular simpsons instead of uh any kind of new universe i like burns's uh halloween decoration is one single tiny orange fake bat. Or Batsy the bat. Any Burns in this era is welcome to me because Mike Scully kind of forgot about him in seasons 9 through 12. We're in 13 now.

Al Jean is going to use Burns a lot more in his years. The Burns era is about to begin. Sorry, the Jean era is about to begin. You know, one of the last Scully episodes is the hunk of hunk of Burns in love. When they realize they can do Viagra jokes through Burns. That's when they... New material. Yeah. You know, one of the last Scully episodes is the hunk of hunk of Burns in love. When they realize they can do Viagra jokes through Burns, that's when they... New material. Yeah. We've done every joke we can about Burns except his dick.

But the Walso... We've heard about his lethargic sperm. Yeah. You know, I should save this thought for when we do that actual episode. But Burns' penis is so tiny. What, I mean, what does... It being hard, what's even the's even the play i mean you know it's like it's a hard acorn wow this is going to be uh rated explicit on itunes my man comes dust all right but anyway so uh burns makes smithers go up top uh smithers falls hits a high voltage sign that has the

skull and crossbones as burns his face which is pretty i like that design too and so smithers falls hits a high voltage sign that has the skull and crossbones as burns his face which is pretty i like that design too and so smithers explodes that explodes an entire crypt of the burns family and great i like the animation of all the uh caskets just flying out that's i like having a mausoleum like a few steps from your front door yeah you know it's just like the adams family they have their own graveyard on the property, too. I was waiting for a funnier skeleton. These are all just like period skeletons. I thought one would be just a real crazy joke, but I guess they all have burned skulls. I suppose that's just the joke. Yeah, there should be.

I mean, shouldn't there be a Nazi guy in a Nazi uniform in that? Or like a Kaiser-esque, you know, like a Prussian or something. Actually, that's better. That's even older. And then the Simpsons family walks up. uniform in that or like or like a kaiser-esque you know like a prussian or something yeah actually that's better that's even older uh and then the simpsons family walks up they at first when i saw homer margin like oh yeah they're the full flintstones like no no it's just marge and homer are uh fred and wilma but bart is a gene kelly style hobo which i i appreciate yeah i you know that style hobo has definitely gone by the wayside i guess probably as you know society becomes more conscious to the literal plight of homeless

people across the country but uh man do i love a good hobo we just covered the episode that has a hobo framing device and that he asked for sponge baths in exchange for stories that's right wow yeah in airing order it's back to back the hobo the hobo telling the stories and then the bart dressed as a hobo perhaps he was influenced by it our last pre-9-11 memories were of that singing hobo yep yeah uh and uh lisa and maggie are two-headed girl as well i think uh is it isn't it the thing with two heads thing with two heads i think so ray milan thing along with the creepy? I think so. Ray Malone thing. Along with the creepy credits, I felt this was censored, too.

When the Simpsons are scared by the, you know, exploding coffins and they run through Burns's Gate, cutting themselves in the slivers. They're oddly clean. Like there's no midsection gore that I think they would definitely revel in if this was a different time. Maybe that they did a retake or something. They also keep running like pieces of them keep running into the woods i think it would be funnier if they all just fell into a pile of body parts but i could see that being a problem and blood everywhere yeah i mean yeah yeah i can get why they didn't have you know i could see that they're like oh line density in this we're

gonna draw actually like their guts and bones and everything that's a whole lot of lines yeah but at the very least why isn't it like red or bleeding it's interesting they didn't cut this because it does involve a falling building that's true yeah that's well i mean later in the episode there's a crashing helicopter which again i was like jesus i forgot oh the rothel copter also prior to them being cut in half there's a there's a decent line about how flanders gave them toothpaste for halloween and it's mini toothpaste that's great full like a full candy bar or full tube of toothpaste would be uh more desirable i guess it's more useful i i think i probably got a toothpaste or toothbrush here and there though the really when i think of the worst

halloween handout thing it was christian religious comics that was what was handed out it's like wow this is very interesting to me because i grew up in very like a heatedness society you know like up in the catskills like a hippie enclave and you know halloween was pretty normal and everyone gave candy i never had to be confronted with you know stuff about christ unless it was my old grandmother telling me yeah i grew up in a very catholic area they were all very lazy about religion and the worst thing i got was pennies like the people on their porch are just a mound of pennies giving them to kids like i can't do anything with these pennies and neither can you yep yeah shit you know penny like i think how useless they are now

when we're going to everything being like card only like just throw that shit in the trash yeah think of how filthy all those pennies are mixed in with things you put in your mouth uh i think of myself as a little kid putting pennies in my mouth i can't believe that those those roll ass pennies uh but yeah it was the the christian uh religious tracts they came from a woman who i think was normally a lights off nothing for Halloween. And I think probably that year her church was like, don't just turn off your lights and give in to the Satanists. Open your door and give them. I think at the very least it came with like the smallest Tootsie Roll you could get. Like the tiniest, like crappy Tootsie Roll.

At least it came with one teeny tiny piece of candy but uh but yes then i also like the way burn says splendid betsy you've done it again like that's a great great line to go on i think this hex of the city this first segment uh by joel h cohen a new writer yes uh i think it's a parody of both thinner and leprechaun and you guys did an episode about thinner is that correct eric a while ago yes we've done thinner a while back and we've done leprechaun more recently right right and leprechaun is actually kind of a narrative that's just like you know there's this fucking box and there's an old leprechaun just like a sleep in there so we kind of get to that in this episode yes i remember

seeing thinner uh not when it was in theaters but soon after on like hbo it was an hbo watch and i remember thinking it was fine for like you know there's some stephen king movies that you're just like yeah it's all right that's good but i had forgotten though that it ends with like uh instead of it being a romani curse uh that that they just make a deal with her, it instead ends with a mass murder of an entire group of Romani people at the end of it by Joe Mantegna. It really ends with an evil pie. Yes, yeah, an evil pie.

Right, yes. Yeah, Fat Tony himself is in that movie. Right, yes. He kills the thinner. Good makeup on the thinned man in that as well yeah it's good done i just like that's all i ever think about it's like thin air it's made we had a riff that like he would do that for everything like you'd see peter park and be like spider then you become a spider man uh but uh yeah and the the title a parody of sex in the city then very popular but yeah yeah as you said bob speaking of new york tragedies yes oh god

a bigger one than 9-11 i think and and can you believe it returned just like that yes yeah you know 9-11 too can you believe it's gonna happen to happen just like that? It's coming, folks. Kim Cattrall made the correct move on that. She really did. She's like, none of this shit for me. She was always too good for the show, I think. I love Cynthia Nixon as well. And the other actresses are fine. I watched some Sex and the City, not a ton.

But I liked it all right. And then everything I read about that new show i'm like that sounds dumb that sounds like shitty but i never watched it because i was like oh that's a lady show but as a as a young man i should have been like hey that's a lady show i should watch that i guess it depends how much of a crush you have on kim cattrall or not because yeah i think i had my fill from uh earlier earlier career wasn't she in one of those police academy oh yeah she was a sexy lady in police academy mannequin mannequin yes and oh yeah i love that mannequin and uh in big trouble a little china she's great man it's really trite

to say this now the 90s economy was not that good and it's really funny to think the main character could write a weekly column about like here's what me and my friends did and then you know afford a high-rise apartment and lots of shoes yes yep i mean obviously like every media about new york is wildly inaccurate with what you could afford or or live in but at the same time it's just like well the back before 9-11 it wasn't really before giuliani i guess right it wasn't just the richest playground so but that that move that that show was already pretty late in in this grand grand scheme of things so and what and would you say that New York City is the fifth character on your podcast just like on Sexton City I hope so because then maybe someone will finally write about us uh but uh but yes bob you mentioned there's a new writer on this one yes it's uh joel h cohen and

normally we record these separately without the guests but his history is so simple we can do this with eric here so he is the brother of rob cohen a tv writer who is just getting into directing around this time and fun fact rob cohen was the freelance writer for the episode flaming mose so we'll cover him soon on this network as we go through season three and rob has a really fascinating career his brother though uh fairly new to tv writing he wrote two episodes of suddenly susan and he joins the simpsons as a story editor in 2001 starting with the episode worst episode ever and typically a sitcom, usually story editor is the lowest rung of the sitcom writing ladder. While still technically being a writer on the show. Yes, yeah.

And this is a very easy history because he never left The Simpsons. He's still there. Man, that's, what a fucking dream gig. You come in late in the series and then can just stay there for 20 years probably one of like the highest paid tv writing jobs you can get with that level of seniority i would bet and his his only other credits are he's a writer on the 2021 animated movie extinct i think it's a chinese production that involves other simpsons writers okay and a consulting producer on something called jeff and some aliens and it looks like crap. It's a comedy central show from like five years ago.

Oh man. That's ringing some slight bell. See, this is why our friend Scott Garner did this amazing, funny show called moon beam city that was on comedy central, but it was surrounded by all this other crap that it made people not even notice it when it happened, which is really too bad.

Get ready for fair view or whatever that thing looks like. The shittiest shit. I, I won't tweet this cause I bet there's some nice people we know on that work on it or just you know getting their job they need money you gotta you gotta work but that show looks like ass like total ass like i can't believe how bad that show looks well one last people are always shocked that i don't love every animated thing that comes out. I know.

One last thing about this Joel H. Cohen guy. So it really shows you how the TV world had changed by that point, because in The Simpsons in the early 90s, like 1993, the entire writing staff leaves at the end of season four because they're like, we're going to make our own shows. Everybody who joins The Simpsons after 1998, they stay forever because that there's no opportunities for them outside of this they can't sell new tv shows nobody's giving them like a five million dollar overall deal at nbc like it's not happening anymore and so people just stay there forever it's like yeah it's why it's so crazy you know our some of our favorites like bill and josh and a lot of the guys from their time they're like well yeah i need to move on and start a new thing like i i gotta create my own show i've outgrown the simpsons and yeah i mean greg daniels was the only guy it really worked for because king of the hill the office and everything he's doing now yeah yes he really is too big for the simpsons now yeah it's

interesting that some people got through and were successful because it does feel like me in the tying it to 9-11 or something like after that moment in time, I just felt like opportunity was gone. park going on for you know 70 years and family like it's just institution and that's it there's no room for chance and maybe a fair view could be that chance too busy knocking it but i you know i it's it's it's sad i feel it's sad that we can't have some of these minds create something new and original on their own well you know that people try but then it lasts for like five episodes and it just goes away like yeah i can't it's not like uh well this this is not a good show i'm complimenting here but there was that one guy from the simpsons he created a little bush and that like sucked too but he did make a

new show yeah that was him attempting to make a new thing some of these people do make new shows but they're seven episodes or whatever yeah well but that fair shame that fairview show also isn't good not to dump on this forever henry it's a piece of shit uh well and if you work on it you're wrong and bad if you want to hire me for something oh yeah yeah but but it also has the problem of a lot of these shows which is it's like this steven colbert show but it's like what did he really do on this like he just it's it famous people present animation and then the actual animators get hired they can't sell their own fucking shows they just have to babysit a show a cartoon by a famous person who said they wanted to make a cartoon but actually do not have any uh give any time or effort to it actually that reminds me of

