Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - When Flanders Failed With José

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

It's time for our final episode of the more maudlin second production season, and we welcome the great video essayist José! As Bart learns karate and Homer learns to not wish schadenfreude on Ned, we dig into the difficult production and the sitcom history of this sinister episode. Learn how "sinister" means "left-handed" and more in this podcast! Support this podcast and get hundreds of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talking 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's also a beef-a-thon. I'm your host, the left-handed nunchuck salesman, Bob Mackey, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and I will only watch seven hours of TV if there's something good on. Me too. Who do we have on the line? Our special guest. This is Jose, and I'm speaking to you all in my recently purchased left-handed microphone.

Excellent. And this week's episode is When Flanders Failed. If you're finished by tomorrow, come on over and strap on the feed bag. We're going to fire up old propane lane and put the heat to the meat. Nummy nummy num. I'll be there. Nutty nutty nut. This week's episode originally aired on October 3rd, 1991. And as always henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history oh my god oh boy bobby arkansas governor bill clinton declares he's running for president the sam simon co-written joe pesci film the super releases to very poor box office and johnny carson has his 29th anniversary special which will be made fun of and i love lisa right crusty's 29th anniversary special excellent these are all things i know about but i have never seen the super me neither i don't think anyone saw it from the

sound of that i it ends with a a rap with samples of joe pescian and i know that and there's a really good episode of we Hate Movies about it. But it's about a man, a crooked landlord, sentenced to live in his own crappy building. And hijinks ensue from there. Conceptually, I like the sound of it. It's like one of the few films

Sam Simon has a screenwriting credit on, I think. I think it's more Nora. According to the wiki page, Nora Ephron then did a pass on it. So what's in the film is more Nora Ephron than Sam Simon. But yeah, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, I knew of him as a little kid because I was born in Arkansas and my dad did not have high opinions of Bill Clinton. From a conservative a conservative standpoint my father a very conservative guy not a fan of bill clinton uh but yeah we who would have thought that that guy would end up uh

creating an entire like political dynasty that we have to hear about all the time and and i get in arguments on twitter with people who say that he was actually great on gay stuff and that we're being a little too mean now modern day gays like me and then too uh too high standards i mean he offered something for everyone which means uh nothing for no one yeah yeah but and he took enough photo ops of like look there he is by that aids quilt no other president did that aids quilt photograph did they it's like well i guess like sure and look how far he's fallen he's on master class which is a worse version of this. Yeah, yeah.

Maybe one day you'll get him to show up and talk about that one episode of The Simpsons he was on. Well, he was in so many, but I mean, the one where he gives Lisa a gift for, well, there's the one where he said he has sex with pigs. That's the one. I like when he's happy for mr burns falling in love oh that's true i'm happy you found love that's right that was my awful bill clinton i'm sorry but what else is going on in the news uh well the johnny carson all right i dialed that up on the old internet and it reminded me of the thing i always thought as a kid about johnny carson which is if you edit it down, you know, 29 years

of stuff into a 90 minute special, it looks like the greatest show there ever was. And I think if you actually watched at the time, it was the thing you fell asleep to. Johnny Carson like fucks up jokes all the time and doesn't care. He's just like, and it's a, yeah, and like uh but especially i get why on i love lisa they had crusty do a 29th anniversary special i think it's because they found it very full of yourself to be like you know what we know when they did that in october they knew that in may and they're joking like yep in may we're gonna be doing our last episode so they know the reflecting is coming and they're like and they're never gonna do a 30th anniversary special because they'll be off the air by the next october but it's like when the end is coming just do your anniversary stuff

at the end of the year why are you doing a 29th anniversary special like six seven months before your last episode you know a terrifying thought i had is that if conan still had a talk show and he doesn't right now i guess he's going to have one soon he would be in his 29th year yep yeah so he would be the carson of our time that hurts to know that i mean yeah uh but the uh the 29th anniversary special that it's all on youtube if you want to watch it most interesting to me is that just to show you how time flies but also no time changes the final joke of his opening monologue is about donald trump sleeping around and not being rich that's that's the the joke at the end of it yep specifically it's about marla maple

saying that he's not as rich as he said she said i thought that was the maples era yeah yeah but but yeah it's all i mean hey there's some real funny stuff on there and i don't just mean that tomahawk to the crotch scene we all know i was thinking that's the only carson clip you need to watch that and uh anything with ed mcmahon being drunk and making a fool of himself so national tv oh the best the best clip i saw that i hadn't seen in a million years was annie potts and shelly winters shelly winters was the first guest annie potts was second and uh shelly winters is like oh you know you're great i i love all your movies annie potts is they're joking around like she's doesn't know who annie potts is and then

shelly winter's like no i've seen your movies she's like i know you've seen the one we're in together and shelly winters is like yeah right and And the film is, this is the name of the film, King of the Gypsies. That's the name of the film. And she's like, well, oh, you were in that really? And she's like, we shared a scene together. And then Shelly Winters is like, oh yes, you were wonderful. Yes, thank you.

Wow. I do like when talk shows go wrong like that. Like the awkward moments are really the best reason to tune into any talk show like that otherwise it's just like those canned interviews where it's like oh what was it like working with so-and-so it's like oh we had a great time on movie project yeah i mean just look at any uh clip package from the chevy chase talk show he just hates everyone he doesn't want to be there uh it's very uncomfortable every moment i think

there was one really great interview i saw it was uh on craig ferguson's show when he was interviewing i believe it was an ex-girlfriend of his and she just sort of awkwardly brought up the fact that he was now married and he just like was started nervously laughing it's like oh and you're married too and she's like yeah you know if i had known you were interested in getting married maybe i would have made some different choices and he just sort of nervously laughs and he's like, let's talk about anything else. I hope the audience was like the married with children audience going. And somebody in the back shot would go out and it was very confusing.

But anyway, that's what happened on the day this episode of the Simpsons aired. But joining us today is Jose. Jose is a YouTube video essayist. And just like us, he looks at a lot of old shows from a leftist perspective. You do these great video retrospectives of so many great sitcoms from the past, like Married with Children and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and even things like The Cosby Show and Murphy Brown.

You do other leftist videos, too. But of course, we're talking about the thing that relates to what we do because we're very selfish yes and self-involved but uh welcome to the show Jose thank you so much and uh I'm I love talking about those videos because those are the fun ones those are the ones that feel like a treat to make and uh they seem to be enjoyed by people as well so that's also fun I mean I'd rather watch all of cheers and have to suffer through any amount of Tucker Carlson clips I wish more america felt that way i suppose they did 30 years ago uh when everyone was watching cheers and tucker carlson was just getting started at being annoying in his life yeah he just put on his first bow tie i guess he was being groomed by uh

the well yeah william f buckley was being groomed by william f buckley that was a joke i missed the bow tie but i think like as you as you grow in stature as a conservative pundit your head just gets enormous like sean hannity their heads just grow and the bow tie couldn't contain it i don't know what's going on there too much salt maybe who knows but yeah uh especially uh but your most recent video actually uh you did a great great golden girls video on the passing of betty white after she passed you released that video the one before that though definitely pertains to this era of the show because uh it really highlights just how important and big cheers was and we forget

what a giant sitcom that was at the time and as the Simpsons is rolling out Cheers is just kind of coming to a stop it's got maybe another year left I believe it ends in 92 or 93 I believe was 93 right and uh yeah that was really people don't realize how big that show was the series finale was the third highest rated scripted television series episode ever it was something like the exact number of ages it was something like 70 or 80 million people watch this. I mean, of course, the Super Bowl be separate regularly, but otherwise the only other shows to top that were the series finale and mash and the episode of Dallas where you find out who shot Jr. And Cheers was just everywhere. Like everyone was talking about it. It's it's one of those shows like I will never have a hit like that again,

just because of the way television is set up and network television just doesn't get those kind of ratings anymore for sitcoms, at least. how it started so interesting and and was about like real class stuff but then it just got goofier and goofier as it went and as you know problems behind the scene like mounted but i just think about like you know tv shows today i don't think would deal as much with like how much like 300 dollars would change someone's life like in in a single episode kind of deal yeah and it's it's funny because you know roseanne does have had uh sort of spiritual successor in the connors and whenever you watch that it really feels like sort of like a cover band trying to copy the original and it just doesn't quite get what that show used to be there was like this very authentic feeling to that original series i think it's just because it had that determination to

tell real stories about real people. And then as time went on, the people telling that story just became more and more entrenched in Hollywood. And by people, I mean, Roseanne Barr, of course. So by the very end in like, season nine, I'll never forget that episode where she literally fights a train filled with terrorists. And I'm like, you know, just a few years ago, the show was like talking about how this struggling working class family and having a boss that's clamping down on workers and they have to like organize a walkout. And now she's just she's an action hero. And it's just such a weird departure. Yeah, it was such an important show. So Roseanne, I think was 88 and Simpsons is 89. It was fighting back against, you know, the full houses and Cosby

shows of the world by saying, this is how real people actually live. The Simpsons is 89. It was fighting back against, you know, the full houses and Cosby shows of the world by saying, this is how real people actually live. The Simpsons is transitioning out of that at this point in its history because it's like, well, we're out of stories about a poor family. We don't know what else to do with them. Yeah, and it definitely felt less like that sort of traditional sitcom vibe.

I feel like the episode we're talking about today was one of the last ones that were really tried to sort of tug on those heartstrings a little, but also, you know, mixed with the sort of cynical humor that The Simpsons would be, I think, more identified with in its later seasons. It absolutely is the end of that era. Like, not just because, you know, it's the last one of production season two, but that's a huge reason for it. But yeah, well, I'm curious, too, you know, you have all these great videos on retrospectives of 90s and 80s sitcoms.

Like, what was your personal Simpsons history as well? Well, The Simpsons is one of the earliest shows I can remember watching. And I feel like I can date myself down almost to the season I started watching because I was a child. Very fuzzy memories back then. It was something I only watched because I had an older sister who watched it. And I remember I started when I started watching it, it was on Thursday nights. And I remember being completely shocked and scandalized that they were moving it to Sundays. And I was like, Simpsons on Sundays, that's unthinkable. And I eventually realized like, Oh, wait, this is where it always was. And it's just going back. And over time, I would see

it in syndication and catch up on those earlier episodes, which I then watched multiple times to the point like, I think a lot of kids my age wouldn't get into that habit where you get home and you just watch The Simpsons over and over. I aired something like four times a day. And I would watch all four of them. Of course, why wouldn't I? What else is there to watch? So for a long time, it just most of those episodes and that the series series just kind of tattooed onto my brain. Up to a certain point, we all sort of, well, not all of us, but many of us dropped off around season 12, 13, 14. That's when I just, it just kind of faded away, which is very sad.

Even to this day, I'm a little sad that that happened with me. But I still have very fond memories of the the golden years of the simpsons you know i think in my childhood watching the simpsons like was the first real well actually i definitely watch it's the gary shandling show first for some reason of course the tracy allman show which was next to it but like i didn't watch like cheers or rosanne or anything until i think after simpsons taught me that, you know, nighttime was not just grownup time. Like I actually could watch a thing with the family, uh, and you know, as a eight year old, I could enjoy Roseanne or whatever. And like, yeah, it was, it also was something, you know, watching your Roseanneanne thing it hit me that I was like oh yeah Roseanne is basically my mom's age so that kind of gets me as well like it's hard for us even when

you know it's it's just so sad seeing what she's become because I can't unhook her from like oh she's like my mom kind of thoughts but and then I googled like how old was john goodman in season one of roseanne and younger than me now 23 no he was like in his mid-30s 37 yeah 37 but still that's uh yeah younger than me now uh so i think uh george went when cheer started was maybe like 32 or 33 yes they were talking about that on twitter a long time ago it was like yeah george went was 32 and john ratzenberg was uh 36 or something like that it's like no that can't be true and it's also they they don't seem to age throughout the series like cheers was on for 11 years and unless you are very familiar with the series i think it would be very easy to point to a season 1 and season 11 episode

and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between george went because like that's just how he looks and it's the same well john ratzenberger is a little easier because he gets a little grayer but they both just have this adult man look that is uh you wouldn't expect someone in the earlier theories to look that way i guess and have you ever considered tackling on in a youtube video i say something is as gigantic as the simpsons which was like you know as long as as four roseanne's at this point see i'm i'm very hesitant to take on the Simpsons, which was like, you know, as long as as four Roseanne's at this point. See, I'm very hesitant to take on the Simpsons only because a lot of people have talked about it. In fact, like us. So I feel like there's so much out there already. Like part of the reason I made the Roseanne video

is when I first started working on it, I had no idea it would catch on. And I had not really done much content like that on my channel. But when I looked around on YouTube, I just saw there was like, there's nothing like this out there. There's no one talking about the series is sort of like this big comprehensive look at it. And that goes into a lot of how I decide what the next show is going to be. Of course, I always reach out to my audience and see what they want to see. And eventually I'll have like a poll and let democracy happen. But I do want to talk about shows that may not have gotten that kind of love and attention. Like Cheers is a show that feels like has been forgotten for better or worse, because in some ways, yeah, but other ways, it's kind of sad that it's gone. And shows like Married with Children is another one that I feel like people remember, but they don't really talk about. And I think

that's true for a lot of the shows I cover, The Simpsons, and there are other shows like that, like Seinfeld, or friends or these shows that are just so entrenched in syndication and in people's minds. Those are bigger projects and ones that have been done by other people. So that's a big part of why I probably would never do The Simpsons. In addition to it just being so impossibly long. That would be like a four hour video and doing 11 seasons is already just sometimes feels like a very big lift.

