Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Whacking Day with Dan McCoy

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Bart is expelled from school as animal cruelty is celebrated, and for such heady topics we welcome back the cohost of The Flop House Podcast/Emmy-winning writer, Dan McCoy! After Dan explains to us how he won the same award as this episode did, we then detail the origins of Superintendent Chalmers. Then we talk about the less-fun IRL origins of whacking day, explain the many dirty jokes in this ep, and much more, so listen now to see if the bullies win mountain bikes! Support this podcast, hear it ad-free, and get 180+ bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ahoy everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, recorded within the sturdy walls of Fort Sensible. I'm one of your hosts, the 19th century Cockney boot black Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? With a pleasing taste and some monsterism, it's Henry Gilbert.

And who is our special guest on the line? It's me, I, Dan McCoy, who loves the sexy slither of a lady snake. And this week's episode is Wacking Day. I'm your new teacher. My name is Mrs. Simpson. This episode originally aired on April 29th, 1993. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby.

R&B group Silk tops the charts with Freak Me. Yo, MTV Raps host Dr. dray and ed lover debut the film who's the man and lauren michaels officially announces that conan o'brien will host late night on nbc and i guess at this point in history he's trying to figure out how do i burn my simpsons contract he's right in the middle of recording sessions for homer goes to college or maybe like the table reader for the episode right after that and is being told like the week before i think is when he filmed his test footage one with mimi rogers and jason alexander and then the next week is when it gets the go-ahead and this is as we said back when we covered Mars vs. the Monorail earlier this year, it was a matter of weeks between that episode he wrote airing

and him being hired as the replacement for David Letterman. It was a wild time as a comedy geek, as I'm sure you recall as well, Dan, as I'm sure you were very invested in who would replace David Letterman then. Yeah, and I remember how wild it was, and I remember how unpolished Conan was at the beginning. Although, you know, I was amongst those being like, this is weird enough. I hope it sticks around. And I was glad it did.

Yeah, I was a year one Conan watcher. So one, I had no idea we'd all be in the same industry one day. That eluded me completely. And two, I didn't know The Simpsons took between six to nine months to produce an episode. So I was watching Conan but still seeing his name on episodes of the simpsons and thinking how busy is this guy not knowing he had wrapped that up half a year earlier it was really smart of dave merkin who was the showrunner working on the show when this aired to basically get a promise from conan or to arrange that conan would guest on the show in season five like within months of his hiring.

And Conan would joke that when he recorded that, he's like, this is going to be like jokes about James Dean that were filmed before he died in a car wreck. The Yo! MTV Raps film, basically, Who's the Man? I've never seen it, though. It's a cop comedy, but really you'd watch it if you are a old school hip-hop fan who wants to see basically every major east coast rap star of the era appear in that movie because

basically all of them make cameo appearances i did watch that movie back in the day and it's funny because you know i have had a greater appreciation of rap ever since then but being a white man who grew up in the middle of a cornfield in illinois like it was such a divorced culture for me at that time in my life but i was a big fan of roger ebert who gave it a good review and i watched it because he was like these guys have like an old style comedy team rapport and it really is a lot of fun as i remember it's been forever i'm a bigger fan of the fat boys filmography like disorderlies and i think that's it and sketches i think on their albums just imagine those are

like mini movies how nutty it would be if the fat boys were orderlies they had putting these guys in charge of an old man's health no thank you sir i'm laughing already it is funny that both of those movies Disorderly Zan, Who's the Man Are like a 1930s Or 20s silent film thing Where it's like, well you have these characters From TV But what if they had to become cops Or doctors, what if they did that

The disorderly setup is essentially Like a Three Stooges short They're like, let's give someone Who shouldn't have these responsibilities A lot of responsibilities sad to report there's only one surviving fat boy so treasure him while you can people well meanwhile both the stars of who's the man still with us and it also though despite debuting at number two it could not defeat indecent proposal which we've talked about before but that was number one at the box office oh and yes the r&b song by silk freak me i hadn't heard it in forever it is one of those very fun songs actually it's like the

90s version of the barry white songs that are parodied in this where it's just a long description of like here's how good i am going to be at having sex with you and it's just a long description of that and now i guess you just hear this in the grocery store, right? Yes. I feel like when I was a kid, I didn't like that kind of song because I'm like, this is just braggadocious. For some reason, Boyz II Men's I'll Make Love to You comes off as classier than Freak Me, even though they're the same genre of song. Well, make love is such a classy term for it. Freaking someone, well, you know, frankly, it's none of my business. Yeah, and they're kindly offering.