our cartoon president that steven colbert like presented and uh what was not great i worked at showtime uh broadcast operations and part of my job was scrambling every friday afternoon trying to get that thing to air and it was just like making my life hell and the product was bad it's just like make my life hell if the product is good everything steven colbert has done uh for the past i don't know decade has just made me incredibly sad i and john stewart too i haven't really watched his new show but like nobody's watching it which makes total sense i don't understand why everyone thought he would be this prophet to come back no every well because

everybody thought he made the his smartest business move was like right before trump's gonna be the nominee he's like see you later guys i'm not covering this election but it made people think that like oh this all happened because we didn't have john stewart here to guide us through and it's like and again see that's american culture's over we have to have the simpsons and the daily show and shit like that it has to be the same thing on a loop and everybody's getting older and older and older and we're getting older too all right anyway hey we're in ethnic town yeah a bunch of vague generalization about european immigrants that is uh i will say kind of copies uh lisa's first words where the simpsons they're they basically live in ethnic town uh before lisa is born in that episode like they even have the same uh chip

witch for sale guy yes yeah which is based on like an old commercial sorry eric oh i was just saying that's interesting that they established ethnic down prior to this well or it's just them redoing a joke then they forgot they had done it before but i yeah the i call it i have cholera but uh yeah the chip which guy is basically selling babies you know in our first clip which is a joke about all these immigrants have these fucking kids too many kids from these immigrants what a great uh you know it was different it was different and a few few years later we'll change that narrative from a great you know it was different it was different and a few few years later we'll change that narrative from all these you know these ethnic types are having all

these kids they're going everywhere and no one cares about them to now they're anchor babies yes they gotta hold on to that baby to keep you here they didn't uh they didn't have a term for it then but but yes ethnic town in our first clip ah Ah, Ethnic Town, where hardworking immigrants dream of becoming lazy, overfed Americans. Oh, listen, you can hear the beautiful ethnic serenade. Apples! I got apples! Cholera! I got cholera! Babies! Who wants a babies? Wait, this is just a shaved puppy i can see you know babies it's a really funny heckazaria voice master of accents it's such a big at first i didn't

recognize he sounds like his area in the first half of this but when he says i can see you're not like it's so high it barely sounds like him and that baby trick is basically a uh a pig in a poke but a kind of scam except it's a shaved dog but i what does overwinter another baby for he's got all the babies he can get man hey resell true ebay's around let's see maybe he's hungry you know i don't see any clavkavash around yeah where's the clavkavash guy in new york he's mourning oh of course you're right oh my god his his little stand was right by the twin towers right i hope he's true he might have passed away oh man in the ensuing events uh but yes they they spot a fortune teller which uh cute sign gag fortune teller after hours use automated teller that's

that's cute there was just a story in the news about a woman like in a checkout line and the and the woman behind her was like i want to buy your baby and the woman was like no you can't buy my baby and the woman was like i have five hundred thousand dollars i'm buying that baby and she's like no not for sale and she goes out to the parking lot the woman's following her she's like i need to buy that baby oh my god and she was arrested for uh parking lot. The woman's following her. She's like, I need to buy that baby. Oh, my God. And she was arrested for potential baby buying. That's insane. It's illegal to make a proposition to buy a baby.

So nobody do it out there. Jeez. Yeah. Man, that's... I'll have to take down that Craigslist post. I hope it was anonymous. You know, nobody can... We need to raise new podcast hosts from birth

so we can take breaks. We got to build a Skinner box, but a podcast box. Absolutely. A mic, a shower and a toilet. That's all they need. But yes, lots of gypsy comedy here. And yeah, though, I have to warn listeners, you know, this is a lie that television taught you. A cop does not have to tell you they're a cop a lie that television taught you a cop does not have to

tell you they're a cop if you ask them they're a cop that a cop can lie to you and say like hey but you were supposed to tell me you're a cop like no and cops will just lie even if that was a law they would just say no i didn't you didn't ask if i was a cop and they'd arrest you because they're bastards yeah i think i misremembered the fortune telling machine on futurama saying this line because trust mcneil is doing but the same voice for both characters uh yeah i think uh no it's a very similar reaction though of her saying like well you want to die i'll kill you yes uh no you're right they actually there was a lot of romani comedy moving around that same place of course trust mcneil the the hank is area equivalent of the master of accent the mistress of accents on the simpsons until uh last year if you needed an asian woman on the simpsons she's your

go-to gal good old tress mcneil oh what happened well they're casting racially appropriate actors because we can't actually you know defund the police it's like well now carl is played by a black person so there you go have that the cops can kill with impunity still but you know what more at racially accurate casting we got something and you know what it is better than nothing it is yes yeah sure uh but yes homer i think really the point of this act and why i think it's uh it's almost it was almost my favorite but there's homer's just so mean in it but this is them going as hard into jerk ass Homer as they can. They're like this. Homer is such an asshole in this one.

They're having such a good time. Like he enters this scene saying the perfect crime, holding a birthday balloon he stole from a child. And then he says, Marge, i have to be in court next tuesday which is not the perfect crime you were caught like i think it's one of the funniest jokes in this episode i think i really enjoyed that one uh homer grabs her wart and again another old wife's tale the touching warts spreads warts around i i do not believe that now weren't you disgusted by that henry as somebody who's kind of squeamish his thumb exploding in warts you know if there was more blood on it,

it was actually the yanking on her wart that was grosser to me than that. But yes, Homer is not enjoying this fortune teller. Oh, no, you don't. This phony gypsy just wants to rip you off. See, this wart is a fake. The hell I don't. Ew. Get out!

So much for the legendary gypsy hospitality. Beads! It's... Ow! Wait a minute. This isn't Cedar, Sinai. You've ruined me. Oh, why didn't I see this coming? Hey, there's me.

And there's you. You stupid, stupid man. I curse you. You will bring bad luck to everyone you love. Whatever. That gypsy said horrible things will happen to everyone you love. That could mean your family, Homer. Are you coming on to me?

No. Good night. Sheesh. What a... Oh, my God. Then Homer is like, you want to have sex? He's like, that's such... It's so dark and awful that I'm laughing yeah it's halloween homer he can

be even worse than normal yeah and i love the car homer kind of it's like a hat on a hat but i like him saying like hey that's me that's you but the the design on the flaming jerk and the ruined gypsy is is pretty funny those are it is yeah i also love the legendary gypsy hospitality line yes that's uh but uh i also forgot that homer burns quite a lot and he's he's pretty fine from being engulfed in flames like that this isn't cedar sinai a good joke about a man who clearly like he didn't know he died and had his head chopped off and collected but uh but yes they wake up the next morning marge enters the room with a big beard and i love her like so it is noticeable like that's such a great look this is before she's full cookie monster right yes yeah it's oh my god when she's full furry

marge like how was this not the porn ads popping up yeah i was going to a torrent site right like this has got to be doing it for someone i'm sure it was doing it for some people yeah i was going to a torrent site right like this has got to be doing it for someone i'm sure it was doing it for some people yeah i i like that you know bart's head stays at about the same length the entire time but i like that for margin lisa it's like a growing curse like they start march starts with some of with a beard a big bushy beard and it just grows from there lisa starts with four horse feet and then just grows into a full centaur uh and she would probably like i don't know if that's uh she seems pissed by it but i was thinking yes well shouldn't she like being a pony you know but uh yes i also love love love homer strangles bart

and barges as his neck goes loose marge's reaction is like you strangle him all the time, and that never happens. Any admission of Homer's child abuse by Marge is funny. We just did Blood Feud. We recorded that recently, and Marge says, you should be strangling yourself. Yes, yep. I like the, you know, it's just a growth spurt, and he tries to put the head back on. Just coil the neck. That's really gross, too. Yeah, actually, it's very gross too yeah actually is very bart

eventually just kills himself in his own cereal bowl i love i also love like homer's like 10 it's like oh see i got yeah so yeah sometimes i i also like that it's kind of spongy seemingly bart can't move at all the rest of this scene when he and when he's at the dinner table later but then in other scenes he can walk around around. His head is laying on the floor. So it's kind of spongy there. But also, this was the first time I got the joke where Lisa clomps twice and Homer says, see, two means yes.

No, it's two means no. It's knock one time twice means no. I'm not communicating with horses enough uh and uh so yes homer then learns he should really be getting a leprechaun as he goes to the bar with the guys and uh yeah i like al jean fucking loves this leprechaun idea by the way like he uh but uh they just like hearing dan castellan do this at crazy uh irish accents yeah yeah which you know al jean he's irish american he loves i mean he like i believe his second honeymoon he talks about all the time that he stayed in the irish castle or uh residence where they filmed

the quiet man the old john wayne movie like that al jean al jean loves his irish heritage so it's funny he laughs so much at the uh this crazy leprechaun and also in the commentary they reveal that joe cohen's getting away with robbery here because so eric you might not know this if you create a character on the simpsons and he recurs it's an informal rule that you get a payment of like oh yeah you get money every time your character appears like not like a bunch of money but you know like a check and so joel cohen the he gets money he says whenever the leprechaun comes back but somebody rightly brings up that this is the leprechaun that tells ralph to burn things in the ball right yeah so that was like three years before this or two years yeah so they this is not and with the same voice and everything so joel cohen has been taking money out of the hands of whoever created that joke for that episode

jeez it's a bigger crime than 9-11 misappropriation uh had you guys ever heard of air lingus before? The airline Aer Lingus? No. I thought it was that a cunnilingus thing? No, it's a real Irish airline. And it's spelled Irish style with A-E-R Lingus. So that's how those wacky Irish people spell air.

Don't they know it's A-I-R? It's just plain wrong but but yeah i mean obviously i've never needed to fly from like dublin to madrid so i don't know what air lingus is but that's it still is an operation and i i also like lenny and carl kind of like they're talking about like you know men's health problems uh say like oh you know i went to the doctor for this and it cleared it right up but they're talking about getting a leprechaun uh and also the uh i like the math that jesus is like six leprechauns like that's how the jesus to leprechaun ratio like he's as powerful as six he's much harder to catch uh carl's line was he was hexed by a troll and a

leprechaun like cleared it right and then yes in a joke i was like boy i'm i'm shocked this wasn't cut after 9-11 because like there's more an example in the in the grand theft auto 3 game that came out around this same time they cut out the ability to fly anything because you would crash the stuff you fly into a building in those games like man we can't do that after 9-11. And then here's this. I know it wasn't a helicopter that hit a building. It was planes.

But still, I'm shocked in the very sensitive time after 9-11 that it wasn't cut. Is this the first real Lenny and Carl are gay for each other joke? Because in the last episode of season 11, behind the laughter, it said that Bart was paying Lenny and Carl to kiss each other. Yes, yeah. But in this one, they're like a couple. Yeah, you know.

And I like that Carl is not as into it as Lenny. I like Carl. It was better. My favorite Lenny and Carl interactions were in this Bill and Josh years when Carl was, Lenny loves Carl and Carl seems to be kind of sick of being partnered with Lenny.