Well if you're looking for a smaller Simpsons adjacent show I recommend Herman's Head. I'd like to see a video essay about Herman's Head. What it has to say about gender and sexuality and the battle of the sexes in the 90s. Wasn't that about two seasons long i maybe maybe three i think they got up to three yeah i think okay yeah i like the sound of that i'm only

i'm only partially kidding i would watch something like that because i was a herman's head viewer as a kid it taught me everything i needed to know about you know dating and relationships which is why i got married at 39 well i mean i ended up i know i did a video on dinosaurs and that was definitely very much a cult favorite only right about four seasons and people wanted to hear about it i just put it on the poll and it did surprisingly well that was what all come up that was a really great one i uh yeah your dinosaurs one i everybody knows the the ending which you talked about because it's it's it is so memorable but like people seem to i think a lot of people remember dinosaurs as oh that show like dinosaurs have ripped off the simpsons right and it had so

many like heavy uh big idea episodes that everybody if they don't remember those then the ending where they cause the ice age and global catastrophe seems to come out of left field instead of being of a piece of everything else in the series yeah i mean like the episode uh the nuts to war uh two-parter where they're just this really biting commentary on war in general and how it's like based on prejudice and uh there's like the great scene where they're like we'll send everyone off to war and the guys are like oh i don't know about that it's like oh by everyone we mean the young and the poor like oh great idea i just remember uh war stood for we are right yes it wasn't subtle but hey it was the 90s well the muppet company

is not known for subtlety no that's not really people in giant dinosaur costumes you just got to go all in there's there's no more subtlety subtlety to be found there but yes all right let's talk about the episode in in general this is honestly one i know more for its behind i remember more for all of the behind the scenes stories yeah then it's content because it's like a kind of average regular sitcom episode that it only occasionally has the burst of like oh only the simpsons could do this kind of thing yeah it's fairly you know by the numbers there's only a few like surreal touches or inspired touches it's not bad but i feel like they're getting the rest of their season two material out of their system and in fact it seems like it was written under not the best circumstances because the story is it was the end of the season the production season they needed a new episode

everyone broke off to come up with a pitch john vides won and he ended up writing this episode and it sounds like it was an assignment he didn't like doing it sounded like he was stuck with a lot of bad assignments on the simpsons like you're writing the dustin hoffman episode okay now write a sequel to that like a lot of these not great assignments and this is another one of them and apparently uh it's partially based on a family friend of the george meyer family who they tried opening a left-handed store and it didn't pan out but there was no homer to save them and meanwhile the b plot is just like i felt like every sitcom had and at least one episode of one of the kids goes to karate class like they're after after karate kid every sitcom did the karate episode and i mean it was accurate for our childhoods like i

took a few karate classes as a kid and i asked my mom to do it because it wasn't because of reading i was just like oh this takes work i don't like this i gotta give up my afternoon. But yeah, every show had a karate episode. I think VD definitely felt, you can tell on the commentaries, especially when VD doesn't talk much, that I think he's telling himself, you know what, it better I not say anything negative

and just not say anything at all then. But yeah, it's funny, the karate thing, it sort of come around full circle watching this in like 2022. And now like, you just, it sort of come around full circle watching this in like 2022. And now like, you know, Cobra Kai kind of brought that all back to me. And it's like, now it feels almost trendy looking at it from a modern context, maybe karate has come full circle. But like, I remember when I was a kid, there was always like a kid in your class who did karate,

and you don't want to mess with that kid. I don't know how true that was. I never really tested that one out. but it was it felt very 80s like that's when everyone was doing it that's when everyone was like you know karate kid or the three ninjas and i mean the ninja turtles and there's always a lot of karate-esque stuff going on oh yeah no i mean well like i remember speaking of other sitcoms we grew up with like the guy who played this character sucked but uh on Step by Step, when the Cody character would bust out karate moves, you'd be like, whoa, what a cool guy. He knows karate.

Wow. But and I remember like a bully in class was like people said, no, he takes karate. You should be scared. Like, don't. He's not just any old bully. I just knew a few dirtbag kids with nunchucks. And if I go hang out with them, they would try to do the nunchucks and hit themselves with the nunchucks because it turns out it's kind of hard to do especially if you're like 10 the dirt the dirtbag kids cut straight through the karate lessons and

just go to the buying the weapons part yeah as bart does in this episode really and uh and yeah i think it's the last of their touchy feely stuff i think my uh my new prevailing theory is that james l brooks gets too busy with i'll do anything and he can't uh police the writers and make them put in a bunch of touchy-feely stuff let's not forget sibs and sibs you're right there's other sitcom that started in fall of 91 but of course the big story behind the scenes on this one that they are not shy about on the commentary is that the uh usually pretty dependable overseas animation studio didn't do a good job on this one and it had a lot of mistakes that took a whole summer they uh they

had this was their you know first year of holdovers because season one they aired all season one when they had it uh but in season two they sat on a couple and this one i think was to buy them the extra full summer to do retakes on the episode and this one and the michael jackson episode were the first ones that algin and mike reese were showrunners on and they're like this was the biggest challenge it was trial by fire for these guys and i like that jim reardon was on the commentary because i feel like all the writers wanted to dump on the korean animators like do these guys even know what they're doing and at one point algin is like when they send back the uh the cat food animation uh burns is opening the cat food the can is spinning around wildly and aljean's like

don't they have can openers in korea don't they know how they work and jim reardon's like they're only following the instructions we send them yeah they don't know the context of the scene they don't know if it's supposed to be spinning fast they're just doing what we tell them to do because it's sweatshop labor and fast as they can for cheat and pump out the footage yeah like everyone is working on different scenes from different shows from different series out of context it's like you need to tell me how fast the can is spinning or else i'm gonna do however i want to get this this animation out the door yeah it's the reality of uh you know animation production they're not i don't think a lot of thought is going into each of these things like you said and i always think of that one episode oh i can't remember where they they show how

american cartoons are made and then they go to korea and korea and they show them like working under these horrible conditions and i'm thinking of the animator who might have been trying that now that yeah uh that specific one they said that their overseas animation director uh who is i believe an american uh named mike gerard uh he told them that like the korean animators wanted to send it back because they were so insulted and like then you fucking draw this thing guys like yeah it was it was pretty it was pretty cruel and yeah i like you said bob i'm so glad reardon was there because like if there's no one representing the animation side of things then you just sometimes it can fall into guys who never drew anything complaining about korean animators and acting like they're idiots and it's uh it's not the best look you know i i don't like that i i do think i i uh figured it out though the uh you

know so the the story on the commentary they say is that send it over to their Korean studio. And this time it was given to a bunch of newer animators, like the B team, or it was outsourced. Looking at the credits, this was done by ACOM, their usual overseas animation studio, who did all of the episodes for season two as the overseas production company and then mike gerard is one of the overseas animation directors and for all but two episodes in season two the other one is nak jong kim the but for this episode and old money which also is kind of a messier episode that animation director is oh young sion and i think maybe that guy was the one in charge of the b team uh but again i don't want to say they were unprofessional

i think it was so i looked at this too in the next season in season three half the episodes are animated at anivision instead of acom acom only does half i think what their lesson was in season two was acom signed up to do 22 episodes 23 episodes of the simpsons in season two and it stretched them so thin they had to outsource two episodes to the secondary company and they didn't do as high quality as a job as acom com does probably because they're a smaller studio and my guess now is that a com who still is one of the overseas production studios for simpsons i think the lesson in season two from this episode was you guys are stretched too thin having to do 20 something episodes of simpsons in a year we'll just have you do 11 and the other 11 go to anavision or rough draft korea or or

similar so that's the uh this is the investigative work that i did on the episode i think it checks out and i think the the better more positive view on this instead of these animators messed it all up overseas instead when this is not as good and it is a weaker animated episode but i think you should really go like oh the overseas team really makes a difference and when you think an episode looks really great that's because they did a great job but nobody it seems kind of rare they compliment the overseas animators for in the final step doing a great job it's only really when they can see like oh they mess that up they messed that up so yeah their takeaway is not these people

are important it's like why do they screw up yes yeah self reflection on who they're taking for granted absolutely the sentence will be right back. Now a little spike-headed one. First lesson. Lesson number two.

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Welcome to the break, everybody, and hope you're enjoying some maudacious vittles a big thank you to our guests this week jose it was so awesome to have them on everybody should check out their youtube channel for a bunch of great videos especially uh the awesome ones about classic sitcoms that me and bob both enjoy thanks so much jose follow them on twitter too at jose not a j and if you enjoy this podcast you should know talking simpsons is only possible thanks to the support of listeners at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because those subscribers for five bucks a month help me and bob do this as our full-time jobs and for that five bucks a month you get to hear every episode of talking simpsons a week early and ad free. If you signed up, you could hear next week's right now.

And you'd also get access to a huge back catalog of exclusive podcasts you'll only hear there. Me and Bob covering Futurama and King of the Hill. You get a new one of those each month. Only if you're a Patreon subscriber. You can hear all the previous ones of those. As well as me and Bob covering every episode of The Critic, every episode of Mission Hill, and our 10 favorite episodes of Batman the Animated Series. It's all there. Take a look at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. but if you want something as nice as a left-handed zither then you need to sign up at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because not only do you get all that five dollar

stuff i just mentioned but you also get a monthly what a cartoon movie podcast our super duper premium podcast only for ten dollar patrons you get to hear me and Bob talk for often over five hours even about animated feature films like recent ones, Pinocchio, South Park, Bigger and Longer, and Uncut. And this month, you're really going to enjoy our Who Framed Roger Rabbit one. That is going to be a whole lot of fun. Sign up now to get access to the three years

of What a Cartoon movies we've been doing covering so many classic films, Beavis and Butthead to America, Spider-Man into the spider-verse kiki's delivery service akira and a goofy movie and a ton ton more check it all out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons yeah i mean if you look like knowing this and looking at the episode yeah you can see it's a lot rougher there's a lot of really off model stuff and i can tell in one part particularly they couldn't do a retake so they just fade to black on a scene as it continues, and it's very odd. But I guess we'll get to it. But this episode also feels like a sequel to Dead Putting Society, because we open with another lawn mowing scene, and we see that Homer's old push mower is broken and just set aside. And you know what? Yeah, it seems like Bart left it there at the end of that episode, and it hasn't moved since. And also, you know what yeah it seems like bart left it there at the end of that episode and it hasn't

moved since and also you know that episode bart's training and putting is karate kid style training that's right uh you're right this is definitely a dead putting society sequel i forgot about that and the uh and the title of the episode is based on the poem by john McRae in Flanders Fields, which I never knew until the commentary, even they're like, this is too esoteric even for us. Growing up in Canada, we actually recited that every Remembrance Day. Oh, wow.

When I saw that title, I was like, that can't be a reference to that, is it? Yeah, this is the first time I actually read the poem and I did get a little choked up because it is sad. It's a World War I poem written from the point of view of dead soldiers. And the author was a soldier in the war. He was lieutenant colonel. And he died before the war ended of pneumonia.

So it's even more tragic. Yeah, and if you ever happen to be in Canada and look at our money, you'll actually see an excerpt of that on the, I believe, the $ bill oh i will next time i go i go pretty often these days what color is that five dollar bill that would be blue ah okay but yes this uh you know now jose after watching your videos i now see all of these i'm like oh yeah look at that that's an immediate class marker that bought that homer's too poor to understand what a weed whacker even is for shows he's poorer than flanders like i'm just looking for class signifiers and all in in every place sorry to interrupt i just looked at my wallet and like did i get that right they changed the money a couple years ago so the poem's not on there anymore oh no

that's okay we have to find the old bills. Yeah, the ones that don't have the little plastic window. And so, yes, Homer is doing the weed whacking, and Ned interrupts him and then laughs at his futility. He invites him to the barbecue, which was our opening sound. It also feels like a very lame joke. Homer says not. It's like a not joke and i guess it's kind of fresh they wrote it in 90 it's kind of fresh but it feels like people were just learning about

sarcasm in 1991 and there's like an 18 month period where everyone is doing these jokes on tv like if you watch like a season three episode of mystery science theater a lot of quips are like that's a good shot not so it's just like well this was a fun new idea you could put the word not after something to like you know negate what you meant well so yeah we've said this before in the other uh homer versus flanders episodes in season two is that homer is just like caustic to flanders and he's like he's too much of a regular guy instead of the giant cartoon character who's gonna give his noggin a flogging this is a homer who's just like muttering under his breath yeah right i'm not gonna do like that homer is not a mutterer homer is a person who screams in your face yeah yeah you get this he's

you get the sense that he's like carrying this deep resentment towards flanders that i don't know it's it's it's so unlike homer he's such a superficial guy he's not subtle yeah he's a man of loud noises and big gestures you're totally right he carries this resentment of flanders in these early episodes and i feel like in the future even like a year from now on the show he would only hate flanders when he sees him he's not thinking about flanders unless he sees him and he thinks stupid flanders but when flanders goes away he's like i'm thinking about like beer and in sports or whatever and bowling and he would just hate him for being like lame not for anything as deep-seated as this guy makes more money than me and i feel inadequate as a husband and father he's old pink canny ned old pink he wears a stupid sweater uh yes they are given an invitation uh that confuses homer at

first the net and mod on the card are great i know uh probably when the animators drew it but jeff martin the writer at the time was a boardwalk caricaturist so i wonder you know sometimes the writers would draw stuff for him but uh i also i love the descriptor modacious vittles yes homer and marge try to crack the code of this invitation the flanders are having a beef-a-thon. Incredible Netables, Maudacious Vittles. I think it means he's having a barbecue.

Why doesn't he just say so? He's trying to be friendly. You know, if you gave Ned Flanders a chance... Oh, here we go again. Look, I don't care if Ned Flanders is the nicest guy in the world. He's a jerk. End of story. Well, we can't hold it against him just because he has things a little better than we do.

Excuse me? Better? Thanks a lot, Marge. You really put me in my place. Oh, Homer. Don't get me wrong. It's worth feeling three inches tall to find out what kind of a person you really are. Marge Simpson, president of the international We Love Flanders fan club.

And, you know, also these scenes are, like, set in, you know, just the kitchen or the backyard or the leftorium. They're not taking advantage of going to a bunch of places yet. There's only a couple of dream sequences at this point. Especially Marge, the family arguing over the dinner table is just such a standard sitcom thing. It feels like they have a sitcom mindset where it's like okay we've got the house set we can build a kind of a mall set for them to go to that's about it yeah i also love homer's in a very complicated thought that ned flanders

i don't care if he is the nicest guy in the world he's a jerk like but homer's also just jealous that he thinks marge loves flanders and and and looks at homer as lesser but it's like yeah you do have less stuff than him it's true it also feels like marge sticks up for flanders a lot more than she would in later seasons like she's really taking his side and trying to you know calm homer down in a way that later on it would just sort of be taken you know as a fact of the matter homer hates ned and uh she's just gonna roll with it i guess he can't be talked out of it so march stopped trying and yeah i mean also too you can see she doesn't particularly care for the flanders most of the time either like they i think she kind of annoys that especially like

uh well i guess i'm really just thinking of her and Maude battling over sugar and having fruit punch with sugar in it. But in this case, Marge heads over alone. She's brought potatoes au gratin, which, you know, it's a simple dish, but I would welcome it in my barbecue. It sounds nice. The thick potato slurry. And yeah, isn't that nice of Ned that he can recognize it just on scent when Marge brings it over?