They're like, I will make love to you if you want me to. Yes. Oh, yeah, I guess they did involve the topic of consent, which we weren't talking about in 1995. So, yeah, good on them. If you look up the music video for Freak Me and you're a Mr. Show freak like Bob and me, you probably will also think like,

oh, this is directly what inspired the three times one minus one characters in that show. A lot of cane work. Yes. Well, also the closet, like their outfits in the music video at least are almost exactly the same as what Bob and David wear in it. Wow. And the filming is the same. It's very fuzzy cameras and just like the lighting. It's perfect early 90s music video work that's for

sure damn that was a reference to the sketch i'm going to segue into our guest here joining us once again is dan mccoy from the flop house podcast thanks for joining us again dan dan was last with us for saturdays of thunder ah yes what season was that I can't recall. Season three, and we're at the very end of season four. An episode that it wasn't until you guys asked me to be on this show that I finally, decades later, thought, oh yeah, that's like a dirty pun, the title. I think even with the phrase, gentlemen, start your whacking in it, I didn't realize it was a dirty pun until maybe the first time we covered this six or seven years ago so yeah i'm late to the party too yeah i was an

innocent 10 year old when this aired and for years and then it just becomes like a fact of the world like yes this is whacking day you don't think about what the name of it is it's just a fact of springfield if you miss it the first time around you're not gonna get it until like a moment of epiphany later on and for young dan Dan, I only understood single entendres, so I didn't get it. Yeah, I recall my parents laughing at all of the other sex jokes in this, like slow then fast. But they didn't laugh at anything with the word whacking in it, so I just assumed it was vanilla content. Yeah. And Dan, before we get into that, I do need to set aside an hour to let you know a lot about Matrix lore.

Okay. I did really like your Matrix Revolutions podcast. I like how you set it up first off with like, now this isn't, we don't hate this movie like other movies, folks. Like trying to defend yourself early from any replies. Yeah, well, I mean, there is a hierarchy of the movies we watch. Not every one of them is one that we're just there to scoff at i mean we don't walk in hoping to scoff at anything but uh because honestly it's a lot more fun when we enjoy it but it's merely my least favorite of the matrices

but it's got good stuff in it you know yes i was very aware that i was poking a hive of bees by potentially making fun of any Matrix thing on the internet. But we did it in large part because I wrote this bit for John Hodgman to read on the Novelizers podcast. They're novelizing the original Matrix. They have comedy writers writing quote-unquote chapters about a couple of minutes of the movies. It was a tie-in. It was a crossover event. It was fun.

I characterize myself as a matrix super fan but i not that man i'll say i had the mistaken belief that we were all on the same page yeah first movie great the rest of them trash but i was very wrong i learned i was very wrong not just from younger people the people of my age and older really like those sequels i assume that we all had the same feelings about them like we did with the star wars prequels but then those are being rehabilitated too. So I don't know what to think anymore. Yeah, I mean, you know,

you see something when you're young and it's really hard to separate the feeling of being young from like watching a movie. Like I would never reclaim the Star Wars prequels, but I understand how they would be impactful if that was a movie you saw at the right age. And I know that there's plenty of stuff that I like that is not actually as good as I think it is. But I just remember,

you know, seeing things for the first time and not having body aches all the time, you know. Then also, you just came back from England. And how are the British listeners in person? What's your impression of them versus American podcast listeners? What was interesting to me is, and I say this with all due love and respect because I also count myself among this number, but podcast listeners as a breed tend to be on the nerdier side.

And either that or sort of alternative, we're on the outskirts of society. both things that I am happy to be associated with. But I was interested to see that like it's exactly the same in England, except for in England, everyone was a lot more polite about queuing up to like go through the merch table, not dominate anyone's time with like talking too long when it was clear that there were a bunch of people that had to be gotten through like they're like thank you very much you know and they moved along so all the stereotypes i guess about british politeness are all true yeah we have british listeners and i assume they're polite because they have never once commented on us making fun of them or the way they talk and we do that constantly on here i was very scared beforehand.