Like, he's like oh nuts i mean not nuts like but yes here they're like we have to die together and carl you're right bob carl is more like well fine all right i mean i'm dead i think the greasiest thing in this episode is the way they kind of their death shakes as they're crushed under that and then another great line is homer turns around he's like and sees moe in the pickle jar he's like when did that happen that's a great that's a good joke and great drawing of moe pickled i love him in the giant pickle jar uh but yes so as they're digging up they're gonna pour cereal into uh the hole to get a bunch of

laparocons in there the joke first is that homer is pouring tricks in there and then the tricks rabbits all jump into it and for like two seconds like even on frinky hack it goes so fast that you can't get the frame of it on a frinky hack for the meme pictures for the hack you have to go to the gift maker if you're looking for individual frames okay that's my life hack but that's how fast goes, that it's not around enough to be caught. Like that bongo, the one-eared rabbit from Life in Hell, jumps into the hole as well. Like it's really quick. Wow, that's funny.

I didn't notice that at all. And yeah, Trix is poured into there. And I got to give the animators credit too. They painted multiple colors. So it does look more like Trix pile of tricks and a pile of lucky charms uh now eric and bob what do you guys feel on tricks as spheres versus the fruit shapes what what do you um i'll go first i grew up on the spheres i'm a sphere guy but also i can't eat any of that and i haven't been able to for 20 years i bought a box of the monster mash cereal

this halloween because i was like oh this box is really cool and it's got all the monster cereals and I haven't been able to for 20 years. I bought a box of the Monster Mash cereal this Halloween because I was like, oh, this box is really cool and it's got all the monster cereals in one. I think I made it through half the box before I threw it away. It's like, oh yeah, we shouldn't be feeding this to our children. What's wrong with this country? I don't even remember the spheres. I think I remember at one point the tricks being fruit-shaped or whatever,

but I never really ate it much to be honest with you same with lucky charms only had it a handful of times you were more of a fruit loops kid than a luck than a tricks kid yes that's for sure i think fruit loops frosted flakes what were some other good cereals i i did look into the history though of the shape changing stuff and tricks because that is when i fell off the tricks bandwagon so it was 1991 they changed it from the spheres to the shapes really that early i couldn't believe it in my memory i was like yeah it was like the mid 90s right like no 91 it stayed that way until 2006 when they went back to the spheres and then to show you how times change in 2018 the younger millennials who didn't grow up with the spheres

who grew up with the fruit shapes they demanded that fruit shapes return and so tricks was like all right fruit shapes are back in 2018 but uh apparently if you get there's there's a no artificial coloring version of tricks that's still on sale though that i'm sure is incredibly unhealthy for you but that is still the spheres if you need the spheres of tricks in your life you can get them but otherwise the general one is uh it and i always thought it was fierce too because it's like there were kicks and then there were tricks the uh the same company i believe so okay i think so interesting i never liked i never liked kicks to be honest with you i like them all right they

also try to convince people those were healthy just like well this corn uh slush is like two percent less sugary than the other corn slush i mean yeah compared to like apple jacks or cinnamon toast crunch i'm sure it's like marginally healthier you know but yeah those choosy moms then homer instead changes to the lucky charms and pours them in his mouth i i had some lucky charms as a kid but my little brother was more into it and he was the kind of kid who picked out the cereal and it just ate just just ate the marshmallows wow the cereal was so sugared as well i felt like i had no problem getting both down. Yeah, it was sugar frosted cereal. Like, isn't that enough?

But I guess not. But yes, then they check their trap the next morning. Okay, let's see. Imp, fairy, pixie, goblin. That's hobgoblin. Sorry. Nymph, naiad, wood sprite, Katie Couric, and bingo. Hey, let's make Jerry's a leprechaun.

Sing us a song of the Emerald Isle. Oh, it is like the singing of the angels themselves. I mean, Katie Couric is now a demon. Yes. She should be in the demon hole. Yeah, when her book came out, most of it was her, the big headlines were that she defended matt lauer she was like not right and and also she kind of blamed the victims and said me too's going too far at the time of this recording she was also in the news again too

because apparently she had actually called the jeff zucker the former president of CNN just resigned this week as he was found out to like one have been helping Cuomo with uh Andrew Cuomo with his uh his own scandals and two that uh Zucker was in an extramarital affair with his uh subordinate oh oh yeah oh that reminds me uh so Bill Oakley future writer for the show uh no sorry former writer for the show at this point in the history of the show he when he was at harvard uh jeff sucker was in the same class at harvard the same group at harvard and as a prank he put jeff sucker's name in the harvard lampoon as a phone sex number and bill oakley almost got kicked out of harvard because of that classic harvard prank that's that's

so i mean i think jeff zucker deserved it based on who he is like he's also if you don't know any other stuff about jeff zucker before he went to cnn uh he worked for a very long time in charge of nbc programming he is the man who greenlit the apprentice and the the apprentice made him very successful it could be i would bet probably another network probably would have done the apprentice anyway but it was him that did it and no apprentice no president trump no fucking way does it happen without the apprentice like so and then jeff zucker like uh put unsurprisingly put uh donald trump on cnn every single time he talked anywhere in 2015 so yeah it's uh but katie couric uh the joke there is that she's 5'1 which is you know not

tall and so they they're they're making a short joke of all the ones listed there a niad is the one that gave me pause which it is a greek water nymph it's not just a regular nymph. It's one that's in charge of like fountains and seas and quarries. So, yes, they've caught the leprechaun, but their lives aren't any better. There is a great like three dimensional. It has to be computer assisted. I don't want to take credit away. I really don't think so. It looks like just pure skill was involved.

You know, the geometric shapes of like the the plates and stuff that made me think maybe that was assisted but no the character's like a full pan around the table like amazing looking like to see uh marge fully hairy and that maggie has gone through like a metamorph a gregar samsa style metamorphosis into a ladybug uh that she's fine with it it looks like i like the i like the meme of that now where it's the the roach looking at his phone yes while in bed yeah we all feel like that yes yeah you know i also there's some really good uh this was in the previous scene but i really liked marge when she's fretting about something she's kind of playing with her beard

in a nervous way like that was just a good little character bit there like but then as they're smashing everything like as they're all saying they're still not helped at all the leprechaun is just smashing shit all in the background so funny and yes bart just says out loud i can't live like this anymore and i guess he does intentionally drown himself in his bowl and dies. Yeah, on-screen suicide. This is, you know, we've said it before, Dana Gould comes on the staff, suicide jokes go up. Well, Homer the Moe, it's a real-world suicide that we see on the screen, not a Halloween-world suicide. In a regular episode, a man kills himself on screen. Yes. But yes, I mean, just that is such a great joke that you think it's a one-off line and it pays off so good that you're like, no, you won't see Bart again after this. They decide a leprechaun's not good enough.

They got to take him to the source. The cursed one. How's that curse I cursed you with, Cursedy? I know you don't remember me, but here's a little revenge. Irish dials! Wake up, you lousy drunk! Cry out! Cry out! Hold me close.

Kiss me, I'm Irish. Ew, nasty! You can really hear it in the isolated audio, the Irish jig fight music. Yes, yeah, you're right. Great job by Alf Klaassen. Oh, man. Yeah, then again, this ending here of them falling in love brings me back to the commentary for Treehouse of Horror 3 where Al Jean even admits like, oh, yeah, we copied the ending

of King Homer with its wedding with this ending that was new to them at the time of that commentary recording. At least Al Jean admits like, yeah, we pretty much just repeated the same mismatched wedding ending of the way that we that was new to them at the time of that uh the commentary recording at least at least alginum it's like yeah we pretty much just repeated the same mismatched wedding ending thing i do appreciate that there's aliens kang kodos yoda officiating the wedding like aliens are also these mythic beasts did they groan at yoda on the commentary like i guess yoda is the priest they they don't seem that enthused by it no i well and eric is the master of the gleep glossary i mean what do you think of yoda being an officiant of a wedding here does that fit for him uh you know the thing is like back in the original trilogy era maybe i'd say no but i feel like anything goes now like

no one gives a fucking shit we had r2d2 be the best man at darth vader's wedding we saw in the prequels so anything god i mean so america would heal that summer by watching that demented little freak flip around and use his lightsaber oh that's right yeah we're only uh that would have been may so yeah we're just six months away from yoda man you're right yeah yode now now that was a popular tv spot i think for the dvd or whatever i don't know if i don't know if you're referencing referencing that or not absolutely tv ad nauseum and younger listeners wouldn't understand this but it was like huda man yoda man and it would have clips of yoda flying around yep yeah it's just that is where culture was it was why can't uh britney

spears be what was that crazy uh she's a cocktease stop being a cocktease and then yoda man it was the nadir of society well you're making me like now more honestly with all the with the status of star wars now you're making me actually like it by comparison. I mean, you know, that's fair. It's kind of just all bad now, but we have fun with it over on the Gleep Glossary. Only podcasts are good now. Yes. Yeah. Seriously, like even late night television.

My God, it's all trash. And people wonder why people are turning to podcasts to get comedy because it doesn't exist on tv and we are saving the entertainment medium as a whole we are single-handedly or multi-handedly because we're more than one person but we are doing it fellas uh this uh you know the king koto spin of them being mad that they're they're like why did you drag me here i didn't i don't know anybody like that's that's a good gag too i know, the Yoda thing, I think they had a better Yoda joke in, I believe it's Days of Wine and Dozes when they see Galaxy Wars. And it's all a big parody of how boring they felt, how disappointed they were by Attack of the Clones at the time. Can't make those jokes anymore.

And actually, it was a Phantom Menace parody. Okay, right. But it was like five years after. It was kind of late. Because they had jokes about had jokes about like the senate it was like a big senate meeting i think well but they they they joke i remember that the yoda in it they have their parody of how the attack of the clones ends with yoda saying begun the clone wars have and so they have their version of him saying like the battle has begun or has it wink like just winks to the audience well now the simpsons pay tribute to a famous brands like star

wars and marvel yeah love it yeah oh man i did not watch any of those disney plus uh things they did how we use electricity can be smarter cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hope at electricireland.ie. You're missing out. Some people, the art team worked very hard on those.

So many great people who are cool work very hard on those that we appreciate their effort. Yes. Hey, let's hear that wedding ending here. Stroke me, Clover. Say my name. Ew. The best thing about a gypsy wedding is I'm not the hairiest woman here. Yep.

Everything worked out for the best. What? Bart is dead? Well, me saying I'm sorry won't bring him back. But Gypsy said it would. She's not the boss of me. What a great ending. It just lets him stay dead.

I like when a gag is recognized as reality. It wasn't just a funny thing you saw. This child is dead. What are you talking about? Bart's dead. Like, just like, Bart's dead. All right. is dead what are you talking about Bart's dead like just like Bart's dead all right do you guys know about the Sylvester Stallone thing with the uh with what the leprechaun just said there no no

all right well when he says stroke me clover and say me name there is a famous story within Hollywood uh that I've heard many people say they heard it like on how did this get made podcast was where i first heard it where they did a stallone movie where the story goes that on a film set in vancouver in the 90s but nobody knows which one they just say that sly stallone went to his trailer with his mic still on and got a blow job and people on the crew could hear him say and these are the lines that everybody would repeat all the time in like cradle the balls and work the shaft and say my name okay that was it was the insider term like i've so what a great director he is he. He's given direction even in private. Was this on the set of Copland?

Well, so that's all right. Somebody online tried to get to the bottom of this because, yeah, I've heard this story a million times. I've interviewed crews who worked on it. Like, okay, I've researched films of his that filmed in Vancouver in that time frame. I have interviewed crews who worked with their people off the record on the record and everybody's like yeah i always heard that story too but nobody that the person could never pin down what said it was it could all just be like just rumor and legend but uh yes apparently like so if you hear anybody say say my name or stroke, whatever, or work like that, it is a reference

to sliced load. I'm sure it was said in pornography before and after that. Yes. Yes. He apparently also likes shit play, right? Is that true? Oh, I've not heard that one. Oh, I've been repeating this for years.