Like, this is a great guest who remembers, like, the food you make, you know? I also do like that as Marge makes the excuse for Homer, like, this was good posing that she looks to the window where Homer is. And she's, you know, it shows like she's thinking of him and she's making up this lie. It's making it pretty obvious to Ned that it's a lie, too. But what is Homer doing instead of a barbecue? Well, that's in our next clip. E-5-0-5. I smell the potatoes are grattin' of Marge Simpson.

Hi, Ned. Homer sends his apologies, but there was some important work at the plant that only he could take care of. We now return you to exciting 15th round action at the Canadian Football League Draft. And so the Saskatchewan Rough Riders, who scored only four rouges all last season, Jack. Stupid Flanders. Go ahead, Marge. Have a ball. What if they came back and I was dead from not eating?

And cry their eyes out. We shouldn't ever go to the Flanders. Oh, why did we go to the flanders i'll just leave homer all alone with no food and i'd be laughing laughing from my grave it's a great understated little rant i love that homer laughing laughing from my grave well now jose with you with you here i i it's uh feels silly to explain the Canadian Football League to you, but most Americans only know the CFL as jokes, if they've heard of it at all. But what is your familiarity with the Canadian Football League? Hearing the American perspective, of course, fills me with

pride for our CFL. I mean, living in Toronto, we've, of course, had a team here, the Argos, who've been around for a very long time, won many championships. But it's always been like in Canada, there's this weird almost pride and shame mixed in something like the CFL because, I mean, the Super Bowl just happened recently. And we do have something similar with the Grey Cup here for the CFL in Canada. But it's it's not that big a spectacle. And I wouldn't be surprised if more Canadians watch the Super Bowl than the Great Cup each year. And there's always been sort of this idea that our football just isn't quite as good because the Americans aren't quite on board with it. It's an annoying thing. As a Canadian, I see this in a lot of reactions to pretty much anything

Canadian. You almost have to justify yourself to Americans before Canadians will take you seriously. And that's kind of how it feels like with the CFL in a way. In this scene, there was actually a funny joke. I don't know if either of you picked up on it when they mentioned the team, the Saskatchewan Rough Riders. Oh, I did all the research on this Rough Riders thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so like, that's one of those things

where when you hear the joke is a Canadian, I'm like, I wonder if anyone in the US is going to get why using the Rough Riders specifically is funny. No, it was, well well i only knew it as well as a joke so americans the joke from the americans perspective is that not only is you know the cfl so lesser to the nfl and all the best players from the cfl just get hired by nfl teams and all that another one was that in the 90s there were less than 10 teams in the cfl and two of them are called the rough riders and it's uh and the south park did a similar joke in 1980 98 in in their

terence and first and philip episode uh but yeah the the short version is yeah it's the ottawa and saskatchewan rough riders one is One is a Rough Riders, one word. The other is Rough Riders. And the complicated reason is because they both started as amateur clubs before the CFL was formed. And when the CFL was officially formed in 1958, neither wanted to change for the other. And I get that. It's like, you know, hey, we were the Rough Riders and we always have been. Why change for you uh but in 1996 the ottawa rough riders folded uh in 2002 ottawa got a new team called the renegades they were not

allowed to be the rough riders again when they came back they i believe there was some effort to still be the rough riders but that's what the cfl is like sorry you gave it up for six years you can't rough riders are gone so so they're the renegades uh which also starts with an r and homer's not even watching a game he's watching the draft yes yeah to make it even more uh boring for him i mean i'm not invested in any sport at all but the gray cup we need to punch up that name it's a little yeah maybe this is our ostentatious american viewpoint on it but, but where is the spectacle? A Super Bowl. That's big. Like a Grey Cup.

It sounds not as crazy. It's a bit of that Canadian humility. We don't need to fancy up our cups. We've got the Grey Cup. We've got a Stanley Cup. There's all kinds of cups. And I think Ottawa actually, they changed their name to the Red Blacks, I believe, recently. Oh, really?

Oh, interesting. And what's this? Significance is just those are the colors a lot of Ottawa teams have had, including the Rough Riders. So it's a way of referencing the Rough Riders without actually using the name. And what is this Rouges thing? I had to look that one up, too. You told me to not look it up, and I'm glad you didn't. You did, sorry. It's a very complicated thing that, again, I feel.

So the fact you need to know about the Simpsons writers, especially then, is that a majority of them were guys who paid very close attention to American football from a gambling perspective. And so these are jokes about how the CFL, what are some differences in Canadian style football in a big one is Rouge or a Rue, uh, which is all right, here's Canadian style football receiving teams are allowed to down the ball in the end zone for a touchback and

kicking the ball out of that downs through the end zone results in a touchback. And it's one point, uh, that is not the rule in, uh in uh american football you don't get a point for for a touchback in that case uh in american style football uh you just started like the 10 yard line i believe but so it's it's a point so when he has four rouges that actually sounds like a few number for a whole season of a game to get to get one of those i kind of loved hearing that explanation it's uh it's uh it's one of those really weird rules that gets debated whether or not it should be held on to and i even had to double check it myself before and coming on here and i found a lovely little clip from a game a couple

years back where it was completely tied and i forgot i think it was like bc was returning a kick and the guy caught the ball he stumbled out of bounds cost his team the whole game uh i've never seen someone lose a football game because someone slipped oh geez yeah i mean despite all the stock sitcom stuff we just spent eight minutes describing that joke so there's still some simpsonsy uh things buried in here yeah yeah i like uh that again it's one of the like the deepest uh things that for an american you you're just like, well, what is the only other than the Rough Riders thing? What's the only other big difference?

Like, oh, yeah, Rouge like that. I'll tell you the one other thing I know about Canadian Football League, and that is from a pro wrestling standpoint, because I'm a big pro wrestling fan. There are several famous pro wrestlers who were football players first, and they like failed out of the nfl and then they uh became a pro wrestler making the drinky drinky motion but well so the this the but for a lot of them including most famously the rock uh he wanted to be in nfl he then did a season in the cfl and then after that he's like you know what i'm just let's go to wrestling i'm gonna

give wrestling a shot you don't you don't get rich being uh being a canadian football league player yeah i think things worked out for him in the long run yeah probably not because he's big and famous uh playing for i don't even know what team he was on stampeters or something he definitely loves toronto i know that but i don't know if he played on the Toronto team and hey we all saw that movie read something red red uh red uh Ryan Reynolds red red red Godot yeah red notice sorry that's the name that's right Godot sorry it's not Godot we're not waiting for her I kind of want her to go away uh but also in the background uh our jokes about the the players being drafted are Kogan, Waldedarski, and Schwarzwald're all writers on the show it's it's a cute little cute little in joke there and the cfl draft

typically happens in may so that lets you know when this episode is set but yeah homer i like homer acts again like a child like a little kid going like maybe dead and then they'd all be sad and then they'd really regret it like it's uh they're they're making homer more childish every every episode and i have one quick question yes i know we've been on the cfl draft for a while but the two broadcasters wearing toupees like was that like what is that i just saw that and i remember laughing i don't know if that comes from anywhere i think that just might signify an older style of newscaster where that was very much the style at the time for aging newscasters in the 70s to just put a rug on. Now I think men are more comfortable with being bald or we don't really have toupees. We have like more advanced hair replacement technologies that can CGI your hair in or

something. You know, back in the old days, Howard Cosell can only afford that obvious rug he had and he was a famous american sportscaster so i think it's if you're from a 70s mindset of sportscaster you're thinking obvious way of toupee in the case of these guys so yeah i think i think it's just about the you know the vanity of uh professional football commentators that they don't want to admit they're going bald and they buy very obvious toupees. Okay, well, the Cassell reference, I think, works a bit more there. But yeah, thank you for answering that.

I've always wondered, is this some weird stereotype about Canadians or something? I didn't know if that was that or something else. I haven't heard a stereotype of Canadians with hair, with balding no i i also i'm stealing this from aljean but he has a good point that like homer is so hateful towards ned he at first turns down free food eventually his piggishness wins out as he's pulled in away with a with a basically a magic finger of of scent but he has too much self-control in this episode i mean later he's at the barbecue

he's eating garbage like he's eating food people left behind but it's it's also cute that homer is drawn in with this intentional like overacting eating by by bart there that that drew him in the and the and the dog over and i also just love Homer. Like what an asshole. That he like shoves past everybody. Eats. Grabs a giant pile of food. And then sits in a tree. Away from everyone.

Yeah. He grabs like seven hamburgers. And a six pack. Homer is going to be dead. I mean next season we'll see the effects. Of all of this overeating. And red meat that's true man those burgers look good though but turkey burger i'd have speaking of turkey

at first i was very distracted that there's a giant huge turkey on the table at a barbecue that is not typical barbecue fare but then i remembered the act ends with a wishbone and making a wish so that's why they i have a a feeling that's why the animators were like, well, there should be a turkey there. If they're going to be breaking a wishbone, they need, you got to have a turkey at some point. That's a plot relevant turkey. Yeah.

And here also Homer is a very proud expert of playground rules of games. You know, I'm with Bart. There should be no tag backs and electricity is only in freeze tag. That's very important to keep clear on the in in the playground rules of games the commentary for this is interesting because if you listen to it when it was new or predicted a joke they would put in a future episode

because on the commentary aljean said there was a scene in this in which homer is hearing two little girls do the miss suzy rhyme where you know miss suzy had a steamboat the steamboat had a bell miss suzy went to heaven the steamboat went to hello operator so the entire joke of the kids rhyme is about you're about to swear but you don't i don't know if kids do this anymore because i think little kids just swear all the time but the the animation came back very bad it didn't work but he would later reuse that scene for season 16's fat man and little boy so never throw anything away yeah i still think uh that you're hearing him come up with the idea live on the commentary that like Al Jean's like,

Oh, and then there's this scene and Reese has to remind him like, no, we cut that. It just didn't work. And then Al Jean, who is soul not sharing those decisions anymore with Mike Reese, 18 months after this DVD is released,

that episode aired. So I think this definitely was his realization like you know no i'm i'm in charge now i like that miss suzy joke i'm putting it in the damn episode honestly i think it's kind of a corny joke i'm glad it wasn't there you know it would take too long it does feel like a big wind-up just for homer to think little kids are about to swear though mainstream yeah i mean oh sorry i feel like i have to see that recent episode to see how it all fits together recent season 16 yeah uh you know 15 16 years ago but uh you know sometimes things are cut for a reason just because you can't put something in doesn't mean you should and i feel like these earlier episodes were a bit better and less uh

self-indulgent in that respect you know i watched that scene and yeah it's like it's it's okay but it one it has to make lisa act more childish than she normally does because she's like playing patty cake and also gives lisa a friend which is like well that not that's not at least i know uh but but then uh i mean it's posed okay but yeah it just takes kind of a while but it would it would fit in more in season 2 than 16 because season 2 you know they're still on their viral moment or one of them for simpsons was bart popularizing the batmobile jingle bells song which was also just taking a kid's playground thing and putting it in your show so i can get why you know al jean would think yeah the miss suzy song that's that's just the batmobile

lost its wheel for for the girls and uh it'll it'll be a huge hit but didn't did work so much i also like homer commenting on lie like a fly with a booger inside the fly was funny and the booger was icing on the cake which as a kid it taught me that as a kid went in on a playground many times after i heard it and And using the term icing on the cake as a way. I prefer that to gilding the lily. Icing on the cake is more, you know, gilding the lily, a little too fancy. If someone says that, I'm like, okay, college boy.

Let's reel it in a little bit. How many lilies have you actually gilded? I've frosted cakes. I've never gilded a single lily in my life. Also, to speak of graining and going back to his usual stuff on the commentary you know they're just looking at all the characters at the table which it is a lot of like the season one people mostly it's it's like other than the simpsons there it's like

four different couples who are at burns's uh picnic uh company picnic in season one the woman with the giant uh orange afro and the giant shoulder pads jean jacket uh from no disgrace like home yeah that was distracting to me because she was the one woman uh that marge talked to she was a woman bragging about all of her children and you know their accomplishments while marge was getting drunk she's very distracting she is and grating is like god these characters look like crap like especially as annoyed that their arms don't have musculature, that it is just like a tube arm, which he's not a fan of. It sounds like one of those

like very specific graining rules that must be followed. And I think they were being a little too literal about this neighborhood barbecue because I assume their thinking was, well, we can't just have like Hibbert and Wiggum

and Sideshow Mel here. It's got to be people from the neighborhood. And not everyone lives in Ned's neighborhood, the characters we know. So they're all a bunch of strangers. Martin's dad is there with some strange woman, though. Yeah, what the heck? I noticed that, too.

That's his mistress. But yeah, all these people are strangers. By season four, it'd be like, well, Krusty's here. And so is like the sea captain and comic book guy. Yeah, compare this to the barbecue homer throws his bbbq every recognizable character is there like the wigum is there you would never in season two though they would think you were crazy if like and then of course the police captain is there at the barbecue of ned's why wouldn't he be you know we have to consider that like the simpsons

are a family about town they are everywhere and in everything so if they're throwing a party they can pull a pretty big guest list whereas ned flanders you know he gets up to things but he's not quite so adventurous so that's how i like to think of it and then maybe all these people left the neighborhood shortly after this uh barbecue so we never see them again you know what they didn't invite were the winfields you think ned would have invited the winfields the other neighbors to the Simpsons at this time. But, well, you know, a message of this episode, too, is that despite the fact that most people love Ned,

if you ask him about him, he's really not good at being, at ingratiating himself to others or being memorable. Like, you're right. You would think people care enough about Ned to notice he was in trouble before Homer tells them at the end of this. But like you said, Jose, he keeps to himself pretty much. He's a very, very modest and meek man, though he could be meeker, as he says.

But yes, here was another thing. So I am not left-handed. I don't believe you are, Bob. I'm not. I am not either. Oh, man. Coming up empty here. But I mean, I knew that being left-handed was a thing as a kid, but I didn't know it was.

It's funny to just make, have a guy start a store about like, oh, don't you know how hard it is to be left-handed? Like what a silly, silly idea. But I feel so much more in common with Ned now watching him talk about quitting his office job, burning his tie and following a stupid dream like i'm like wow that's actually pretty great ned i i live i live your life now ned but probably because this would be online now this would be uh like a patreon or an etsy store or something that wouldn't amazon have killed it already at this point it would have

bought him out i think oh yeah you know they need to get a big payday then but but yes in our next clip ned introduces the concept of the left torium friends we love you all but i also have a sinister motive for asking you all you're sinister being latin for left-handed but enough joking that was a joke as of friday i'm saying toodaloo to the pharmaceutical game. Leaving? I can't believe it. What is he talking about? No, I kid you not. Here's the noose I had to wear for ten years. What are you going to do, Ned? Well, sir, like one out of every nine Americans, I'm left-handed.

And let me tell you, it ain't all peaches and cream. Your writing gets smeared. Lord help you if you want to drive a standard transmission. Amen to that. Well, sir, I'm opening up a one-stop store for Southpaws. Everything from left-handed apple peelers to left-handed zithers. Gotta call it the Leftorium. Ooh.

I just got that that's an A to Z thing. Yeah. Apple peelers to zithers. I think this is the first time, too. Yeah. And it turns out that, yeah, Matt Groening is left-handed. Mike Reese is left-handed. On the commentary, Reese says, you know, it turns out a lot of writers are left-handed.

Whenever he's in a writing room, it feels like a third of the people are left-handed. But according to my research, one out of nine people are left-handed in the world. About 10%. Interesting. We're not treating him as sinister and evil at this time. Oh, sorry. Ned says one out of nine. It's actually more like 10 more like one out of ten okay yeah but i also like uh you know when he calls it a noose i was just thinking like did i ever wear a tie i wore a tie once one day for a specific function at a job i went to but it was it was rare jobs i would

button up a shirt for it which you know that, that's why it was not management material, I think. I had one job where I was business casual. It was a temping job for about like a couple of months. And I had to wear a dress shirt that I had ironed every day and dress shoes. And I made more money than I had ever made before, like Patreon. But still, it felt like a lot of work and no one was seeing me. I was just in a cubicle all day. Ugh, man. Yeah, I've had jobs like that before thankfully not too many of them and i've never had to wear a

tie uh aside of you know like weddings or something but if i had to wear one every day i feel like that would just drive me absolutely nuts they are not comfortable it's pretty great that he calls i like him calling it a noose that's pretty great great. But I'm thinking back to like, you know, I'd hear about it again. I don't think this was a thing in any office I worked in. But in the same days as everyone, like everyone's got to wear a tie. It was like all the women have to wear pantyhose. And I'm just like, man, that sucks. That doesn't suck to have to do a shitty job all day also wearing that.

You can't wear comfortable pants but uh but yeah this ned quitting his job for a for a dream and to follow a dream i it's hard not to love that and i also when he says pharmaceutical job as a kid i imagined he was like the local pharmacist and now he's not doing it anymore but as an adult now i'm like no with all the stuff he has he had to be like some exact salesperson or something at a pharmaceutical company like a guy who sells uh you know gives out the free pens that have name of the pill oh yeah doctors my mom was a nurse i had so many free pens and notepads it was great and uh yeah then homer i also like that homer he sees sinister meaning left-handed like and how he ned laughs at himself i love that he hates the courtiness of that clever joke like that's so

great uh oh yeah so there i looked this up uh i think we knew this last time i wanted to get an update on it there is a left-handed store in where we live in san francisco it's called lefties it's a specialty store on pier 39 in the embarcadero so in the big you know touristy area of san francisco near the market street and surprisingly it is still open i was i was sure i was gonna read it was closed it is open for business today in 2022 it's crazy that is shocking yeah san francisco a couple years back and i remember seeing that exact store and like kidding myself for not taking a photo i'm like a left-handed store for real i would have went in but it was closed at the time it was pretty late in the evening i think as a kid i was only made

aware of left-handed people because some kids in the class got the left-handed scissors like you knew who was left-handed in your class scissors yeah knew the left-handed scissors. Yeah, I did. You're right. As a little kid, I saw left-handed scissors like, who the hell is this for? Yeah. Though notebooks, no. I never saw those, which you can buy both those scissors and notebooks at Lefty's. I saw it on their online stores. Well, you can buy them online, too, if you want. I think for a while, they did try to keep this consistent by who is left-handed.

But if you look at the end of this show, every character you've met so far is left-handed, it feels like. But I still feel like they try to keep this consistent by who is left-handed but if you look at the end of this show every character you've met so far is left-handed it feels like but i still feel like they try to keep burns left-handed i think definitely ned and barn and yeah i think you're right with burns but i don't think mo and barney have stayed left-handed yeah i don't think so barney was only stealing left-handed privilege oh you're right he just bought this shirt for barney yeah but uh but yes uh it's this again is very sweet like as as a kid i would thought ned is annoying and homer's funny at least in this episode as an adult i see like homer is just a true asshole and ned is only nice and he even despite how mean homer has been already to him, Ned actually comes up to Homer and wants Homer's insight and approval on it.

He's like, I'm dying to know what you think, Homer. I'm like, geez, really? What do you care about this dick? Homer does. I mean, sorry, Ned doesn't read any ill intent in anything Homer says or does. He's like, oh, it's my buddy Homer. And he's funny sometimes, you know, but he means well. Oh, I wish.

Like, yeah. Then he says, I think it's pretty stupid. my buddy homer and he's he's funny sometimes you know but oh i wish like yeah then he said i think it's pretty stupid and ned just takes it as like well yeah it is going to be a lot of hard work he feels like not eating he goes to an unfinished burger then ned shows up and he's like puts his hand away i go i was gonna eat that and then as he's talking to ned then he does just pick it up and he goes like now i'm gonna eat this somebody don't care. It's only a couple bites. I'm going to finish. Homer has eaten like five pounds of ground chuck at this event. He's definitely sweating while he eats in this case.

Yeah. But yes, they are offered up a wishbone by Maude. Homer first imagines a lot of thing, which is funny. We just had the Super Bowl to date this recording. The Super Bowl was yesterday. And I did chuckle at seeing President Simpson win Super Bowl. That's a good headline. It's funny. At this point, again, they're being kind of literal about things.

So when Homer has a dream sequence, you literally see the thought bubble. We just had that with Blood Feud, where the thought bubble comes out of his head as he strangling Burns, and then it turns into him squeezing syrup onto pancakes. I think in the future, they would just cut to the fantasy without the thought bubble around it they would trust the viewers enough to know this is what homer's thinking totally totally i also noticed in his fantasies the spring shield shopper is free which makes me think i always thought it was like you know a paper you would pay for but i guess it's one of those like free circulars and uh or maybe his fantasy is not having to pay a quarter for this i think it is a free uh

low quality newspaper i i always think it is free but i bet i i'm sure it's been bought at some point in the show but yeah i think i think it is usually a a freebie thing but yeah so ned then finally gets homer to focus on the wish he'd make and you know what in the past i certainly had some negative wishes against other people and i still kind of do sometimes but seeing it through homer's eyes i'm like boy this is this kind of a shitty way to live to just like oh you're just living to hope something bad happens to somebody else like it's not it's not the most happy way to live i prefer just uh periodic installments of schadenfreude where you're living your life happily and then you're checking in on people you dislike are they still

failing all right sure sure doing that every six months or so yeah yeah yeah i definitely know the feeling it's like there's a special joy when you know someone is terrible and you find out that they are now failing after succeeding there's like a special feeling about that but it's not it's not a way i can live my life every day it's not it's not a way i can live my life every day it's like it's a pleasant surprise i might come across one day it's a special wine you savor every now and then you know but if you drank wine every day it wouldn't be good for you uh but uh but yes homer uh speaking of things not being good for you homer nearly dies in this next clip.

Too far. Okay, ready. Yes! Oh, yes! Read it and weep! In your face, I've got more chicken bones! What'd you wish for, Homer? No, no, no, don't say.

Otherwise, it won't come true. Ooh, that would be a shame. What is that plan, Dick? that's such a funny scene but that's where the fade to black happens i feel like there was so much of the animation they couldn't save so the rest of it plays out over darkness which is just weird yeah yeah it's weird i the only other thought if it wasn't a problem with the animation they don't mention why it fades out then uh but if it wasn't a problem with the animation, they don't mention why it fades out then. But if it wasn't a problem with the animation, then it would have been that the Fox sensors are like, you can't show Homer spit it out of his mouth.

That's too gross. Like that, that'd be my only other guess on why it fades out. But I, I would bet it's the, the animation quality, the Dan Castaneda re reading these lines with just a mouthful of something and just eating the mic, especially on water. And it fl the animation quality. The Dan Castellaneta reading these lines with just a mouthful of something

and just eating the mic, especially on Warden of Flanders. Yes, yeah. That's good. I have like a vague memory of this. I'm going to go out on a limb here. I don't know if this is true or if it's one of those like artificial memories,

but I do remember it not fading out when Homer was choking. And what I distinctly remember is seeing something lodged in Homer's throat, like a square-ish shape. So when I was choking. And what I distinctly remember is seeing something lodged in Homer's throat, like a square shape. So when I was rewatching this again, a few days ago, I was just kind of like, I was just thinking to myself, like, don't we see something here? Because I know when they put this in syndication, they cut it even earlier where you don't even see his face change colors. So I don't know if this is like my memory playing tricks on me or if like

that was the bit that was cut out maybe when it first aired or what, but definitely feel like you can tell there's something clearly missing there. You know, I was, I know that Phantom Limb kind of feeling with this, but I definitely remembered watching it in syndication and seeing it cut earlier. And that's what I remember. But then I couldn't recall if I was getting it mixed up with seeing something actually fall out of his mouth we're getting mixed up with in the softball episode Homer is choking to death on a donut and

you see everything fall out yeah it could be it's like one of those tricky things right because there's it feels like especially when you watch these episodes over and over in different circumstances everything just kind of gets swished around in your head because like there's the syndication versions then there's like the ones they put on dvd and then there's like what is what is my memory of this episode now it's just i guess whatever the most recent one i saw was and then if you you know then there's the disney plus way of doing things too which i think those are pretty much just what's on the dvd and in basically all cases so long as you switch the viewpoint to uh the the correct four three ratio they are what's on the dvd but they ran the dnvr process over them so they look a lot worse so the

dvds are still the best version of these episodes they've not been like uprezzed or remastered or anything you can see all the shitty line weight issues in this episode crystal clear yes i also think you know again think about this that homer just imagined like ned dead and he's like yeah you know what too far but i still want him to lose everything and then ned saves his life like homer would have died if ned didn't save him from choking and and homer's still a dick the for the next like eight minutes of this show but yes jose i'm glad you pointed out the syndication thing because yeah there's some fuzzier memories in it and i also thought maybe that syndication cut came because like i normally would think grating would hate homer changing all those colors but then on the commentary he actually is like oh i

love this joke this is so funny so i mean it is kind of cartoony the colors he changes into but people's faces do change colors when they choke they broke a rule but it turns out it was so funny that they let it be broken then we come back from break it's an itchy and scratchy short oh solo meow uh and they joke on the commentary that this is john vd talking about his his italian heritage threat i love the background is the italian flag that's a really clever little thing in there for for what's really a very simple itchy and scratchy yeah i mean uh bob we've talked about this before but i was a little fat kid watching tv all day and

this episode really came at me as i was watching it with my mom in the same room and later marge chastises your parents yes out loud it really i wonder what my mom was thinking in that moment you know what do you think like oh should i do this or i also i i did find a cell of bart laughing with his big gun and marge looking on but i was like too rich for my blood but i i was tempted by it but but yes uh bart is asked about television in our next clip how many hours a day do you watch tv six seven there's something good on don't you think you should get a little fresh air and maybe some exercise yeah but what are you gonna do march tv gives so much and adds so little. It's a boy's best friend. That's the problem.

Even as we speak, millions of children are staring at the TV instead of getting some much-needed exercise. Those children's parents should be ashamed of themselves. Hello, I am Akira. That didn't hurt very much because I know the ancient art of karate. Karate focuses the mind and gives one the self-confidence people from all walks of life doctors

homemakers landscape architects Choreographers ha hi karate at low low prices. I cannot tell a lie this is a great deal oh hey mom how about if i learn karate will that make you happy that sounds fine bart see mart you knocked tv and then it helped you out i think you owe somebody a little apology yeah i mean uh this this spoke to me too because i did live the bart lifestyle at this time in my life i'd get home from school around three uh latchkey kid uh my parents would get home at five so from around three to nine or ten it would just be television and what else was i supposed to do i mean honestly what else what else could i have done not karate class no my parents were too busy

working to take me to anything and i assume they didn't want to have to sit through like you know exhibitions or whatever and i don't blame them i didn't play any of these sports or do any of these things yeah yeah who wants that now say yes i have similar parents disinterested in stuff and also very busy uh as as well with two both both having jobs but uh you know now my seven daily hours of tv you know it's interspersed with about five to five hours that is just phone time uh lesser tv time it's more like three hours of tv a day with seven of phone time in my time to look at big screen okay now back to small screen yeah hell what if i put the small screen in front of the big screen i can look at that twitter while also the the youtube videos on tv really is living the dream huh but know, like it worked out for some of us.

I lived that life of watching too much TV. And like now I do that and people listen to me talk about it. So that shows you, Marge, I guess. Yeah, all the college I went to didn't do anything for me. Just put me in horrible debt. Watching all that television. Now it's paying off. Finally.

We've both told our moms this now. The same thing. But we can come back at our moms like see that seven hours was worth it mom you you shouldn't have worried thank you for not having time for me it wasn't her fault but oh sorry i want to go over this high karate thing because we did it last time but i i looked more into it so uh the the joke is high karate at low low prices so uh high karate was an after aftershave sold in like the 60s to the 80s, like this 20 year period. And it was like part of the joke was, you know, it's from the Orient.

It's so mystical and magical. But also it was sort of like the axe effect before axe body spray, where the joke was you will need to fight off women. They will be so attracted to you when you spray this stuff on. Sorry, when you put the aftershave on so i have a little commercial here i think it's a british ad for but you'll get the point this is high karate aftershave if a man uses too much he's asking for trouble and usually finds it because just one whiff drives women wild makes men irresistible. Fortunately, every pack of high karate contains indispensable instructions on self-defense. High karate aftershave.