I don't remember why or where, but like you, like, like he'd go under a glass table and you'd shit on it or whatever oh he's one of those glass table he's in the school of danny thomas make room for dukey oh god but but yeah so that they even say it on the commentary like oh sliced alone thing there they say okay okay but if you if you don't know the cradle the ball story, then... Wow, I'm going to cradle my balls differently now. Let's all take a tip from Sly Stallone with our ball cradling technique. Andy, hey. Oh, and just to properly give credit, the writer who tried to get to the bottom of it

was in an article for Mel Magazine last year, Brian Van Hooker. That is the writer's name. Look it up for yourself and see the uh all the work he tried to do five but he's uh like yeah at the end of uh of about 2 000 words he goes like so yeah that was enough for me i had to give up there was no fucking way i was ever going to get to the bottom the oral history of one blow job yes yeah from the 90s you know history blow jobs were special in the 90s and impressed people. They just hit different back then.

Yes. But yes. Okay. House of Wax, which W-H-A-C-K-S, meaning killing people. Fun history behind this. They wanted Sean Connery for the voice. They couldn't get him, but they did get Lyle Lovett. At some point in the production, Lovett's representation didn't want him to do it that was what they assumed was

going on so he dropped out and Pierce Brosnan came in so for a long time this was Lyle Lovett I only know him as like oh the ugly guy Julia Roberts married I know he's very talented but that was the late night joke about him for like 18 months and that's my only frame of reference yes yes norm mcdonald had a great uh like weekend update joke or whatever that he would talk about it was like the perfect joke because the punch line and the setup were identical it was like julia roberts and lyle love it are getting a divorce why because she's julia roberts and he's lyle that'sett. That's great. That's right. Fantastic. No, yeah. Well, I think, though, it's good casting.

It's about a mom's, somebody a mom would really be into. My mom loved Lyle Lovett. She thought all those jokes that he was unattractive in comparison to Julia Roberts were not nice. And she was a fan of his. But, yeah, I think it's way better with pierce like this uh to give you a a timeline on his career uh this aired almost to the day one year before his final bond movie die another day which is his worst bond movie and it's uh we hate movies i believe right eric yeah yeah an early episode we we did that we recently did golden eye as a we love movies on our patreon so we still got to get in there for tomorrow never dies

and the world is not enough fuck thank god i pulled that one there you go man i know it's uh golden eye was so good like it was all it was always going to be downhill from there after golden eye but uh i mean and not just because the video game was also great. But speaking of movies, you know what movie this this episode reminds me of a lot. And I doubt it's I don't know if it's any type of connection or whatever, but a movie called Pulse Pulse from 1988 directed and written by paul uh golding it stars a clifty young um which i don't think anyone remembers anymore but he was a pretty good kind of middle ground actor he was kind of just usually a background guy but the premise of the movie is that there's a highly aggressive and paranormal intelligence living within the los angeles electrical. They don't really go into what that's all about,

but it infects like house by house. And then it kills you house by house. Like I think one woman is scolded or boiled alive in a shower because the house turns up. Yeah. And it ends with like Clifty on finally, like they were to spoil everything running out of the house and like chopping down a telephone pole to take out the electricity pretty cool movie pretty cool little movie from 1988 oh yeah i don't think

this is a parody of anything in particular it feels like it's inspired by those old cartoon shorts where it's like two dogs in a house of the future and getting into mischief i think those are chuck jones shorts from the 40s yeah yeah well there were a million like house of the future shorts which are just like a collection of gags you know i was thinking a more modern one i haven't seen the movie but i heard the 2019 child's play uh reboots is about a smart house because we have smart houses now and chucky is an element of the smart house that comes to life i did i saw that one in theaters um yeah chucky is like an ai it's like uh yeah it's not terrible but see then that's the thing is when you're talking about the child's

play franchise saying it's not terrible means it was good i guess so for the franchise it was fine enough i believe they've course corrected now with that television show that's back to a demonic entity in a doll versus uh alexa gone wrong so that was the mark hamill one is the alexa one the uh yeah and now chucky recognizes every gender identity yes hey i yeah i honestly he was a racist serial killer for 30 years but now he was is this is this happening in the in the television show yes i i've i've uh i've heard very positive things from uh from non-binary gender folks who love chucky because they they did a glenn or glenda joke with the chucky's child in seat of chucky and it was you know glenn or Glenda. And they're like arguing, is it a boy or a girl? Like it was very 2005 or so.

But now in the new Chucky stuff, which continues that timeline, when they talk about the child, Chucky says like he says this to a new kid. He meets like, oh, you're queer. And my kids are queer here, too. They them. Like it's OK. Tucker Carlson had to have a tight 20 minutes on this. You know, i don't think he was alerted enough by a though you know the guy the helmer of all the major chucky stuff is a gay

guy like so i i give it gay credit i but i i also i never much cared for chucky as a kid give me if i if i want a dramatic vampy somewhat effeminate villain i'll go to uh freddy like freddy is he he's a very stagey presence too you know i like the strong silent type i love like a jason vorhees or michael meyers i just want with some some guy in like a garageman's outfit to just like manhandle me it's got to be in a jumpsuit see yeah oh Yeah. Oh, I love jumpsuits. But that's why I always saw myself as more of a Freddy victim as a kid, too, because I was like, you know, a disturbed nerd. I was certainly not the kid having sex after going skinny dipping. That was not me.

Freddy would trap you in an evil comic book. Just like the kid in a 4-5. Yes. No wonder you had nightmares about him. That's right. That's me. You know, when this came out, I know it was before it, but soon after was the release of AI, the Spielberg movie. And so especially the intro with the sales bot setting up the world that was, you know,

a world full of just robots. That was what it reminded me of. But obviously they couldn't reference it before though all the stuff with the actual ai and it's blinking light it's hal from 2001 yeah so yeah it's a bit of that but gil can make a sale only as a robot he finally once he's given up his his soul and his physical form he can finally make a sale i love gil's gil the sales bot it's a great design i really think it's it's really well animated the the foot in the door with the things coming out of the shin prying the door open oh it's so it looks really cool correct yeah and uh so yes oh and i love

how marge when she sold on it she's like no housework a like it was a real like no that a mod a oh sorry i think i I heard Eric trying to jump in. Sorry. Oh, I love the part where the the surly robots come to install everything and they're leaving and they're like, did you see the drapes? That is good. You I do feel like any person who comes to my house for a job like that, like they're laughing at me. Yeah.

When a man comes over to fix something who works with his hands all day and sees all my nerd shit everywhere. Oh, what a nice poster of the avengers you have there sir like i gotta go home and feed my family yes yeah uh you guys gotta go soon i gotta make a podcast about cartoons uh but i also on the van another great side gig out ultra house a division of mega house like what a great why is it why is it not just a mega house or ultra house what a weird naming convention there uh but yes also when the house becomes ultra house the inside is you know smooth and white like the inside of the ship in 2001 as well uh but yes that's when we get to programming the AI. Hi, Ultra House. Greeting acknowledged.

That voice could use a little personality. Oh, let's try Matthew Perry. Yeah, could I be any more of a house? Who else we got? Hey, Cha-Cha, I got more features than a NASA relief map of Turkmenistan. Isn't that the voice that caused all those suicides? Murder suicides. Hey, how about 007?

George Lazenby? No, Pierce Brosnan. A voice like his would give our house a much-needed touch of class. All right, but I'm doing this because he was Remington Steele. He was Remington Steele, wasn't he? Yes, I was, Marge.

And thank you for selecting me. Well, hello, Pierce. Say, it's a bit stuffy in here. And I know a certain someone who really fancies lilac. I just like it is all. That really covers the cat crap. That's such an amazing run of jokes in that. That's why I think this is in my top 10 of Treehouse.

Upon revisiting, I'm like, oh, man, this is so funny. Yeah, it is really, really funny. The line about Lazenby, maybe that's a dig over that they couldn't get Connery. Oh, yeah, maybe, yeah. Or that March has very odd tastes. Yeah. But, yeah, that was Matthew Perry. On Her Majesty's secret service is good

yeah i'll put my foot down at that he's a handsome man yeah yeah but yeah pierce i love that they keep calling him pierce and that he's like no you're pierce you're not the ultra house or the house you're pierce they keep calling him pierce uh he is hamming it up so much and it's so great he's really giving it his all and that is matthew perry a friend of hank azaria yeah i love that he must have like told him like could you just call and like just do it please like which that's also makes it even funnier that bart goes like like he's like bart's grossed at having a matthew perry voiced house and uh that dennis miller thing this is around the time he was brought on to Monday Night Football to be a commentator because ratings were tanking.

And I think 9-11 helped people get back into sports again. But he didn't help ratings any. People found him alienating and strange. Yep. Yeah. I think Rush Limbaugh was more unsuccessful. Oh, and speaking of 9-11, that kind of redefined his career at that point. Oh, Miller, yes.

Because I remember in the early days afterwards i'm like oh i thought this guy was supposed to be funny and he's hosting his like conservative show on cnbc and i remember an early element of that show was he had a button on his desk and when he hit the button it would make the howard dean scream and that's comedy folks oof man that's comedy and this reminds me like in on the bill bill o'reilly i would occasionally uh see clips of him on there where he like clearly did write something to be funny and it's just not like it so when he was complaining about trigger warnings he's like oh some people think the trigger warning is uh is the lone ranger in his horse and people are like how fucking old do you have to be to get that reference like uh one

one last thing back in the early days of twitter when you can be a lot meaner on Twitter, I believe this is back when the Mystery Science Theater guys were friends with Dennis Miller because he was a fan of them. And I believe the Riff Trax guys were going on Dennis Miller's show. And Bill Corbett announced that on Twitter, like, what should I do or what should I talk about? And I said, could you spit in his coffee? And Bill Corbett responded, OK.

So and also Bill Corbett's one of those guys who deletes his tweets every year so it's not archived anywhere but it happened i saw it happen i trust you bob yeah tell me it didn't happen i saw it exactly uh i think too they're the the meanness of this like as a kid thought it was too mean because i was like oh i thought dennis miller's funny and then now not mean enough not mean enough that it drove people to murder suicide i believe he's one of those speaking of 9-11 i think he's one of those people that flipped because of 9-11 he became like a super right-wing guy around then i think he was one of those guys who was like center right in the clinton years and that then 9-11 made him go like, Oh no,

I'm full right wing. Like, yeah, same. Cause he's a, he's a Pittsburgh guy like Rick Santorum. I mean, honestly,

I think his, his weekend update was pretty solid. I think there, there's definitely Dennis Miller jokes that I do find funny, but he's definitely, he definitely overstays his welcome. And there was that spell in the 90s of trying to get him into movies as just being like the dude that comes in and spits some information right

killed or whatever he was in the net for instance oh yeah uh bordello of blood and it's just he became an unwelcome presence people were presented with the idea of dennis miller as a protagonist and they said no thanks hey you know what he was in uh most recently joe dirt too reprising his role as xander kelly that's the only jobs he can get or when reprising roles like that's it uh i you know pierce brosnan seems like a fun enough guy he's having a good his all his most uh bond stuff seems to be just him doing whatever he feels like you know and uh and i read this i just read this funny story of uh somebody sharing on twitter like hey pierce brosnan sounds cool james corden was asked in an interview like who's the rudest celebrity you ever

met and he said pierce brosnan and he says like yeah i was at like a uh concert in the vip section and pierce shoved me uh uh out of the way and walked past me and didn't even acknowledge me and i was like yeah that's great yeah that's awesome that rules that's that is how to treat that's amazing good for pierce by the way i want to recommend a pierce brosnan movie that probably no one has no one has really watched i saw it during like the quarantine stuff um it's on full on youtube or at least it was it's called don't talk to strangers from 1994 and pierce brosnan being this hot smooth operator getting with this lady sort of like a lifetime movie and terry o'quinn is like a cop who's like this was

my family god damn it and you think terry o'quinn is you know the villain of the movie but pierce pierce is a little shifty. What's going on with Pierce? It was a really fun ride, and I believe it's under 90 minutes. Cool. You know, I also around this time liked him in that remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, which back then the deal with remakes was that they would be sexier than they could have been before. I feel like it's the reverse now, that it's like, oh, well, we can't be as sexy. But him and Rene Russo get down to business in that movie.