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or something, this nebbish man is being pursued by a giant busty woman through a department store. It's everyone's nightmare. I have it every night. It does seem to imply the guy's trying karate moves to fight her off as well. And at the end, she pushes him down into a bed. Yes, a Murphy bed that goes up. And so they've got some privacy. Yeah, it definitely implies that

it's dangerous to high karate will turn on ladies too much and they'll they'll want you too badly and lose all sense which yeah it's uh that also just seems like illegal advertising like that's just a lie like i mean well so was x yeah it's true that's true yeah i want to know the people this works on where they see that like hmm maybe maybe i will try this one out well especially in the 70s you're just like well you know the secrets of the orient it must be true yeah that's me 70s i believe there's probably a lot of talk in the air about aphrodisiacs like women love it when you spray this on yourself or they they the scent of this drives them crazy it was the the era of Spanish fly as well. Yeah. And then on top of that, I also love that this commercial makes it that, well, you know,

we have this Akira character who was a waiter. I'm sure he's a karate expert too and he runs his own karate place. That's fine. That's the same. Let's not call George Takai back. Yeah. It's funny. I have this theory now because uh you know akira was the waiter at the sushi restaurant plays by george takai here it is

hank azaria doing a sulu impression for uh the season three episode uh and then he comes back again in um brother can you spare two dimes as the chair salesman so i think he was they were going to do a lot of like um akira runs various Japanese style businesses in Springfield. I think that was going to be the runner. And then they were going to have George Takei be in the Monorail episode, but he didn't want to because they're disparaging public transit. So I think they wanted Takei like in all of their seasons. Which I'm on Takei's side now, you know uh don't disparage public tram the montreal episode is the funniest ever but it set back american public transit by decades making people fear it yeah i i completely

agree it's a i'm kind of glad that in some ways akira is also a character that's kind of faded away definitely of its time and i mean unless they can get georgei to do the voice, it seems a little not great. You know, in other episodes for one-off Japanese characters, half the time they got a Japanese voice for it. Like, often Sab Shimono was the main actor they'd get. But yeah, it was only recently in the last year that the recurring character of Yumiko was actually cast with a Japanese-American actress instead of Tress McNeil. Instead of a white lady in her 60s. Yes. Yeah. And yeah,

Takei would not come back until 30 minutes over Tokyo where he played Wink. So he was not on the show for a long time after his first appearance. But yes, it's instead Master of Accents Hank Azaria is doing his thing. So I caught one extra joke this time. So Jose mentioned bad wigs. This is another bad wig on the George Washington actor where his real hair is poking through the wig. That is a good joke. But the joke I notice is when he says,

I cannot tell a lie. This is a great deal. You can see his digital watch on his hand. Oh, that's good. I missed that. That is good. So it's a fun anachronism. Oh, sorry, Jose.

Oh, no, I was just agreeing. That was didn't uh i didn't pick up on that one and uh you know ten dollars in 1990 for per karate class i think that is a great deal i was paying 10 bucks per guitar lesson in like 1998 so pretty reasonable uh and all the blocks of ice uh also again i laugh at the uh choreographers hall like very uh well it isn't a little homophobic sure but i uh there was one other staging joke i really like this time that i i missed that marge is telling bart like you know bart you're you're really could get some exercise and don't be lazy on the couch then hober walks in with a beer in his hand and stands right next to bart also very fat. And it's just the statement of like, oh, who's the one defending TV?

The fat guy with the beer saying like, no, my little fat kid doesn't need this. They're kind of finally pointing out in the show like, oh, yeah, every male character with the upside down light bulb body is fat. Yes. Yeah. Better than me. But this is one of the first times they personify the tv to refer to it as bart's best friend i think this is the first time i mean in the way we was the you know they're really tv obsessed but i think this is the first time where homer tells someone to apologize to the tv

yeah it's true yeah that would lead to jokes like uh good old tv you'll never you laugh with me not at me and then the tv laughs you're so stupid yeah homer gives a big hug and kiss uh though you know what in season one i i do recall there was maggie does hug the tv right it is but that personifies a two degree but yeah jose i believe you're right this is the first time homer talks directly to the television as a person yes and akira is really misrepresenting this karate class because on his commercial he's portraying everyone's superficial idea of karate in 1991. You're like you're breaking boards. You're breaking, you know, ice blocks.

Someone is pounding on a giant ice block while it's sitting on your chest. All of these, you know, movie ideas about karate or karate. That's what he's advertising. But when you get to this class it's about learning like philosophy which though i mean what he is trying to teach bart is i i laugh later as as he does the lesson to him uh that bart says he doesn't want to learn stuff and then he is later bullying people lisa mainly with it like it is what akira wanted him to know like you should even you do need to learn how to not use karate because if you abused it then it you'd be a bad

person but uh that's uh yeah i mean handing a kid a giant book of uh the the art of war i i can understand why part quit i would have i would have done the same thing also this uh mall karate thing it is i do like that it pairs up the a and b story as well you know they it's a mall it's karate taught in the mall by the leftorium so it gives homer an excuse not that later they wouldn't even think of like yeah homer just goes to the mall five times this week like whatever and checks in on on the head it's yeah it's homer saying you know well i'm part of this b story let's check out on the a story what's going on with this a story they were so you know season two they're so obsessed with the mall like not that they didn't go to the mall after this but like you know in

bart's dog gets an f it's all about the multiple trips to the mall for the shoe store and the big cookie and blood feud is settled by burns walking around stores in the mall and eventually buying an olmec head and this there was just this general interest in like what's the deal with these specialty stores at the mall who are these people i have to wonder if the ladder barn or tongs are uh stayed open longer than the leftorium did that's a good background because we can see it across from the karate place and then a few scenes later we see it on another level of the mall. So yeah,

they have to look, I may know that people were really buying tongs in the early nineties. So they have so many uses. Also, as Bart starts this class, I, I was reminded of a year after this, there would be a Butterfinger ad.

That is the actual vision of what you would want to see in this of Bart doing karate uh he's in the class with Akira Akira is still in his area Akira is treating Bart with less respect and he steals his Butterfinger and the losing his Butterfinger finally gets Bart to actually out karate him and beat him in a martial arts battle. And because it's a rough draft 30 second commercial, it's a level of animation better than a regular episode of The Simpsons. Oh, those look so good. Yeah. And I checked in with my wife.

The scrolls in the background of the karate class say Akira roams Neo Tokyo. So they're referencing the movie Akira, probably not even on VHS in America at this point that's awesome man that's so cool I do you think it's the do you think it was the American background team that drew that in there I'm guessing the background

artist or someone I don't think anyone overseas was doing it I feel like there are a lot of anime nerds on the staff at Chupo back then yeah it's true wow wow you have to be really plugged into the scene to to be aware of akira and like i mean this must have gone into production in like 1990 yeah yeah it's uh i think streamline maybe would have put out there well i didn't see akira vhs is anywhere until the early 90s yeah you had to be pretty uh close to the scene then uh which i've i've heard it before there was that great bit in the uh in another episode where they

mentioned uh in the in the animator only commentary they're like oh yeah the way the smoke moves here i wanted to base it on that scene in ninja scroll and i was like wow really you guys are thinking of of ninja scroll and animating smoke on the simpsons these guys were way ahead of their time i just looked this up the vhs streamline release of akira was may of 91 this episode is uh october of 91 it definitely was drawn before may of 91 that background so yeah and that is then that is a very these nerds probably saw like an la screening of akira or something like that. Well, thank you, Nina, for translating that for us.

I also like on the commentary, Gene, is that we head into the leftorium. I like that Al Jean brings up the like nuts and bolts of it of, wow, to just open this story, like Ned must have lost like a million dollars just on inventory alone or like at least a hundred thousand, like to have all that stuff and not just the car of course but like all the stuff building a sign and you know the counters and display racks and all of that stuff yeah but uh but yes homer checks in on ned's store in our next clip so flanders have you sold anything uh not yet but but one of them all security guards took a good long look at a left-handed ice cream scoop.

Greetings. I am Akira, your guide on the path to true karate. And this is our map, the Art of War by Sun Tzu. It will teach us our most important lesson. We learn karate so that we need never use it. Um, excuse me, sir. I already know how not to hit a guy. Can we break out the nunchucks? Ah, yes, the impetuousness of youth. For now, let us read. Akira, my good man, when do we break blocks of ice with our heads?

First you must fill your head with wisdom. Then you can hit ice with it. Yo, sensei, can I go to the bathroom? You can, if you believe you can. Paying money to read books. Pfft. The hell with this. Bart was stealing Homer's short-lived catchphrase, the hell with this. You're right. Yeah, man.

I love that phrase, the hell with this. But I love Bart. Bart is so funny there in his like, you know, I already know how to not hit a guy. It's funny.

That's pretty good. I have some leftorium info. Now, you see, Ned opens his store store it stays open it's a big success but they kind of forget about it it does not come up again until season six when they're all in the bomb shelter and homer says i know what we won't need in the future left-handed stores that's you flanders so it's only mentioned once they don't even say the leftorium in that episode and then in season eight bill oakley and josh weinstein big fans of big fans of season three

they put it in both hurricane netty and in march we trust because in hurricane netty it's looted and the only thing that's looted yes yes that's true and in march we trust that's when uh he's menaced by teens in the lectorium right so yeah the same one stealing pinking shears this ned's mistake is well one he's taking advantage of like that woman instantly when he sees his forgiving nature. She just goes like, well, will you validate my parking with no purchase? Of course. Yeah. But his other problem is, you know, so many in the crowdfunding world need to remember this.

Promote your business, guys. It's important. You can't just count on word of mouth to spread. This thing about getting your parking validated was so bizarre to me as a kid. And where I lived for a long time, parking was ample. There was never too much parking. I mean, everyone could just park wherever they wanted. So you didn't need to prove that you bought something at the mall to get your parking validated.

You could just park anywhere in the giant lot, go in, but do nothing, buy nothing, and then leave. And it was fine. Yeah, I didn't understand that either. In all my days in malls, there's never been an issue with parking or needing to validate parking for anything. I just assumed this was something that happened in certain parts of the U.S. It's certainly an L.A.-based joke, that's for sure. Like, you're paying to park wherever you go. And, I mean around around here

parking is not ample in the bay area where we record no but probably the first time i saw parking validation was when i came to the big city here and in san francisco was like oh this is that's like a ned simpsons episode that ned did that's what i said the first time i saw severe tire damage spikes yeah same deal just like on tv you know to go back to that super bowl that happened again i was hearing that people were paying like a thousand dollars to park in in the area near because it was in los angeles this year the super bowl like and that some people were like renting out their lawns of like hey park on my lawn a thousand bucks or whatever if you want to park anywhere near the stadium in the the sofi stadium i hope that's not per

axle man maybe that happens all the time in la people renting out their lawns for parking that's uh but yeah the i also yes paying money to read books that's a great line uh and the simpsons once again inventing fatalities uh because super slug fest in season one had fatalities so does this mortal combat comes out in october of 92 in arcades this is october of 91 so uh he just did a fatality on that man he charges up for a touch of death and kills them and not only that when later when he says rip a guy's heart out and show it to him before he dies. That's Kano's fatality. I thought Kano wins. Yeah.

It's amazing. Some part of me thinks that I couldn't find this in any retrospective on Mortal Kombat. And I looked up a couple. But you got to think they were watching The Simpsons and were thinking of this. I mean, though, Simpsons and Mortal Kombat are also stealing from the same same place which is the jean-claude van damme movie blood sports uh which i don't know if you guys have seen that or seen it recently i watched it recently again it's uh is a fun ridiculous movie that is not about the it is about the uh kumite uh battle and it does have the death punch like the the punch that kills a guy thing that uh the jcvd was taught in the movie i learned a funny thing on the behind the scenes on that movie uh the bloodsport that he plays this guy frank dukes who's a real guy so it's like this autobiographical

thing and the guy is like the biggest liar of all time that this guy that basically and for the 30 years after bloodsport came out has been disproving everything he said that bloodsport is based on like bloodsport based on a real story and his story was well i will of course was a secret black ops killer for the navy seals and then i was in china invited to a secret fighting event that definitely happens. And I was the first white guy to ever win there. And I was undefeated. And my record was like 75 and 0 in the Kumite. And I've got a friend who was there with me.

And he says it happened. And they made Bloodsport the movie based on that. And at the end of Bloodsport the movie, Frank Dukes' fighting record is on screen. Like, Frank Dukes really did do this in his fighting record. Even all these magazines proved to him, like, they're like, we could find no record of his military service. There's no proof of the Kumite ever happening. Did it say in the movie, like, based on actual events? Yes, yeah.

Frank Dukes is, like, co-writer of the film. Yes. be like based on actual events yes yeah frank dukes is like co-writer of the film yes it's ned flanders could learn how to promote his store the way this guy promotes his uh fictitious life yeah for him would have done better ned flanders if he's copying copying the frank dukes way his first thing is to put out ads in soldier of fortune about how cool you are again this was back in the day of like in the pre-internet days you could just write a book that said i of course went to japan and learned all the secrets of ninjutsu and i'm going to sell them to you in this book send away for it like you had that was a legitimate business pre-internet

pre-ufc you had no way to contact a japanese person to find out if it was true yep yeah that's it same that's like how the ultimate fighting championship also ruined all these things like blood sport made you think like oh yeah i i learned karate kid stuff from the master and over time you saw like well now the guys who win at ufc are in the first ones were guys who do not look like jean-claude van damme they're wiry scrawny like five five guys who are masters of brazilian jiu-jitsu and twist your ass up like that's who wins the ufc but anyway i also then play i always loved as a kid seeing them play video games yeah that's always fun and recognition finally yes finally they know kids play video

games then uh the scene ends with bart laughing and it starts with homer laughing in the next scene as the world learns uh a german word that definitely I don't think anyone in America would know if not for this scene in The Simpsons. I'm telling you, Flanders store was deserted. So what do you think of your bestest buddy now, Marge? Dad, do you know what schadenfreude is? No, I do not know what schadenfreude is. Please tell me because I'm dying to know. It's a German term for

shameful joy, taking pleasure in the suffering of others. Oh, come on, Lisa. I'm just glad to see him fall flat on his butt. He's usually all happy and comfortable and surrounded by loved ones and it makes me feel... What's the opposite of that shameful joy thing of yours? Sour

grapes. Boy, those Germans have a word for everything. So, Bart, what did you learn in karate school today? Yeah, come on, boy. This better be worth my ten bucks. Uh, I learned the touch of death. Ooh, the touch of death. Permit me to demonstrate. Lisa, shut your eyes.