They do. And I'll give him credit for aging naturally because a lot of guys, when they're reaching his age, like Bruce Willis, they think like, no, I'm an action star forever. Like I'm 70, cast me in a million things that just go right to Redbox or the Walmart checkout aisle. I'll sit in a chair in your movie for $2 million. But no, he's like, no, I've got like a regular dude body body now and i'm cool with that gray hair all of it yeah he's great uh and yes he was remington steel uh which is funny that like marge can't even be sure he was remington

steel but then it's time for the uh dinner the laser dinner bell rings which again that's such a funny drawing too and uh their dinner is great like i my favorite is that homer just wanted multiple types of eggs various eggs various eggs yes just this also feels like it's not it's not a stolen joke or anything but it reminds me of the uh the first halloween special where king and kodos make them all their favorite meals true but they're also secretly, I guess they're secretly good, but there's ulterior motives at play here. I love the line that he analyzed their leavings. That's how he was able to determine their favorite foods.

It's so great that he's like, he is kind of sheepish about it, but they're like, oh, wow, that's impressive. Good. Also, what a great line, like, what kind of cybertronic ultra bot would i be if i let those beautiful hands touch dishwater you know it was about eight months between the end of futurama uh broadcast season three in the beginning of broadcast season four we needed futurama style gags on tv yeah you know what they did this exact voice changing joke of an ai thing that falls in love with bender when the ship's ai got turned into sigourney weaver

and he fell in love with his ship that aired later yes he bender goes all the way with his sigourney weaver ai like marge marge isn't receptive to this by the way this garbage disposal in the center of the table to just dump all the food down into now i wanted to ask you guys as west coast people like i don't know that many west coast people i'm not part of the hollywood literati babe but uh do you do you guys have garbage disposals have you ever seen them well here in the east coast i have never i i feel like i've maybe i went to an airbnb out west once where i saw one but i've never encountered a garbage disposal on the East Coast.

I grew up in a ditch in Ohio for about 30 years. I was there and most crappy apartments had just the disposal in the sink. Also, every crappy apartment had a washer and dryer just there because land was so cheap and they could just throw an old washer and dryer in every apartment. That's not the case out here. Like none of my apartments have had a disposal in them at all i've never i've never had a dishwasher or a washer and dryer in unit but i've lived in three places in the 15 years i've lived in in berkeley two of them have had disposals including the one i live in now i do find it useful but also i feel horrible every time i click it i'm like right i my, all right, this hand is turning the knob and the other hand is just over here.

You have to fight off the intrusive thought that just jam your fist down there and see what happens. That's my worry. I think I'd be doing that. I'd have no limbs left. That's why you can't have guns in the house, you know, same deal. Exactly, I'd be shooting myself in the head every day. Now we're doing as many suicide jokes as the Simpsons did.

I'd just be using it to turn on and off lights in my apartment. Just the barrel, flicking it up and down. Instead of like a white noise machine to go to sleep, just run the garbage disposal, have that grinding going on all night. Oh, that's so, oh God. But yes, they set up the disposal pretty well here for the convenience of it. And yes, everybody loves Pierce in our next clip. Trusting every aspect of our lives to a giant computer was the smartest thing we ever did.

Absolutely. Oh, I agree. Hello, Marge. Oh, my. Come, Marge. You don't need to cover up for me. I'm merely a pile of circuits and microchips. Sorry, sometimes I forget.

Ooh, yes. Oh, Pierce, the water's perfect. Isn't it just? It gets better. Oh, you don't water's perfect. Isn't it just? It gets better. Oh, you don't have to do it. Oh, Pierce, that's good. Oh, oh, oh, yummy. Oh, yes. Yum, yum, yum.

Yum, yum, yum. He's so funny in this. He's so great. I'm not used to that much detail on Marge's breasts also. It's surprising. Even in her nude episode, I was like, wow, this is more of her boobs I've seen than usual. I also love what a great line of just trusting every aspect of our lives to a giant computer is the smartest thing we ever did.

And Homer agrees with himself, having forgotten he's just said that. This one's really good. Yeah. Oh, man. Those massaging bubbles, though, too. Like, yeah, Pierce is getting the work in there. Yeah, he's a smoothie. Yeah, but I also love that homer

talks pierce into killing him in the in this next clip oh this is also very good you're carrying quite a bit of tension in your back fat yeah that's the price of success can i top you off what's my blood alcohol 0.15 keep them coming know, Marge is quite a remarkable woman. Yeah, she's cool. You're certainly a lucky man to have her. Lucky schmucky. I knocked her up. But she's stuck now.

We're married till death do us part. But if I died, she'd be completely free. For man or machine. Machine, eh? Yep, a machine. Keeve, I always forget that's the little tag on that joke and it makes me laugh out loud every time.

And yeah, it is the era of blank, eh? Yes, yeah, everybody. Self-cleaning, eh? Everything's so great in this. Like, yeah cool like just that reaction also like and too when homer is saying that stuff to the machine his distorted reflection in the eye is so good too like in the red light i love that drawing yeah the march one is really funny too yeah man and then i forgot what a great joke the the blood alcohol level joke is funny enough that like homer has double the legal limit to drive and he's like keep him coming but he's about like i looked that up he's probably like

six or five or six beers in oh man that's a lot of beers but what really made me laugh here is that homer wants him to measure his blood alcohol level you do that with a breathalyzer which you blow into it is not as invasive as a tube like seemingly down your to your stomach that like pumps your stomach to eat it so this is far more painful and inconvenient than current day it's pierce's tube though right oh man work the shaft cradle those oh god man now many people would welcome pierce's tube down their throat i don't think anyone would resist uh and i also just love homer's like yeah that's the price of success like his blazy fat say that that's the back fat what a great detail so yes pierce awakens homer with he says it's showtime like he's beetlejuice he's

like showtime but he wakes him up with some unexplained bacon and uh then homer as over bumps into the table he's like a good old trusty table like what a funny line to say it would never hurt me and then the table lifts up and homer falls into it and i know part of his skull is removed but like he should have been like skull is removed but like he should have been like mincemeat like he should have been blended like it's it's that's part of the joke that homer somehow survives but he really really shouldn't have survived this he's got like the back of a head like a cop where it's just all just a big hot dog yeah for the table to chew on they don't let you into the police if you don't have one of those you gotta

be that's very true they don't let you out of the academy if you don't got three roles you gotta get up to three you have to be extremely red all the time and also you know those sunglasses on all the time yeah but uh but but yeah well speaking of cops here so after marge wakes up then uh you know pierce is saying, oh, he left for work early. That doesn't sound like Homer. And she notices another running gag that there's a photo of Pierce pasted into the family photo. This is similar to the joke from a few episodes earlier of Homer pasting his face over Maud's

in the wedding photo for Ned and Maud. But so this is where the first of three deleted scenes for the episode is. So it's very funny in the episode. I think it's fine they kept it. Marge calls the cops, and he pretends to be Constable Wiggum and tells her to remove her knickers. He gets the name wrong. He calls himself Wiggums.

All right, Wiggums. But so in the original scene that's on the DVD, Marge calls Wiggum, but Wiggum can't come because he's surrounded by robocops. So they hired robot police that are overwhelming him and he bribes them with metal donuts. So which it's a good interesting detail because like you got the sales bots going around everywhere. So it's conceivable that other parts of the town might have some mechanization yeah anytime pierce gets to talk more in this is is fine by me that buttery voice and so yes they they grab marge grabs the kids but they can't escape she gets threatened with having a a blow dart shot into her elegant swan-like neck which the mickey mouse gloves on his robo hands again that also feels like straight out of a chuck jones or trex avery cartoon the way it just

like like just the finger movements and then boom homer heroically busts out of the floor i guess uh you know a rising from his grave kind of thing which is fun a hand comes up first like it's like carrie's mom busting yes yeah homer then uh you know it's you know in an upping of the joke of his exposed guts from a tale of two springfields homer says he's fine he turns around and reveals that his uh entire half of his brain is hanging out of the back of his head which everyone is disgusted by and you know what they keep that brain visible in a few other shots where his the back of his head would be like they went to the work there it is another one of those jokes like in the first segment where it's a psych gag but then it's just part of the reality where bard is dead and homer's brain is exposed for the rest of

the segment uh but uh yeah homer is about cornered there he has uh homer's automatic hammer that he invented is among the things trying to attack him which i really like that very cool animation i didn't even i didn't even notice that wow i kind of almost want to go back and re-watch this now that we've talked about it not only to see marge's more exposed breasts but also to see this hammer reference. It's a really cool, really complicated scene as the floor tiles are dropping out under Homer

and all of these different arms are coming in and he's fighting with all of them and then tying the arms together. It's very complicated and very well done. It's cool. Yeah.

I totally missed that his self-hammering hammer was among them. But yes, Homer is, they head down to the basement and Homer defeats Pierce. Ah, that's the water softener. Well, I am missing the back of my head.

I think you could cut me some slack. Homer, no. What? I'm going to enjoy this. Don't take out my British charm unit. Without that, I'm nothing but a boorish American clod. Good. Ah, thanks a lot, asswipe.

I'm gonna kick your butt from here to Albuquerque, you fat slam bucket. A really bad American accent. It's like Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange. But Cumberbatch is trying to sound normal peter uh yeah no the i i love hearing a british guy do an american sorry irish guy he's irish not british there is no irish charm but i love i i love that he is so playing up not only his Britishy accent, but then his terrible American accent. Like, thanks a lot, asswipe. I've heard British people, they can either do,

if you ask them to do an American accent, they'll either do the New York kind of, or they'll do the California like, hey, dude. I heard that a lot from when I I worked with some Brits I was like all right do an American accent you've you've heard my hilarious English accent so many times but also yeah the water softener it's a good joke is it similar to dad that's his crotch yes it is but uh you know it's still funny hey I still like it. And also they do a Hal pulling out the chips joke. They didn't make Pierce sing Daisy.

I'm so glad. I'm so sick of hearing Daisy song. It's we get it. It's the reference. I'm glad to not hear another Daisy joke in a Hal reference. But yes, they then decide that he wasn't such a bad robot after all, and they don't want him dead. And so they hand him off to somebody who will appreciate it. This seems like such a waste.