Soon you will be at peace. Hey, quit it, Bart. Quit it. Hey, quit it, quit it, quit it, quit it. Mom! Bart, don't use a touch of death on your sister. That's a good line by Barnes. Yeah, it's a good one-liner.

I think she doesn't trust this is an actual technique. Well, you can really make out the noisy eating sounds and the silverware scraping against the plates when it's isolated. It's real ASMR. Simpsons ASMR. Cut those all together. I like to do that.

Homer thinks sour grapes is a german word as well but yeah i would never have heard of schadenfreude ever is if it weren't for simpsons like they i i think they correctly say on the commentary they're like yeah if you hear anybody say that now it's because we popularize the term in in the u.s i was just gonna say i have no reason to doubt them i don't it's one of those many things i feel like i picked up for watching the simpsons chock full of little lessons like that for a little bit of trivia more accurately it seems like it definitely a harvard you know like the harvard students would know that as a snotty thing to say you laugh you learn new vocabulary they've got it all the simpsons i also love

homer's delivery of like please tell me because i'm dying to know again like sarcasm was new we're just playing with it like what if somebody said something they didn't mean uh though now i take that as like that's pretty shitty if homer did say that to his eight-year-old daughter like that's a real dick the uh i also love like lisa shut your eyes soon you will be at peace great... Oh, yeah, Homer was really having fun with sarcasm because in Blood Feud, he was like, I loved what you sent me, Mr. Burns. That's right.

We were so happy to get it. In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic. That's right, God, you're right. He did that in writing, though. Yeah. Another great cut I love in re-watching this now is that it cuts from that scene just to Scratchy screaming!

Just like, ah! Just on fire screaming just such such a great cut and uh i feel like writers didn't write these jokes i feel like they were made by the animation team these are not actually the names of the many koreans who make the show these are all made up names and the the funny in quotes thing is the simpsons does not include any of these people's names. It says overseas animation by ACOM. That's like a hundred people who work on the show. You're never going to see their names. But I have, I have a few of the crazy credits that are in this little credit sequence. So we have in this itchy and scratchy fast paced credit sequence, we have some funny, funny titles of things, mobile medical unit, trauma staff on call. These are like the headers that names are beneath them.

So that's one of them. We also have arson control, bomb squad, and fire prevention team. We have one credit. Itchy and Scratchy show a theme performed by Zeke Moonglow. We have catering for the director is Chez Mystique French Cuisine. Catering for the staff, Krusty Burger. Scratchy's entrails provided by Alistair Biological Supply Incorporated. Toxic waste supplied by Springfield Nuclear Facility., and itchy's blood by Rodent Gut Limited.

Wow, man. I'm pulled in by just the names you first see, which seem to be Korean names, but I never paused and checked all those things. So that implies that it's a real show and not a cartoon in this world yeah you know what pausing for all of those jokes wasn't worth it at all none of you laughed at home and could you imagine you know i like that the crusty burger that the staff got crusty burger and the the execs got i feel like that's a joke by uh by the lower class dudes who shove out the animation i also like bart has now fully recreated his home life like he's on the same couch eating chips again and watching itchy and scratchy while pretending to exercise as mart has to rush back to karate it's a real ferris bueller kind of thing which i'm glad there's no music behind it i think it plays better if they had done like a copy of oh yeah over it or whatever

that would be lame you know it feels like that they were trying i mean i don't know this uh you know uh i don't know the behind the scenes of this but it feels like they there was probably some song they were trying to clear because it just oddly plays out over not silence but just sound effects just bart mischief running through the mall like running up the down escalator running through this kitchen um running past the guy having phone sex right one of the bar flies. You know, a lot of those sound effects feel so extra that it definitely seems like they had laid it out with a song over it and no sound effects. And it makes the sound effects more noticeable.

But I kind of like it. You know, it'd just be corny. That's more of a family guy thing to just be like, yeah, it's Ferris Bueller. play the ferris bueller song over it because just to make sure people know know what we're referencing and a few signs i caught in the background that are very hard to see are when bart first leaves the store and runs out of it past the group of people we see the indoor soccer hall of fame that's a really funny joke good i like that and also a less funny joke i can't believe it's flannel yeah yeah and that's about it i prefer i can't believe it's flannel. Yeah. And that's about it. I prefer I can't believe it's a law firm. Now that's yeah.

Maybe took the same space up with it. All of him and his smokies. It only plays part of a sign. Yeah. It saves the money. Saves the money on the side. Just, you know, put it's flannel over. Sorry.

It's a law firm over. It's flannel. You got a new store. It's it's nice little pacing. And Bart runs in and instantly comes out to meet homer and he describes kano's fatality to him uh and this is you know what i'm glad that it's not super needed but the bullies here show that the store is too crappy to even shoplift from they don't even care you need to see the bullies here i guess to set up the bullies that'll so they show up later

in the in the start of the third oh right i like i just naturally know who they are so it's like oh i guess they need to be introduced to the audience uh yeah jimbo dolphin kearney's still pretty new it's so new in fact that jimbo's got his uh tress mcneil voice here it's jimbo if you're wondering like jimbo doesn't sound right that's's because Pamela Hayden typically does Jimbo, but Tress McNeil does him in this episode. And Pamela Hayden voices Dolph in this scene. Dolph is normally, Dolph is Tress McNeil, Jimbo is Pamela Hayden, and Kearney is Nancy Cartwright. So they traded roles for this scene. Wow.

It's all over the place in season two. Sorry, season three. I think by four they figured it out, but they still get it wrong sometimes. But really, they just appear at the start of an incredibly important scene in simpsons history well not really would you swipe and i love lefty shot glass left-handed pinking chairs thinking shears let's go to the food court and steal some baked potatoes hey flanders what are your busy hours, I expect things to start picking up soon. I think word of mouth is starting to spread.

Hey, I hear you validate parking tickets without purchase. Oh, right as rain. Or as we say around here, left as rain. Just stamp the ticket. What a great line reading. And yes, it's the debut of Just Stamp the Ticket Guy, who would have a few important roles in seasons like one through six as a very sarcastic, encaustic guy who would either punch you in the face or singing a song about the sun or tell you that you should have been at work earning money to buy tickets instead of sleeping in line. Things like that. Yeah. He's so funny.

Like just his line to Marge about at the swap meet of saying like i i don't think my son or daughter is that stupid yes that's so good like yeah he's doesn't appear enough he should be i think just stamp the ticket guy should be on the level of uh bronson voice man uh rafael uh and and a big thank you to YouTuber TheRealGyms who does all these great Simpsons character histories but his one on Just Stamp the Ticket, Man, is a really, really good one including showing the one that we've talked about before

but in the spinoff showcase, he is used in his classic fashion of being like a sarcastic guy and I think it only got cut for time because it's a good joke. They wouldn't have cut it because it's not funny is it him asking the questions like why are you dressed up like it's the 70s yes why why are you doing a 70s spinoff show it's really kind of out of date yeah he's he's then cut from the audience also i learned from that real jim's video that the last time he had like any kind of impact was in the crappy episode lisa goes gaga

the lady gaga episode that nobody likes he's he's one of the people holding up his phone to spell out gaga or whatever oh good for him yeah yeah i think he was definitely replaced by the branson uh voice guy sorry bronson voice guy and i think if i want to get uh you know a script on the simpsons in like season 35 i want to write the just stamp the ticket guy story yeah what's his life like are his tickets stamped every day still now that we've moved on to smartphone apps like what's going on with him uh i love his i love our code yeah just show me that qr code no i just love the ned so he's having such a good time he's like as we say around here left is right just stamp the ticket yeah he goes okay all right no

no time for this cutesy bullshit yeah it's so good uh yeah ned not selling anything then another great like they're really good at starting scenes with good memorable shots like barney slowly emptying his his beer stein and you see his face through the bottom of it and then he puts it down like that's a great scene starter. I love that. And it's early enough that most is serving wine. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's strange,

isn't it? Well, later that bottle of wine will give ever supply everyone with drinks in that store. So it's a bottomless bottle of wine. I mean, that's why he doesn't need left-handed bottle openers now is because he never opens a bottle of wine,

but it's a, you know, again, listeners Homer should be spreading the word about Nana. now is because he never opens a bottle of wine but it's you know again listeners homer should be spreading the word about nan and that shows you the importance that if you like a podcast for instance or youtube videos tell your friends about it and spread the word better yet take their phones away from them and subscribe to us on their podcast app of choice and then sell them on the patreon that's the right guy yeah that's the right move i like uh like your style and expanding your audience like that you got to be active you got to really go for

it but yeah i uh i like i love homer's stance of like you'd have a great job if you didn't know the place uh and then it's also like never in life do you ever see anybody complaining about a left-handed whatever and now homer sees it all of the time he's given ever every opportunity it's like the first time you hear a word uh you hear it everywhere after that like schadenfreude yeah and so yes they uh we get a quick scene of bart bullying lisa to change the channel this this also feels very dated and then like they don't have a clicker or whatever they just they're like lisa has to get up off the couch to change the channel. You're dating yourself, Grandpa. A clicker? Well, I'm saying it in the old way that they'd say it.

You know what? In my household, it was called the scanner. The scanner. Isn't that weird? No, we would have said past the remote. Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely a remote household here. I don't know why it was called a scanner. I used that in front of a girlfriend, and then she was like, what is a scanner?

What the fuck? Yeah, and she left me. Not that day, but. It was that night was that night oh oh dear she immediately started packing uh then we cut to another hilarious scene of like there's just something funny about homer looking at apples over and over again just in a cycle that's just so funny first there wasn't enough tartar sauce now there's too many apples yeah and only apples bring food from home yeah yeah well you know marge just makes some of those bologna sandwiches and never with a double bologna the way he likes it you know yeah he should well at this point i guess they are not buying as many

donuts it's it's not yet the homer who uh who buys donuts a bunch but or who just takes it in the bathroom and eats it by himself yeah and they always find room for burns in this time of the show this period of the show and it's funny because uh in blood feud there was a scene of burns reading to homer a letter homer wrote to him in his office and getting mad about it yeah so it's a very similar scene yes i've i've got it here as burns as burns helps a cat that is never seen again i i have to think burns either killed this cat or smithers gave it away or took it for his own safety but i was really happy to see burns having a cat i miss that cat such a it's got this cute little derpy face when we see it with its

tongue sticking out and i don't know maybe it's too cute to be with someone like mr burns like he needs uh his like little tarantula town. Those are, that's a Burns cat. Was it supposed to make him like a Blofeld or something? Yeah, I bet you it is a Blofeld type deal too. It's the same kind of cats, isn't it? Yeah, for the last time I watched that movie, I'm pretty sure it's the same cat.

Yeah, I always think of it as a white cat, not even just for Blofeld, but that Dr. Evil has Mr. Bigglesworth is at first a big fluffy white cat before the flash freezing that happens. But yes, this one, Burns is talking about apples and cans. Oh, look, Smithies. Another member of our nuclear family with some helpful suggestions. And what's your name?

Homer Simpson, sir. Simpson, eh? Mm-hmm. I'm Monty Burns. Keep that handsome owner out of sight. He's distracting the female employees. Smithers. Got me, sir. Oh, it's a real one.

No more apples in the vending machine, please. Well, that's almost a sentence. Can I leave, Mr. Burns? Oh, of course, and don't worry. There'll be plenty of apples for you. Nobody will take away your precious apples. But the note was asking you to... No, no, no.

Tell my secretary I said you could have a free apple. She'll make everything all right, I promise. Damned infernal gizmo. My kingdom for a left-handed can opener. Uh, Mr. Burns? Come on, Homer. Tell him about the store. I'm dying out here.

Sorry, Flanders. It's so great. You know, even at this point, the runner has happened enough that he's like, Simpson, eh? Nice to meet you. Like, even Homer is like, Homer Simpson, sir. And Mr. Burns is having fun with being sarcastic, too. You're right. Everyone's learning about sarcasm this week on The Simpsons.

We also see Burns reference him as a secretary. Like, did we ever see Burns as secretary at any point? I mean, i just assumed smithers would take thing yeah and homer the smithers it's implied that smithers serves a very secretary style role for him with a desk right outside his office but yeah there's this definitely he says a secretary who is a woman but yeah i i don't think we've ever seen like burns a secretary i suppose it is a woman that tells homer to go through the supplicant door when he reapplies for his job and maggie makes three right but she also could just

be hr it doesn't necessarily mean she's burns's secretary but yeah i mean a secretary if they're not going to actually create a role for a secretary then it's entirely redundant when you have uh smithers who does literally everything for Mr. Burns. It is also something Mr. Burns would do to degrade Smithers right to his face by not speaking to him directly like that. So maybe that's what he has in mind. Well, I also like that Burns and Smithers have this game

of not only just giving each other complimentary or Smithers giving Burns complimentary notes, but also that he's like oh there's a real one and then smither like burns knows that homer did it and he's like taunting him it's such like a mean and the way homer just goes like can i go now like he's this indignity is just too much for homer he can't take it it's it's a low tier uh burns line but i think of this whenever i get a comment on my own work that's like just very malformed or rude or just doesn't make any sense i think well that's

almost a sentence that is so i'm trolling all you out there when i see those itunes reviews i sometimes get youtube comments that are poorly formed it does happen on occasion believe it or not what usually when it's like no more politics homer heads out even in his uh fantasies like i i like to think that ned telling him tell somebody about the store that's like some part of his subconscious telling him like come on this is to me and like give give ned a little help here but uh but yeah it's uh so then it actually is making me more sad as an adult seeing ned sell off all of his stuff like to know what that means like as a kid i didn't fully understand what that meant about ned that this what an indignity that he had all of the nice things that homer hated ned having now ned has to get rid of them all out of out of just pure need

chris farley does not want this camcorder you're right it does look a bit like farley really shows how big a risk the leftorium was like he really did put like every last sentence into this thing he uh you know his friends were right to to worry about him like homer i think should have given him a better more intense negativity it feels like he took out another mortgage on his house because his house is being taken away. So quickly that house gets taken away, too. They're going to be living with his sister in Capital City. And I think Ned was lying about his barbecue because at first we hear propane Elaine is going to be fired up.