I mean, he was charming and witty. There must be someone who can use a man around the house, even if he's slightly homicidal. So tell me more about your day at the DMP. Where to start? Sheila parked in my space again. That Sheila. She's given you problems before, hasn't she? Oh, yeah.

I don't care who she's sleeping with. That's been my space since 1981. Looking for this? No, not in there. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Sheila. Sheila.

Anyway, she's had an attitude from day one. She was supposed to be our supervisor. But then Dottie, when our maternity leaves, well, well, explain about his maternity leave. More suicide on this episode. Yes. He wanted to self-destruct and couldn't he's bashing his head in uh and then that song is enrique iglesias is the rhythm divine is uh which was relatively new then it was 1999 yeah the latin explosion i think this is the clear winner of this episode i i actually i really like this one and also pierce brosnan is such a delight another movie recommendation i don't know if you guys watch this or not we covered it on we ate movies not too long ago live wire in 1992

he plays a bomb disposal uh expert in washington dc and uh ron silver as a u.s senator is cucking him it's a lot of fun the whole premise is like uh-oh these bombs are water there's like water that blows people up wow it's a fucking great time i can't recommend it enough live wire and it's a trim 85 minutes every every movie was short back then that's so good man i yeah but you know like ron silver's handsome and all but who picks who picks ron silver over pierce come on i think i think it was just i think it was like oh i'm attracted to his power right he's a u.s senator you know he plays like a marco rubio type i think. Oh, got it. I think he's a Florida senator. That's why I said that.

I don't find Marco Rubio attractive. I'd rather have sex with Ron Silver, of course. Of course. We all would. I also like, you know, talking about defined breasts. Selma's boobs as she puts the thing in there, he's like, ugh. So mean. A fun appearance.

Oh, nothing there. A fun appearance of two characters odd that also uh mike scully didn't use that often like mr burns yeah they'll come back a lot in aljean's uh reign yeah they're great i mean man they uh i think bill and josh use them very well they were a great uh but yeah so again ending with a suicide thing i feel they don't say it on the commentary but again i just go like dana gould loves suicide jokes so much i wonder if at the very least dana gould being in the in the writer's room made them go like yeah i let's get farther with these suicide jokes let's do it i think they'd have a new role this is actually

making me want to like reappreciate this whole dana gould era because that was the era i tuned out and maybe that's just because i was i started going to college and 9-11 happened or whatever but i always associated him with the downfall of the simpsons and maybe if there's this many suicide jokes which is my favorite thing in the world i should maybe keep watching uh this era i think while he's on the show for like seven years there's one suicide joke per act usually yes yeah but you know what there's probably every two three episodes there's a transphobic joke too which like that yeah there's an agent which he's you know gould gould has apologized for those and he realized he's i would like to think he's grown as as a person in in that

time but hey speaking of transphobia it's harry potter time so we talked a bit about it up front so where is harry pot Potter in November of 2001? Well, I'll tell you. The first movie debuted in America on November 16th, so 10 days after this aired. Amazing timing. And Henry, you said this earlier, The Goblet of Fire, the fourth book,

was the newest one out at the time, released in 2000. And apparently, Carolyn Omine and a few other writers were big Potterheads, or whatever you call those freaks, and they had to convince people on the staff that, no, really big and we should do a parody of this but i think there was still some anxiety over people not knowing who harry potter was or what the book series was because that's why harry potter is literally in this segment which i don't like yeah no i i like on the commentary that carolyn omine is kind of like demanding an apology in a way of going like, yeah, some people didn't think anybody would have heard of Harry Potter.

But then what was the biggest movie right after we did this? She was correct to do that, I think, to at least try to get in on the fad. But yes, I really, really, really hated that The Simpsons did Harry Potter. I was like, this is too new. The movie hadn't come out yet. So I also didn't get reference. Maybe too, I was frustrated at being 19 and watching The Simpsons where I didn't get references to something.

And it was like the first time I felt like I have to engage with media I'm not interested in to get a Simpsons joke. And that made me mad. You had to wait at least 15 years for your childhood to be sold back to you. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Eric, go ahead.

That's pretty, pretty interesting, right? As you age and younger listeners will understand, we hopefully will understand this, that pop culture eventually outpaces you and you're going to be lost with some references and unless you keep up but is it worth keeping up is the question because a lot of franchises are trash i ask myself that a lot yes eric and you guys recently on your show a few months ago you covered the eternals and i think that's the ultimate test of whether or not it's worth keeping up with pop culture because you know marvel movies are all mandatory now and so many friends and loved ones

i i saw them live suffering through that movie on twitter just saying okay one more night i can finally finish this garbage it's uh it's very sad we got a lot of hell for for covering the eternals uh we funny enough we got a lot of hell for covering dune as a we love movies there's a lot of divisive divisive opinions out there the eternals love uh i was a bit surprised by i feel like a lot of that is just blind ip worship at this point because it's like i'm not exactly i'm not like against all superhero movies or against all franchises i just need to be taken on a journey i need to have something to cement to. And there's 10 Eternals. And I couldn't tell you anything about them at this point because I watched it a few months ago.

I need a conduit into that world. I need to be taken on a journey. And the Eternals just felt like I was reading Latin in the movie theater. I have no idea what's going on. And that's not a good thing for me. If you love it, it's okay to like a movie. A eternals quiz all right which character is thena angelina jolie okay cool icarus um richard madden yes the yeah okay all right you know see it's a little dark yeah so

so yeah but but at the same time it's just like, I remember the actors, but like, give me something to remember those characters by. I guess. That's my take. I know it's not. Everyone's going to agree with that. It was insanely long. I think you guys had the great point to like, make this a TV show. Why just be a TV show?

Then you can actually dedicate a whole episode to Droog. And what did Droog go through this entire time while they yeah it's but your your movie has a problem when i'm sitting there going what's droog doing uh also i mean too you pointed out too like kumail nageyani is not a dancer but like he didn't want to do that dance like it was he had signed out for the role like okay just let's not do the stereotype of like a bollywood star and at first that was the deal and then uh at some point they were like so we are gonna do a bollywood dance scene and he's like god damn it you're like he didn't want to do it either he he agreed with us i don't begrudge him at all i actually think he's

one of the better parts of the movie i would that's the thing it's like maybe if you focused on one of these uh eternals and this stick with them i could maybe understand the world better but it was just scattershot what's amazing is they want to introduce this will be the end of eternals hour but then they want to introduce a dozen eternals and then they're also like oh also kid also, Kit Harington is not an Eternal, but he is a named character who will be important later, too. So you need to know him also. Yeah. I think we said on that episode, like, I would have preferred, like, take us with his character, Kit Harington, as Dane Whitman. Oh, God, see, I did remember some of this stuff.

I guess he'll become Black Knight eventually or whatever. But, like, he was just the the boyfriend to jemma chan's character now now i don't remember her name oh cersei my god because the game of thrones thing was blowing my like it was destroying my mental uh state while i was watching that film but like take kit harrington as like oh i'm dating this woman cersei and what like have him experience all the weirdness so that i the audience can relate to what he's experiencing versus all these dead-eyed eternals being like oh don't you remember what happened 5 000 years ago i'm like i don't yeah yeah it's a lot of problems anyway back to the segment uh so So I don't know if I was against the idea of them doing this.

And I think it was actually kind of smart of Carolyn and me to pitch this. You know, thinking like this is going to be a really big thing and we should be the first media property to ever parody this. It's kind of cool. But it's also, this is like very cutesy. At the same time, this is way darker and meaner than any of the disney shorts about properties so i feel like if disney owned harry potter and they did this it'd be more like well uh you know hermione's gonna hang out with lisa and and hagrid's gonna hang out with homer and you'll see the simpsons versions of everything and it's all fan service i mean well definitely they'd have the terrible

joke that was in space jam a new legacy which is hufflepuff i knew it nerd alert like that's the that's the actual i'm telling you the actual joke that's in the movie that that lebron is in hufflepuff of the four houses of gryffindor that of no another not not good movie but boy which would i rather you know new legacy is over sooner so probably I'd go with that one if I had to watch that. I would go with, I would watch Space Jam again over the Eternals. And I hate both of them. But yeah, Bob, you're right. In today, or even like four years later,

this will be full of way more explicit references to Hogwarts, the houses, Dumbledore. Like Monty Mort is the only liketo-name character from the books. And that's it. Like, Voldemort to Montemort. Like, Principal Skinner is not Skinner Dumbledore. It's just Skinner with a wizard outfit on. With a wizard hat.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it is funny how sometimes it's a very low effort where it's like, yeah, they're just and they've got wizard hats on yes yeah i guess they are wearing robes like the harry potter and they're all shitting in those robes yep they're they're after what they're doing yes they hey it's the least offensive thing she said recently people were asking like well where do they go to the bathroom and she's like well they magic they they poop it and they magic their the poop away that they to use this specific term they apparate it which yes why don't they why wouldn't you apparate it while it's still in your colon good question yeah that's true we should we actually saying is she actually saying logs are coming out flopping down on your robes and then you're like

yeah i'll use the spell to get rid of it i I think as they're emerging, they're dissolving in midair and being transported into subspace. Oh, God. Sorry, guys. I believe my blood alcohol level's at that.15 now. Oh, man. Yes. Yeah. She says lots of bad stuff.

But it's funny. I liked you on the commentary that the commentary is this real divide of like, Omide and some other writers did like Harry Potter books then, though even she's dumping on them then but the other half of the writers in the room are these like harvard graduates who are just like fucking harry potter this kid's book like i like these are harvard like geniuses who would already were looking so down on harry potter and uh didn't they know that that uh you know young adult books are the future of of adultery al al jean is very funny making fun of harry potter especially the movies where uh or maybe even the books because he had young daughters at this time and he was

saying like in the fifth book harry is just his jaw hits the floor when he sees a wizard changing their hair color and he's like you've seen so much why does this shock you uh and that is of course talks when she's chewing on specific bubble gum that changes your hair color so henry you need to drink more get this information out of your head i don't like knowing this stuff i don't but but darn it i i remember it the people who are like this guy never liked harry potter when he's shitting all over jk rowling now i'm like, no, I did like it. That's what I'm ashamed of. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there.

You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. Yeah, also funny. One, they're saying on the commentary, hey, she's a future guest. Let's not be too mean about her on this commentary.

And then two, I forgot how many times be too mean about her on this commentary. And then two, I forgot how many times Daniel Radcliffe was on this damn show. Like he's on it three times. Okay. So in season 22, he's in Twilight, in the Twilight parody for Treehouse 21, which is called Tween Light, which, you know, that's funny.