Then we hear it's a butane butte. Yeah. What is it, Ned? Come on, Ned. Butane's a bastard gas we all know this you know maybe he has maybe he has a propane one and maybe he has a butane one well that's why he's out of money and ruins yeah and i mean homer taunting ned with his 20 dollars that ned like can't turn down is so mean like yeah it's homer homer's getting and i mean then in the next scene

that like homer buys all the stuff, including like personalized t-shirts that have no real value to them other than just like humiliating Ned. And then to see Bart putting on Ned's glasses, like that's about as cruel as it gets. And a great funny drawing of the squiggly vision through Bart, that Bart's seeing in the glasses there too.

It really highlights like where Bart gets his bad behavior from like homer's not being a great role model here by just having so much joy in uh in flanders is suffering so i mean bart for him it's the only way he can connect with homer you know normally homer's like yelling at him they're like hey did you waste my ten dollars at karate class and so now now bart can unite with his father in mocking the the bad situation for the flanderers is especially them saying to each other like daddily doodly like what i mean bart is very proud of his china hutch yeah which again the taught me a thing as a kid i i was very confused by that word china hutch as a nine-year-old i i think it is at least important though that homer through all of his

cruelty the nice side effect is that based on what he offers in act three homer must just give ned back all of his stuff and uh and let him have it instead of instead of keeping it so that's how if ned had sold it off to a bunch of people he wouldn't have got all his stuff back so you know what in a way homer's cruelty at least had a silver lining sure sure i'm also wondering why uh ned who was on such hard times still went out of his way to buy a welcome mat for his car just to just to humor the family for taking everything rather well in the next scene homer's watching the tv the barney's bullarama jingle is playing which i was surprised they did that because like in this by this point gene and reese would have

put in like a more specific just you know non-visual joke of like a local news prompt or a movie trailer or something instead they just pulled the jingle like out of the library like that was from season one that jingle yeah we're getting a lot of these old businesses reference like shakespeare's fried chicken is in this episode and barney's bowl of rama is in this episode as well yeah these all these season one and two things that by season three they're like no if the if they're gonna go to buy something it's probably quickie mart and if they're gonna or or the comic book store and if they're gonna eat something it's it's the crusty burger we don't need multiple other places they do this stuff i always remember remember him as from the Repo Depot,

but he is not from the Repo Depot. He actually shows up later in The Simpsons. He is in Two Dozen and One Greyhounds. He's been promoted. He's the regional director of the IRS that Marge invites to dinner. Right. Oh, wow, man. So Marge invites Lovejoy, Homer's old commanding officer,

and this guy, and the dinner is ruined when the turkey's walking across the table i bet they saw him in the character packs they're like well he's got a ledger he can be the irs guy they redesigned him more to look more like a character from that era but yeah it's it's chuck uh chuck dixon i think his name is chuck ellis i also like after he realizes he's at the wrong place homer asks him are you sure he owes all that money he says we don't make mistakes like that's that's a good joke that he he just made a mistake and saying we don't make mistakes but I I also like that Homer actually is feeling guilty

enough to almost suggest the leftorium but then the guy reminding him that Homer is also delinquent on a bit on his bills that derails it. And Homer's like, ah, forget it. No, no, I'm not doing that. And then Homer's dream comes true right before his eyes. As he gets to the mall, he sees Ned sobbing in front of an out of business sign, just as he had imagined. Except it doesn't say stupid left-handed shop on it. That's the one difference uh but then act three begins with wrapping up the karate story as lisa is taunted by gigantic versions of the three bullies you know what i i don't like this this

whole thing uh just because again it's like getting the rest of season two out of their system and the the bowling is just realistic they play keep away yeah and then bart is just beaten up there's nothing simpsons-y about it. It's just, it's too realistic and not fun to watch. And like Lisa's crying. Yeah. There's, there's no extra edge to it, you know? I guess one of the, I think it's Dolph's like, I'm Elvis, man.

That's, that's kind of funny, but it just, it's just realistic bullying. Yeah. It was, it was sad. And you don't usually see the bullies target Lisa like that, too. And it's, I don't know. You just kind of feel bad for everyone. And then you see Bart hanging by his diaper. Well, this was something, you know, as an older brother, this was the fear that someday

your younger sibling would ask you to defend them from bullies. And you'd be like, I don't want to get beat up either, kid. If it's bullies in your own class then maybe but otherwise i i don't know if i can stand up to bullies for you younger brother the one line i caught from lisa that i thought was okay was she said start from the touch of death and go from there that's a good yeah that's good yeah so there's some there's some nuggets to mine for in here but but yeah it is a very traditional sitcom thing of a character lies about something and then gets his comeuppance like there's no no extra turn to it really it's just

bart said he was taking karate when it's put to the test he is beaten up and uh humiliated for doing so and then they phone james l brooks on the set of sibs and say uh what should lisa say here because that's such a james L. Brooks line that she says. It's funny how two wrongs sometimes make a right. They also, with all the stuff they said about the animators, it's funny they say that in the original cut, Bart was very bloody, like horribly beaten. But that was actually ACOM doing what they were told to do, then doing it right. The animators thought

or on the u.s side the producers thought it'd be funny if uh probably like how homer was incredibly bloody and at the end of uh the skateboard trick they're like oh it'd be funny too for bart and they were just like so horrified by it they're like we gotta pay extra to just have it be bart is basically just in a wedgie in a basketball loop not all that roughed up I feel like the show would take a different tone if they showed Bart as the victim of that level of violence

like with Homer okay he's a grown man but a child it's a bridge too far I misremembered this episode as being what happens in Bart the General where when Nelson beats Bart up the first time you see a front-facing bart as like fist pummel and deform his face yeah and i think they're like we can go that far uh back then let's go a little further but i thought that scene was in

this episode when i was re-watching this i'm like oh yeah doesn't bart get beaten up from the first person perspective but he doesn't that's in bart the general you know in future ones in the mercenaries bart would definitely be like savaged by the mercenaries bar would definitely be like savaged by the bullies like they would be punching him really hard but it was just the physical damage was not realistic on it so it was a mix of like oh yeah horrible beatings like when they jump on top of bardica in uh lisa and ice and going that's for wasting teachers valuable time it's like that's rough what they do to him, but Bart isn't like spitting up blood or

whatever when you see him in the next shot. It's like when you see Homer strangle Bart, right? If you really thought he was going to die, it would take a different tone. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric

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a rate that's not reversed the next day like even a good day at the left tori does not get back your house when it is seized by the bank they should just live in the left toriam for a few days you know i would i would guess they live in the left toriam for about a month or so and then then they buy back their house or something and this this time, one thing I noticed, the scene where Ned and Homer talk at night, we see Maude and the kids in the car, they're all dressed up and it's a wonderful life gear for the last scene.

Like Maude's already in her Donna Reed dress. Ned is wearing a scarf for some reason, even though this is airing in October, presumably taking place in May. Wow, you're right. I never even thought a scarf is the George Bailey scarf. Yeah. Well, because, you know, the Donna Reed outfit is so in your face that I never even think of like, oh, yeah, and it's just like wearing a jacket and a scarf.

Not that he's wearing exactly what George Bailey wears. But, yeah, I think the kids, you know, this would be a typical thing for Rod and Todd, even as their mother dies, that they do put on a happy face at all times. And some could say it's a deep denial coping mechanism for children, or they perhaps do so deeply believe in God and God will save them in the end that they're not worried even a little bit about it. As Ned also explains it, I think it's very sad in a nice guy way that ned is like and they got a nice man for the bank who was only doing his job you know like he's like damn yeah they they that unflapping positivity it makes me always a little suspicious and i think

that helps you empathize with homer a little bit and his uh and it's shot for it earlier but at the same time it's like like i like i don't know what this is. It's so alien. It almost feels like they are holdovers from earlier sitcoms as well, and in that way, they really fit the spirit of this episode. Yeah, and this characteristic of Ned's, I mean, he would just be a very

religious character in the future, unflappable until Hurricane Nettie, but they're not really exploring this idea, but I think they're in a way, maybe even a tacit way, they're exploring like, this is what relentless positivity can get you. You can be very unrealistic about things, but say, it'll work out. Things will be fine. And aside from this one line to Homer about selling him his Bible, the religiosity of the Flanders is not too big in this one. Like he says

like, there's a curse on me or whatever when he should just you know in later episodes when bad stuff happens to ned he gets more directive like yeah i'm like jobe right which of course then lovejoy uh says no because jobe was right-handed right right but but but in this case yeah it's that ned ned certainly would turn to the bible for help but he's not so religious to be like god has left me or i i'm even shaking my belief in god in this moment homer yeah and it's and this version of ned is you know where he's ironically had his most relatable in that sense he's less cartoony and less of uh of a caricature basically i mean it's sort of a well

known trope of like people say that about flanders and how he changes and how everyone on sitcoms eventually becomes the most exaggerated and silly versions of themselves but in some ways it's like i don't know it's more reflective of this era of the simpsons well i mean even in in fan communities the term is flanderization of of how a character changes over seasons and uh yeah, I think this is, you know, if you look at it from the perspective of season one, Ned, who is just the yuppie who has things better than Homer, this is like Ned's punishment is giving up yuppiedom.

Like he stopped being a pharmaceutical executive, which it's also funny. Like, couldn't Ned get his, all right, leftorium's closed. Got it, Ned. Could you get your old job back? Why do you got to move back to Capital City? Not the way I quit.

But yes, as Ned walks away from the car, the kids start singing Put On a Happy Face, the song from Bye Bye Birdie that will close out the episode just to set it up. But yes, Ned confides in Homer, and Homer, well, he's feeling a little bad about it. Poor fools. Homer, and Homer, well, he's feeling a little bad about it. Poor fools. Homer, I'm ruined.

I know. You know, at times like these, I used to turn to the Bible and find solace, but even the good book can't help me now. Why not? I sold it to you for seven cents. Oh. You know, ever since that barbecue, nothing's gone, right? It's like there's been a curse on me.

It's all my fault. No, it's not. Yes, it is. No, you tried to warn me about gambling my family's future on some pick-it-up boat. I didn't listen. Homer, you were a true friend. No, I was just blind. Listen, Flanders, do you still have that store?

For two more days. It becomes Libertarian Party headquarters. I hope they have better luck than I did. Flanders, you open that store tomorrow. Oh, Homer, there's no point. I said do it i always forget that libertarian headquarters that's so good it sneaks up on you yeah what a good lie that that's that that would be the basis for them and it's like oh maybe not better luck to me which is like

they they it's it's not so much a joke about just the libertarian ideology but just that i think about third party loser groups like this is just oh yeah third third party presidential group they're a bunch of losers they'll never get anything i looked up who was in the last election as of this episode uh as of when flanders failed so who was the 1988 a candidate for libertarian party obviously it was ron paul oh who else could it be of course that twisted old fucker wasn't this like just on the cusp of uh ross perot that was like not on libertarian i think it was like the reform party yeah he started the reform party but yeah this is here here they laugh at third parties and the most successful third party guy ever

will be the next year yeah but but then again they say they laugh too with the dead bill clinton running for president like but yeah you're right this is this is mocking libertarian that's it's funny to think of ron paul as the libertarian guy because he just fully switched parties and is a republican now like he's not we gotta worry about rand now oh god even worse that i i can't get over that ron paul was like an internet meme for a time and i still see it every now and then. I'm like, come on guys. I'm on team Rand Paul's neighbor. Yeah. Yeah. One anti-Paul family is a okay by me at this point. You know,

I couldn't remember. So I went to the Ron Paul Wikipedia page and I saw the word I hate to see sometimes. And that is, I want to, I want to see was, I want to see was, I get you.

Hey, you know, as Homer would say, that's too far. Hey, but Homer, want to see was i get you hey uh you know as homer would say that's too far hey uh but homer that homer bought it for seven cents his bible that's that's a funny number at least and and so in the production this was the last big like animation issue they had that they said not unlike the george hw bush speech it was a thousand points of light in that it was way too many stars in the

background and they had to reanimate the whole sequence because of it. I also do like Homer calling himself a swine and it's good acting. Like it's another of those ones where it feels special now of Harry Shearer is with Dan as they're acting out this scene. Yeah. It feels like they're acting off of each other and that rarely happens happens it was uh it'll be rare even a few years after this episode yeah even by like season six i think but but yeah so homer then starts calling people all night getting ned's help like so this ending here it also is just such a typical sitcom ending like there's a little extra to it like in of homer acting like uh if paying back a loan is a favor that needs to be repaid and and other stuff like that but it really does just play pretty similar to how it

would have on like the cosby show roseanne of just calling in favors to help a friend and the community saves a guy kind of ending it feels a bit like uh an upcoming episode mr lisa goes to washington where all of this incredibly unrealistic stuff happens all at once to solve the problem yeah and they're aware of it to them all I'll explain on the way that you know yeah Burns takes it far enough but it's not as good Mr. Lisa is is a funnier version of that because the characters are gasping like a little girl has lost faith in democracy like all that like this is just close enough I don't feel like they fully executed it perfectly to make it clear of like the joke is how amazing this is you know that it this would never happen in real life kind of ending i mean they literally go out on a musical number in this

one i i think it's like deeply sincere and heartfelt in that way uh in a rose-colored way that sitcoms tended to be uh of the 1980s anyway i i have an issue with that i also have an issue with this wonderful life parody so a lot of what happens at the end actually very little of what happens at the end is like the end of it's a wonderful life yeah i feel like in the future they would have went farther and they did on in miracle and evergreen terrace they do the it's a wonderful life ending scene and they do a lot of like beat for beat parodies. People coming up to the big bowl of money. Mr. Byrne saying,

does anyone have change for a button? Lisa's playing, you know, Hark the Herald Angels Sing on the piano. Homer yells at her. And this one, it's just like, yeah, there's a bunch of people in one room. Wiggum has the accordion like Bert, right? Yeah, like Bert the cop, yeah.