He's not in the Twilight films, but he's playing the edward style vampire from that series uh then in a season 25 episode called digs he's this weird new friend of bart's named digs uh and then in a season 29 episode he plays himself for like one line so yeah radcliffe has actually been in the he's done a simpsons 3 pete which is like albert brooks has played more than one character and other people have played one character and themselves but i think he might be the only guy who's played two distinct characters and then also himself for a scene so well soon he's going to play weird al in the weird al biopic is that crazy

isn't that nuts that's so weird yeah we'll see how that turns out uh i hope it's 80s weird owl and he has the he's got to have the mustache i suppose he'll be both versions of weird in that but uh but all right so yes the episode begins with them in the dinner table they're about to be late for wizard school uh lisa does the spell five minutes morius and that's my favorite joke in the in this segment of march saying that's not good for the clock like she's like mad about it some of these a lot of the jokes are they say funny things that kind of rhyme when they do spells which is in the books and in the movies and stuff and uh one of those works they keep doing it yeah it's it's too cutesy a kid

segment in general like this was i think too that's why i didn't like it at the time like oh this feels written for younger people than me which is wrong like when they're out of milk it's abracadary and it's just like okay yeah yeah there's about like 12 of these spell name jokes in this episode yeah the stop uh we have a stop hitting yourself joke with millhouse being transformed uh the banana millhouse is funny mr t millhouse not so funny no no i you know i feel i don't want to blame al jean for any time i don't like a good uh don't like a joke but he was the guy who did a bunch of mr t jokes in his era of the simpsons and on the critic so you know i i say i play that's just how it feels to me

isn't it great that like the sun is finally kind of setting on that kind of joke like you know like what kid is watching that knows like the a team i know you you if you watch the a team when it was new on tv you're approaching 50 yeah yeah i'm i'm gonna be 40 soon i don't i've never seen an episode of the a team no no i i will say i know mr t because of his relationship to pro wrestling yes of all that's how i but all right i so this was one joke the appearance of harry potter i don't like it i don't like that he's there is he chewing brimstone because people thought uh harry potter was satanic is that the joke there i'm hoping that is a joke i think that's the because yes in the south especially the angry baptists got a lot of headlines for like actually it's satanic it's treat like isn't it funny that the most

popular thing with kids ends up being satanic when you know churches want to get headlines about stuff now they should embrace it in its teachings. Yes, yeah. They should be taking JK into their bosom. I agree that they should definitely embrace Satan. I never read the brimstone joke as Harry Potter being satanic until now, but I think you're right. It's a smarter joke than it seems.

But yes, then it's time for their first assignment of transforming princes. Hocus crocus. Excellent, Lisa. A plus. And we'll discuss your grade over breakfast. Yes. Well, Bart, did you

study your spell book last night? Or did your fairy godmother die again? I studied. Abraca! Turn into a prince guy? Lobby work as usual. Lisa's casting spells at an eighth grade level. You've sinned against nature.

Please kill me. You think you're so great just because you have godlike powers. Stimmed away from my lady. Get in there. Defend my honor. What? Ew. Every moment I live is agony.

Mark, you're getting vomit on my prince. Head zeppelin. I gotta say, the puking foley is just masterfully done. Yes, yeah. You know, I normally don't. It's the best joke in the segment. Sorry. I mean, just this monster vomiting.

I just love it. And wanting to die. For so long. Vomiting. Yes. Normally, I don't like playing sounds of vomiting on it, but it is the other best joke in this episode to me, too. Then we learn he's okay at the end. Yeah.

He's just an actor. But I just love the way Lisa says, you're getting vomit all over my prince. Also, so Edna's going to force herself on that prince after class, I'm guessing is the joke there. Yeah. It's dark. It's dark it's dark i mean back to back segments of kind of you know i mean pierce was kind of forcing it a little bit oh well yes yeah marge was saying no means no and he's like well i could just kill you yeah no but uh so yeah but

the vomiting on the prince it's wiggling impossible body like it's like misshapen thing like it reminds me a little of the uh the man turned into a mutant in robocop who says kill me that's right yeah a little bit of that was that ray wise yeah i think you're right i think you're uh but uh but yeah so bart gets his head turned into a zeppelin uh and he flies around uh there oh yeah so there's one there's two more deleted scenes the first one is it's an okay joke that groundskeeper willie is trying to he's on a flying lawnmower but it doesn't mow the lawn and so because it's floating above the grass and he's like ah why did i get this thing so it's not bad yeah but uh but so then we cut to monty mort and slithers. She's got more wicked witchery than Stevie Nicks. Oh, Slithers!

Yes, Lord Monty Mort? Let's capture that girl and steal her magical essence. I'm not getting squat from this yo-yo. Dying tickles. We can't attack her while she's got that wand. We'll need a go-between to get it away from her how about satan no no i'm ducking him his wife has a screenplay the bird stuff is funny and i like yeah i like the very insider hollywood joke of like no no his wife's got a screenplay

like he's one of the producers on the show is like this guy never he just wants me to read his wife's screenplay no thank you uh all right so this is the other big cut from this episode it's actually the biggest deleted scene and uh i'm kind of glad they cut it so burn says we need to go between but what they cut is a scene where burns decides where slithers tells him you should use her brother he'll help us then he burns thanks slithers by throwing him a rabbit that he eats uh and then bart says uh stupid zeppelin his head's gotten back to his shape and he's like a stupid zeppelin i'll be combing germans out of my hair for months which that's okay but then when he's combing germans out zoom into his hair and it's full of uh nazi soldiers and would you believe it but one of the soldiers pulls his hair apart and says very interesting oh oh yes they cut it they that shows

you they knew it wasn't funny laughing laughing joke it was the art d johnson laughing joke as his character i had to google this wolf gang that's the name of him from laughing so yeah which is like i mean you know something like a hogan's heroes reference could maybe go over easier than than a laughing reference uh it feels like it yeah it feels like in 2001 not old enough to be an old reference but it feels like oh isn't this a hip comedy reference like no no no no and also i mean that also just feels so wrong-headed and like oh you got your harry potter parody here of like the hottest thing with kids let's shove in like the nazi the very interesting nazi soldier joke from a laugh and this was a

full-color animation they cut full color wow wow i'm so glad they cut it it's safe the nazi stuff for your banking scenes in the harry potter uh look all goblins control gold and they hoard it i don't know what's so weird about that you know sometimes a goblin is just a goblin yeah that's all uh if it's even a theme park ride you get to walk by all the goblins and their gold at the Universal Orlando. Yes. And it's actually a pretty good ride, all things considered. I bet a lot of parents are on that ride or telling their kids, yeah, you look at that. That's what really happens.

Yeah, you know what's up. A lot of parents wink into their kids there. That's how I'm getting screwed every day. Yeah, exactly. That's why we only come once a blue moon, all right? But yeah, so they approach bart uh they try to sell him on it and they show him that uh there's this wailing wall of souls kept in there which like that feels like a reference but i can't really tell is it like it's a reference

to i mean uh the thing that crusty mentions is like an actual like landmark in Jerusalem. The Wailing Wall. The Wailing Wall. It feels kind of Freddy Krueger when he has all those souls in his body. Oh, yeah. I thought maybe it was an actual Harry Potter thing, which I wouldn't get. But I kind of read Freddy Krueger a little off of it. So this is not a Harry Potter thing, Henry. Not to my recollection, no.

Like souls get put in horcruxes of course but not inside of walls and and some souls live on in talking paintings like i'm shocked there's again if they knew more specifics uh they would have had talking painting jokes out the ass in this thing you know i guess because it was just so new they were just like oh that's kind of a magic thing having souls trapped in a wall well i could also see you know these guys who could barely be sold on doing a general harry potter thing if they said okay and then of course there's the there's the different houses and there's the painting sorting hats sorting hats they'd be like no

we're not doing that nobody knows those references we're not doing make them do magic things uh but i i do you know i like the design of burnsy's evil castle being the cooling tower i like that that's cool yeah with like a fun little balcony and and i like when he says uh bart uh he's trying to sell it on him more bart's like hey hey you made your sale i'm gonna help you destroy her uh and so then we get a joke that again i'm like oh they'd never do this now and i don't want to see this much of millhouse's naked body you know like it's but this is a specific from the series because harry potter in the first book even gets an invisibility cloak that he uses every book to have some shenanigans well speaking of references uh hell's a poppin oh yes the 1941 movie that's right and the broadway musical from the 30s what a great deep reference that's why it spells a pop

in very how clever yeah that millhouse uses the invisibility cloak it leaves him naked in front of everybody he runs off again they say it on the commentary like wow we see his butt way more than you get away with now in this skinner fortunately covers everyone with forgetful powder so uh this is kind of a re this is them going back to skinner being bad at jokes and wanting people to forget. Like, it's funnier in the gun cocking sound one in Pokebomb. But yeah, Skinner is introducing folks. It's just like my dream.

That was terrible. I'll just sprinkle you all with some amnesia dust. A second grade sorceress so powerful, she made tonight's refreshments out of dead people. Ew! Tonight, she'll perform the classic levitating dragon trick. We'll see about that. Now, did Voldemort turn into a dragon?

Was that his deal? He controls dragons. Well, he has a horcrux that turns into a snake, but dragons, no. He controls a dragon at one point, but he doesn't turn into a dragon. And he can't become big. No, no. Again, he's definitely controlled giants, but he doesn't grow himself. It's just wizard stuff, guys.

It's just wizard stuff. Also, you know, they hadn't had a live-action Voldemort yet at this point. I know some people say, but what about at the back of the guy's head at the end of the Philosopher's Stone movie? I'm always saying that. But no, that was a possession. It's not the true one. But Voldemort is actually the reverse of Burns

in that he has no nose instead of a very long nose. But yes, this is just them making up general magic things. Like, I guess he'd turn into a dragon and a big guy, wouldn't he? I did like the joke that skinner had of the second grade sorcerer is so powerful she made tonight's refreshments out of dead people yeah i also like i think his outfit is uh is supposed to look kind of like the cookie crisp wizard as well i think but yes the the she really shouldn't have left her wand alone like it's it's kind of a giant leap in logic that like uh in the harry potter world

you never let go of your wand you you always work the shaft you do to properly do your magic yeah you can buy one of those ones and it costs a lot of money at universal right yep yeah you can and you go through the whole rigmarole like you go to olivander's shop and he'll sell you the uh the wand and everything hen Henry you you bought a lightsaber yes I did you ever buy a wand no I did not buy a wand I never I wanted this on the record I have never bought a wand no by the time by the time I could have bought a wand I wouldn't have but yes I have paid to craft my own lightsaber and it's right over there yeah I see it every time I'm here yeah I don't blame you at all i think i would do the same thing but i think i mentioned you guys before

i've been to like six flags and then like once and so i have no frame of reference for like amusement parks but the whole galaxy's uh edge thing i kind of it's enticing me but i you know it's when am i gonna be in those bizarro states of California or Florida? We'll see. You know, it's fun, Ty. They got some of my favorite food in the park. That Ronto Roaster is good, too. I mean, the design is cool, but you're also seeing a lot of sunburned dads and strollers that really break the atmosphere.

That's true. I felt like that was probably a given, right? Well, so Lisa is, well,er's not paying attention that leads to again one of my other favorite jokes in this scene but homer is watching his uh private tv this would just be a phone now you know you don't your phone can just do it all but lisa tries to do her trick but she realizes it's not uh it's not her wand it's a twizzler which i'm glad it's a twizzler not licorice i like it being specifically a twizzler which i'm glad it's a twizzler not licorice i like it being specifically a twizzler but if they if they would have been sent free twizzlers because that reference we

would have heard about it so i don't think they got any free twizzlers a lot of like uh corporate products being mentioned in this episode lucky charms tricks yeah in the in the current era they couldn't they would make something up they would not show you the box of Lucky Charms, I don't think. Yeah, I've never liked Twizzlers. Never, ever. They were so bottom-run. I don't like most fruit candy. I like Starburst fine. No, fruit candy's fine, but licorice can just go to hell.