There's one very odd shot of mod like rubbing her hands across her face like donna reed does that's not an iconic shot from the movie no if you didn't tell me that was from the movie i'm like what is this odd thing doing in here later in the show george bailey will just be a character that's right in the savings and loan like i feel like they didn't trust themselves to go further like if you're gonna do and it's a wonderful life ending parody take it all the way to the end. Yeah, it's weird to just lightly do it in this way with just a few visual signifiers. And also what's great in Miracle on Evergreen Terrace is that that happens at like the seventh minute of the episode or whatever.

It's not the finale. It's the middle of Act Two kind of thing. And I say, you know sing old langzyne instead of put on happy face it'd be funny if they start singing that and ned says well homer it's not new year's eve and hober goes it doesn't matter yeah and that could be a joke i'm writing jokes for 1991 tv now that's a season three or four kind of style for sure yeah and it would be funnier like instead of you know just singing the song from bye bye birdie like it's it's all right but yeah the the directness of it the best jokes in this are just how the people buying these left

handed things are feeling more fulfillment and joy than anyone has ever felt purchasing anything my life begins today uh barney instantly gets a kid i mean so there is there was one other joke i really loved not just uh yeah the burns one was the best because it's so big and arch like it makes it a parody uh but i did like the reveal that at first you think barney is getting his phone call laying in bed but he's actually for some reason laying on his kitchen table and falls off his kitchen table which is a great dirtbag move on barney i love the few times we see the inside of his crappy apartment. Yeah, it's a nice little glimpse into the life of Barney Gumbel. I wish we had seen a bit more of that in some ways.

But also, you know, not seeing it, it has that mystique. It's like, tragic is this guy's life. And in the previous episode, we saw a shot of black groundskeeper Willie. This show has a white Dr. Hibbertbert if you look at the pan across to the roadster there's lots of animation mistakes but seeing a like pale not even simpsons yellow white person just a pale crusty white on hibbert as you pan across very odd very bad yeah and it also when when mo i noticed this when mo gets the phone call from homer there's a yellow loo in the background as well yeah everyone's changing races in this episode

yeah which again you know it's a lot of characters to keep track of even at this early in the show there's still a whole lot of Springfieldians to draw in so you know if Lou stayed white like he was in his first appearance Hank Azaria could still voice him it's true that's true that's the only thing that coloring mistake could have brought him

but yes I've got the happy ending here as we all put on a happy face. The worm has turned, is it not, my tin-plated friend? Look at you. You were once so proud. Feel the wrath of the left hand of burns. My life begins today. Wow, what an icebreaker.

Left-handed ledges. Now I can ride all the way to the edge. Ha ha ha. Left-handed duncho. Wow! The boys at the diner's club will think I've gone quite mad. Oh, and I'll have that roadster in the corner as well. Ooh! Ooh! Yes, sir.

Huzzah for the shopkeep! Huzzah! Homer, affordable tract housing made us neighbors, but you made us friends. To Ned Flanders, the richest left-handed man in town. Everybody! Grace guys are gonna clear up! Stick out that noble chin

Wipe off that full-up doubt look Slap on a happy grin I don't know if it's supposed to be a joke, but I always laugh out loud when Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie walk in while they're singing the song. Yes. Let's get them in the room, too. It feels like, well, where are they? All right, just have them walk in in the middle of the song. It's so awkward. Were they drawn to the singing of the song? It's so weird. Yeah, it's so awkward in the way it cuts in that it feels like it was a late addition to like,

I wouldn't have had the laugh at it if you just have, oh yeah, both families are together for the final shot and you just assumed that Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie were there at the same time. But instead you have to see them walk into frame that it's almost like they thought it was a continuity error if you don't see them walk in. But to have to see them walk in frame that it's like that it's almost like they thought it was a continuity error if you don't see them walk in but to have to see them walk in and join in in the singing is is more distracting than if they just appeared with no explanation why simpsons are part of the

principal cast they need to highlight their entrance and reason for being in that scene and in this case it's just to join the sing-along it's a fun little shot of both of them singing together like or i mean not fun sweet it's sweet and too sweet for what the simpsons is in season three but it's not quite dignities on me friends but it's it's approaching that and i'm glad that they i mean they didn't really earn this uh and again i wish they would have brought the parody further but yeah i'm not a fan of this ending i do love Burns' huzzah for the shopkeep. And then everyone joins in, huzzah! What a great, everybody knows to say huzzah back.

Like, same with, they remark on this in the commentary. Everybody knows to let Rod sing the first line of the song and then they join in on the second line. Like, they know they're in a movie. And one thing I noticed, I mean, this episode is full of animation errors. One new thing I noticed is that when, I almost called him Berzerns, when Burns is presenting his credit card to pay for the left-handed can openers, he's holding like a nuclear power plant identity badge, not a credit card.

So I think it was a prop error in the art side of things. Like someone, the card wasn't drawn well enough it's like well we've got this we got this name badge in with our props is he holding a name badge i don't know so he's presenting a name badge to pay for materials but it's not a joke wow that's great i miss that that's uh you know it's full of animation errors and just like you could have been a runner if it happened a third time. Burns' thing is that he goes to a mall store and buys the ridiculous thing that nobody ever buys there. First he buys the Allmec head in Blood Feud. Now he buys the Roadster.

That's just supposed to be a prop that you go into the mall and go, Wow, that's cool looking. But you never buy it. All these entrepreneurs are salivating when Burns walks in the mall. What ridiculous thing will he buy? I read online, like somebody asked, Is it hard to change gears when you're left-handed? But I don't know. It seems like it's not.

People said that it's not too hard in the Cora I saw. But I don't know. Obviously, like I've driven an automatic car and have used my right hand to like, you know, go from reverse to drive or whatever. But I've never driven manual and with all the gear shifting anyway. So I would guess if I had to do it with my less dominant hand, it probably would be harder than if I had to change gears with my left hand, it probably would be pretty hard. It does sound harder.

Yeah. The closest I can relate to is I remember being at an arcade when I was a kid. I don't remember what game it was. It might have been like Cruisin' USA where the gear shift was on the left-hand side. And of course there was just like one shift. So I guess it wasn't that complicated. But yeah, I'm sure it's probably a slightly different experience than a real car.

Though I suppose if you're driving, say a car in England or places like that, you are shifting with your left hand with an automatic gear shift, right? That is true, yeah. Maybe that's also part of the joke when it says only three ever made gear left hand gear shift where it's like well in america maybe but not in not in a lot of other countries but yeah i get like the line affordable tract housing made us neighbors but you made us friends that's close to dignities on me friends like

saying you made us friends to homer like that's a little too sweet yeah at least it's going for a joke though it does also feel james l brooksie yes yeah yeah but again soon soon sibs will arrive and he'll be too busy and and in the next episode it's a lot of wacky fun and things are crazy and it's a downer ending not a happy ending for sure for sure yeah which that's part the murder i'm talking about my final feelings on this is a farewell to the season two aesthetic and all of the sappiness uh i will not miss it but this is a good like farewell to it i think lisa's substitute is the best of that type of episode and this is also like ned and homer aren't in their perfect

way that they are of working off of each other like ned's not religious ned and homer aren't in their perfect way that they are of working off of each other like ned's not religious enough and homer's too like clever in his distaste for ned like it needs to season three will also reset this and they they'll both become much more cartoonish but that's that's what works for the comedy of the show in season three so yeah this is and it's also i think other than a couple of cutaways this could have been a live action sitcom like this oh yeah this could have been an episode of any like network sitcom and at least in setting and stakes no i totally agree henry it does feel like a farewell to the season two aesthetic in terms of just the writing style

the characterization the schmaltziness and again we weren't against the schmaltziness, but often it was unearned. And sometimes it would sneak up on you and work. But this time, it really didn't for me, at least. But yeah, I am excited, more excited to get into season three, the snappier, sillier episodes and investigate those further. Now that we have a lot more time, let's say two and a half hours or longer to explore them. No, and Jose, thank you so much for your time. What are your final thoughts? Yeah, so this episode, I just echo a lot of or longer to explore them. No, and Jose, thank you so much for your time. What are your final thoughts? Yeah, so this episode,

just to echo a lot of what you two are saying, it does feel like a classic sitcom episode. Like this could have been a live action show from the 1980s. In some ways, I sort of read a little deeper or a little differently maybe into it because what this episode to me was like, this is Ned

Flanders going up trying to live the American dream, right? Like, start your own business, and then he goes out and he fails. And in some ways, his success, well, in every way, his success was like in the hands of Homer the whole time, like failure and success all dependent on whether or not Homer decided to literally help out his neighbor here. So it sort of felt like a reaction to the reaction of sort of the more cynical understanding. I mean neighbor here. So it sort of felt like a reaction to the reaction of sort of the more cynical understanding. I mean, if you look at sort of the history of how the American Dream gets presented, there's this very cynical streak through a lot of art and literature about like, oh, it's all an illusion. There's no class mobility, and you'll just fail. And the show

sort of is coming back and saying like, well, if you help your neighbor out, maybe they will succeed. And in that sense, it's like, it's a very, it's a very conservative message, something you would definitely see on a 1980 sitcom where it's about supporting these sort of old fashioned ideas, like be a good neighbor, and then you can make your dreams come true. While also, you know, it might be worth taking a step back and noticing that Ned lost everything, like his family lost their home. And in that sense, it is also a critique of like the sort of idea that it's trying to uphold. Yeah, there was no safety net for Ned.

There was no GoFundMe in 1991 to help his store. Honestly, he should have hired like a street team, like the Leftorium street team, get the word out. But yeah, it is a good depiction of failure. It is unrealistic in that its problems all go away instantly because it's a sitcom. But yeah, I do like that exploration. Maybe that's sort of how The Simpsons transitioned and grew as it. And this is sort of, like you guys were saying, the sort of perfect kind of gateway into a new era of The Simpsons,

where it would sort of tear down the illusions of older sitcoms of the past and be a little more a little more realistic a little more cynical about how the world works yeah i think uh you know in the real world too even if you got everybody to give him a really good day of business at that store i would guess burns keeps coming back all the time but i mean you know once you got that one left-handed ledger like how many times you're coming back to buy that you know or the one left-handed pinking shoes well the internet will destroy ned's business completely yeah it's true yeah but hey that's why that's why he then started that new business online selling the rugs right

religious hook rugs yeah that's right but Jose thank you so much for being on the show we love your videos please tell everyone out there where to find them how they can support you sure you can find my videos on a little website called YouTube. The easiest way is to just go into the search bar and type in my name, J-O-S-E.

I should be one of the higher results up there, if not the top. And you can watch all my lovely videos there. I've also got a Patreon. I do not remember the URL right now, but there should be a link on my YouTube page. And obviously watch a couple of videos before you throw any support in my way and uh yeah if you you like me talking about old sitcoms there's a bunch more of that there yeah any any uh teases coming down the pike sure well i just finished watching the series so i'm not i haven't started writing anything yet so i'm not entirely sure how it's all going to fit together but uh the next big series I'm working on is Boy Meets World. Oh, cool.

Interesting. I'm going to have to talk a little TGIF and see how much we can construct about how that block of programming figured its way onto ABC television and Fridays during the 90s. I'm looking forward to that, but if I see a Herman's Head video in the

future, I need a shout-out in there. Definitely. I will write it down shout out Bob if you mention Herman's Head it's horribly unavailable that series there's absolutely no way to watch it really you know like with shows like that I'm always kind of sad that you can't watch them because I remember one time I thought it would be a really

fun April Fool's Day prank to like pull out a series that lasted for one season and everyone's forgotten and I was like I'm going to doboys from Outer Space I but I just could not find any episodes online I found like five and just the worst quality ever so it's funny it's funny you mentioned that because a lot of Simpsons writers wrote at least one episode of Homeboys from Outer Space yeah it's very strange and uh more like sorry go back to Herman's head I feel like it should be on some streaming thing because there are 72 episodes and every one features Yardley Smith and Hank Azaria.

Yeah. Like, that should have, well, I would assume it was 20th television. And so Disney would own the rights to that. Put it on Hulu. You'd think. But some shows just, for some reason, don't get that kind of treatment or they just sort of forgotten. I remember when I was working on the golden girls video uh i was like researching the spinoffs like empty nest and like that ran for seven seasons and it's like nowhere like it's

very difficult to find like the the footage i found was like rebroadcast on some like c-tier cable channel meanwhile for some dvds of like i was tempted by a 17 every episode of alf box set but then i found out it was the syndicated cuts of alf and not the full broadcast version though like no way gotta gotta be full bracket that's a bastardization of alf i agree we need all those jokes i need to see everything algin and mike reese wrote for that adorable puppet but uh but thank you so much yes thank you jose yeah thank you so much, Jose. Yes, thank you, Jose. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. I had a lot of fun.

So thanks again to Jose for being on the show. Please check out all of his videos. We're all big fans over here. If you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week at a time and ad-free, please go to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up there for five bucks a month. You'll get just that,

but also access to everything behind the $5 paywall that includes over 100 bonus podcasts we've recorded so far and also access to monthly episodes of talking futurama and talking to the hill there's a lot going on behind that five dollar paywall that you will want to hear if you enjoy hearing us talk about old cartoons and there is a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you get access to all the five dollar stuff plus access to one megalon podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob you're talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast once a month we

cover an animated series super in-depth and then we do the same for the what a cartoon movie where we cover an animated feature film mega in-depth just like we do on the simpsons that means uh over an hour of chat about the history of how it was made and then i'd say in total four to five hours of talk about an animated feature film like recent ones pinocchio south park bigger longer and uncut and lion king 2 simba's pride a huge back catalog over three years worth of them that's over 225 hours of what a cartoon movie podcast you get at that $10 level in addition to all that $5 stuff bob mentioned you can see a big easy to read list of it 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 my other

podcast by the way is retronauts that's a classic gaming podcast about old video games you can 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. Follow me there to stay in the loop on my life. And also you should follow the official Twitter account of this podcast at TalkSimpsonsPod, where you will know when new episodes go out on the free feed on the Patreon when there's polls when there's other news follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter

and of course if you want an easy back catalog of all the free episodes of this podcast and what a cartoon head over to TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com Thank you so much for joining us folks we'll see you again next time for season 13's A Hunk of Hunk of Burns in Love and we'll see you again next time for Season 13's A Honka Honka Burns in Love. And we'll see you then.

Hey, everyone. I'm back. Nice to meet you. Hey, Homer. Very nice. Okay, thanks for coming.