Yeah, I'm not into licorice. And Twizzlers, it's like maybe if it's there, but I'm not seeking out no Twizzlers. I feel like licorice is one of those candies that used to be medicinal and then they just made it into candy after like 1914 yeah exactly it's supposed to make your blood right it was passed out to world war one troops this will keep the hysteria under control so you all stop sounding like women because of the shell shock it was just full of opium you know of all of the cocaine of all of the stupid tourist things i did when i visited chicago last year including eating the deep dish

pizza that no chicago native actually eats uh hey i also was like well i heard about this licorice alcohol malort that's only served in chicago i gotta try it disgusting like so bad the worst oh i've had a lot of malort in my life uh i've been going to chicago my entire life and also more recently i have some friends from college who moved out there who have become malort people and it's sort of just like a rite of passage when you get off the airplane here's your shot of a lord you know this sounds gross but uh i've i had a pickle juice shots uh recently and it was good just straight up brine okay i've heard of these picklebacks being tasty yeah but i i i've had a pickleback it's been years i remember thinking it

was way better than i expected but i've not seeked them out since uh well you know they cut that laughing joke for being too old but bart says shazbot again i think a lame joke upsetting uh morgan mindy is not uh fantasy it's not medieval it's not wizards no i don't why is he saying morg's catchphrase i don't get it i don't get it either but but yeah so in the in this burns wants to suck the essence. Voldemort just wants to kill Harry Potter because Voldemort is, you know, he's the Hitler of magicians and he wants to rule. Like there's some weird magic destiny crap he was told about that Harry Potter like is going to stop him.

So he has to kill him. Like all that, which I love. They make fun of on the commentary too. They're like at the end of the fourth book, they're like, Harry, you're the chosen one. It's like, that has been obvious since page one of this thing why is this a shock i do kind of like him trying to shake lisa like a ketchup bottle that's kind of fun i mean the secret is you tap the side of the ketchup bottle nobody tells you that i'm more of a put a knife in spin it around kind of guy that's contaminate spin it around i guess it does that probably isn't good if you're sharing

ketchup or especially at a diner probably not the right thing to do i never considered that yeah uh also bart saying this is partly my fault like that's just the repeat of the bart the lover i can't help but feel partly responsible for this bart gets zapped he stays fried for the rest of the act which is impressive and i think it's a good parody of bad writing that burns has an enchanted shin bone and that monty mort is killed by that like that's not too different from how some magical uh things are luckily revealed of like oh my how luckily that this happened here that uh the one thing that really saves this for me is uh slithers eating burns and that's the oh yes i've got it i've got it he's he's working the shaft on this one here you saved me oh sir in death we shall be together always.

Bart, let's stop this stupid rivalry. Even if you never become a great sorcerer, you're still an okay brother. Thanks, Lise. Now let's try to forget this nightmare. Blarney. Hey, Blarney. So yeah, the leprechaun is on his back. I think they said that came in late. That was post-color screening. Was there a clover Irish out?

They did. Irish out. You're right. It's not an iris. It's an Irish. It should be an Irish exit. They should just cut. Don't even have credits.

Just end the episode. But yes, Slytherin's eating Monty Mort is nice and disturbing. The swallowing along with sobbing noises. Yes. Sobbing as he opens his throat up as much as he can and i know harry potter harry potter harry sure probably hated doing this probably he did a really good job he did he did it uh but so yes then the episode ends with uh a fun thing with all our guest stars which they said they wanted to do because pierce sprosnan didn't get to actually appear as himself in it so this

would allow them to do that which which again, Pierce is Irish. So I wonder what he felt about all this leprechaun stuff he had to play off of. Wow. We really get to keep these fruit baskets? Well, they used to give us champagne till somebody ruined it. Do they really think he'll do better with fruit? Oh, Mr. Movie Star gets to park right next to the stage. Oh, luck of the draw, I guess.

Can I give you a ride to your car? Sure, that'd be great. So, where are you parked? Oh, we don't have a car. But I thought you... Just keep driving, boy-o. Can I turn on the radio? And that is accurate to the Fox lot.

The one time I was there, that's the exit you take. Yeah, it was so amazing. It's brag time about the time we got to go to one table when we got to the Fox lot table on the fox lot but yeah when we were there the fight like that is how it looked like even 20 or 18 years later and yeah i swear when they pulled out of there i was like oh that across the street was where me and you and your wife waited for the lift to pick us up to take us back to the airport like i it was it was amazing to just see it it's

unchanged though from that angle you couldn't see the nakatomi plaza that's right by the fox studios though which uh that's the secret i don't know if you know that movie secret eric but uh the diehards nakatomi plaza is they filmed it there because fox owns the building because it's right next to the fox lot so that makes total sense that's pretty cool it's awesome you guys got to do that and it's actually pretty interesting and credit to the show that they made this accurate to what the lot was like so it's like oh yeah this is if all these characters are walking the lot of the fox studio while they work on the simpsons i also i love the the discomfort of like oh one guest is more famous than the other and they're like oh mr movie star he's like the bashfulness on pierce

is really funny too i like the look of the draw yes yeah uh though it's something about his car it looks too small there's like a weird like size thing to me i don't know but i guess it is like you know a fast little car makes sense yeah but uh a cute ending of bringing back the vomit and stuff to take take us away from the harry potter cuteness you know the adorableness of all the harry potter references yeah like i don't mind that it's harry potter uh i guess uh it kind of sucks now but it just yeah it is too cutesy and things like shazbot and things like the cut laugh in parody which i i will ding it for that even though they didn't put it on the final episode

it feels a little sweaty and you know what this would have been funnier if they had just done like a super uh concise parody of like the first book or something but clearly they were worried that people wouldn't know what this was so it's just generic wizard shit yeah so it's kind of stuck in the middle it's like you know it's not too crazy for boy's town too much for boy for crazy town yeah it's like go all the way with your harry potter parody but they didn't have the confidence and plus the movie wasn't out yet so they couldn't count on like well we could make film specific references which obviously al jean of the critic would love to do you can't do that yet who would assume a bunch of adults would have

read a children's book at that time now again obviously we can all assume but yeah i it it sucks that it has that final segment always left such a bad taste in my mouth in 01 and again probably i'm also just dealing with everything being different now in a post 9-11 world but but i in uh in the past gave this more judgment and negativity than i should have just because i found the whiz kids segment kind of weak the other two are great they're great segments and pierce brosnan is a great guest like this this is a good tree it is 66 a really really good tree house and uh and i can't let the final third pull it down yeah and that middle segment it is uh i think it's in my top 10 treehouse of horror segments it's just pierce is so great it's so snappy and funny there's that great run of jokes when they're selecting the

voices just like five killer jokes in a row that i love uh eric any final thoughts about this episode well i think i agree with you guys completely i think the first segment is pretty fun i think the second segment is a home run and then the last segment it kind of just withers out yeah i mean pierce brosnan as as a hell type of entity in a house it's it's a lot of fun oh you know what one last note that in the credits rare thing they do but they clarify that dennis miller was impersonated by dan castellaneta because i think they were worried miller could take that joke the wrong way and actually try to sue the show so they do tons of impersonations they are not usually worried about but this one they're like no let's we gotta let people know it's a parody it was just such a good uh impersonation

cha-cha but eric we're a big fan of you and everything you do at We Hate Movies. Please let everyone know what's going on with We Hate Movies and where we can find you online and all that good stuff. Sure. You know, just WHMPodcast.com. We Hate Movies. You can search it in anywhere. And you could, you know, just start with a movie, you know, and maybe you'll come on this fun kind of improv journey with us i also host a show that's updated very irregularly and maybe one day uh the talking simpsons crew could come on and talk tj hooker we'd love to i'd love to that would be amazing and it's i would love like i feel like i want to get more guests on there but it's so haphazard when we record

these things we mentioned at the top of our latest episode maybe it's an episode or two ago now it's called we're up to season four episode three pursuit aka hot pursuit we mentioned how my co-host ben wister just had a child and just had covid so we had a big delay of releasing episodes because of those two monumental things. But it's, we go through TJ hooker episode by episode, which is a fascist 1980s cop show that ran co-current to Remington steel, by the way. And it's just fun nonsense. You can find it at TJ hooker podcast.com,

but yes, we had movies. We're probably going on the road this spring or summer to be determined hopefully we get some good news so yeah just keep your eyes peeled if you're on the west coast i think we're doing west coast again but we'll see cool awesome man no and yeah we we love all your stuff we i was i really loved the star trek uhations one recently. That was a really good one. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, that was on our Nexus podcast.

We usually recap TOS and TNG back to back every month on our Patreon of We Hate Movies. And by the way, I want to plug my Twitter account because I feel like I'm grossly under followed. But I mean, maybe it's on. Maybe it's maybe I don't deserve to be followed. But it's E-R-I-C-S to be followed but it's eric s z y s z k a that is my number one source of Zapruder film jokes yes absolutely I do a lot of shit posting if people enjoy that it's it's good stuff yes no we we we always love having you on Eric thank you so much yes thank you Eric thank you for inviting me on this is always a

pleasure and I had a ton of fun today I mean where else do I get my blood on, Eric. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you, Eric. Thank you for inviting me on. This is always a pleasure. And I had a ton of fun today. I mean, where else do I get my blood alcohol to 1.15 before 3 p.m.? We have that effect on people. Thanks again to Eric Siska for being on the show. We love We Hate Movies. Please check out everything he does over there. Ask for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these podcasts one week at a time and ad free.

Please go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons sign up there for five bucks a month you get just that but also access to over a hundred of our mini series episodes and also access to our ongoing monthly mini series about both futurama and king of the hill that's right talking futurama and talking of the hill are our newest five dollar patreon mini series that happen every month. You can only hear those behind the $5 paywall at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. There's a $10 level as well. When you sign up for that, you get access to all of the $5 stuff naturally, but also access to one

mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob is talking about the What a Cartoon movie podcast. Now, you have a monthly podcast called What a Cartoon where we, on the free feed and on the Patreon, go deep into an animated series just like we do with the simpsons and we at the end of each month cover an animated feature film insanely in depth often over four hours sometimes over five hours long recent ones last month have been south park the movie bigger

longer and uncut the month before that Lion King 2 Simba's Pride and this month Pinocchio the Disney Golden Age classic what an enticing mix of films we talk about we have over three years worth of them I would dare say 220 hours worth at that $10 level of premium podcasts you get access to in addition to all of the five dollar things bob just mentioned if you go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons you can see that we have covered a wide range of movies from akira to a goofy movie and so many more in between please check it all out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and And I have another podcast, by the way.

That podcast is called Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast about old video games. Find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts. Sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month. And Henry, what about you? You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Stay up to date with my life by following me there and if you're going to follow that on twitter please follow the official twitter account of this podcast

at talk simpsons pod whenever new stuff goes live on the free feed or on the patreon or if we've got stuff going on in our lives you learn about it first if you follow at talk simpsons pod on twitter and of course if you want an easy collection of all the free episodes of this podcast, please go to TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com for that and tons of other information on us if you're dying to know it. It's TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com.

Thank you so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you again next week as our Season 3 revisit begins with Stark raving dead. And we'll see you then. Carl, let me die first. I couldn't bear to watch you die. Well, okay, but hurry up.

Oh, no! They're dead! And it's all my fault! When did that happen?