We do these sort of like PowerPoint presentations before our live shows, before like the meat of the podcast part where we talk on a topic and sort of a comedy essay with visuals. And I did two new ones for our shows. Both of them were sort of themed to being in England. And I was worried ahead of time I'm like did I get the mix right like of showing them like how much I love their culture but also roasting elements of it and are there references I put in there that they're gonna be like I don't know what that is you know and I was so stressed about it beforehand but it went off really beautifully so

thank you England for indulging us i guess british simpsons fans are a special breed i know that too like they're almost like american anime fans in that it's like they love this animation from a culture that is not exactly theirs yeah i think that that's always sort of part of like the charm of seeing something from another country that you know is popular over there like being like okay what are you concerned with what are you interested in what what are your day-to-day worries and like what's your life like you know and they like us because we can explain who alger hiss was yeah i'm not sure i could explain i remember a couple times where we had i believe it was eyepatch wolf was

our guest an irishman and he had no clue like the Casey Kasem. We explained the Casey Kasem Top 40 joke in the episode because why would someone in Ireland know about the American radio institution of the Casey Kasem Top 40? Yes, they only know him, of course, as Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. That's his international stardom. Yeah. Yeah. from scooby-doo that's his international stardom yeah yeah this is an interesting episode too late in the season but i think it has a fun message i mean i think it's an amazingly animated episode too this is a great episode yeah yeah jeffrey lynch is the director and this episode was

pitched by george meyer but john swartz welder ends up writing this episode because seemingly i guess our theory is, George was trying to leave the Simpsons at the time, so he was not available to write this. And it's funny because George Meyer and John Swartzwelder are philosophically on very different pages. They're in different books entirely. So it's very funny that John Swartzwelder is writing this super environmentalist episode that's all about animal rights, something that George Meyer is very concerned with. Yeah, it's funny because the two of them are very good friends. One hired the other at Saturday Night Live and writing on Army Man. So even though they are very politically opposite seemingly, they are good friends. But yeah, it's so funny to take George Meyer writing this script that also follows his patterns of, you know,

rebelling against the system and history teachers and all that. But then you put it in the hands of John Schwarzwalder, who is an anti-environmentalist. And I think that's why in this episode, when Bart reads a book that activates him, it is a founding father's like fable, basically, is what Bart loves. That felt like the swartz welder touch to me they are two of the stranger writers at least in terms i don't know them personally but in terms of like what they find funny and you put them both together and like this is an episode full of like a lot of oddball stuff and it was all made to highlight a real life event

the sweetwater rattlesnake Festival in Sweetwater, Texas. So this started in 1958, and there's a lot of information about it. And by the way, America has a lot of let's round up and kill a certain kind of animal festivals. They're happening all over our great country. But it's all about this one, and I'll quote an NPR article about it to let you know what it's about. So, 4,000 pounds of snake are rounded up every year where they are weighed, sexed, milked, killed, and skinned. And as an animal rights guy myself, I was reading more about this, but I was starting to get sick.

So I mean, all the bummer details are out there if you want to find them, but it's incredibly sadistic. And I understand, yes, animals need to be killed for meat and all other byproducts and people enjoy those things but this just seems mean-spirited when it comes to killing animals and i'm not down with it neither is george meyer john swartzwalder who knows what he thinks but he wrote this episode and it's kill more snakes he says i yeah i had no idea that this was based on a real thing until, again, like, looking into it for this episode. And, you know, when I was a kid, I found this episode of The Simpsons kind of, like, off-putting. Because, like, I was disturbed by the idea of Wacking Day. And also, you know, this was...

I mean, I know that they had already sort of solidified the idea that, like, okay, Act 1 is going to be its own thing. Like, it won't necessarily tie into the rest of it but it was still early enough on that i hadn't you know like i didn't feel like oh that's the rules of the simpsons and i think even more so than a lot of episodes it felt like whacking day came out of nowhere in the second act when i remember first watching it i'm like wait hold on we're now there's a crazy snake killing holiday in springfield wait we're doing this internally they were very worried about the depiction of killing animals which is why i think we we maybe see one snake get killed it's shot into pieces basically but yeah they were very concerned about this i believe

on the commentary mike reese said after this episode aired, his mother called him and shamed him for this episode and said, you guys went too far. That was disgusting. So he felt truly bad about having upset his mother. Though they mistakenly recall that this won a Genesis Award, which is incorrect, at least according to the records of Genesis Awards. Yes, you're totally right about that, Henry. It's poorly cataloged, the Genesis Awards, but the ones that I saw that won in the classic era are Dog of Death and Lisa the Vegetarian. These awards aren't documented very well, so maybe that one slipped through the cracks, but I don't think this won the award that year. Well, Dan, were you aware that The Daily Show won a Genesis Award in 2014 while you were

working there? What's the Genesis Award? What's the... Oh. It's an award about programs that are calling attention to animal rights. But I'll be honest, there are maybe three or four things called the Genesis Awards, so not the best title. See, now, I ask this, though, because... So I have in my home somewhere a plaque,

and it may be from the Genesis Awards, actually, but it said something about, like, the Sid Caesar Award. And it just showed up at the office one day and I apparently had been one of the writers who won this because I'd worked on a segment for the show focusing on how inhumane hog farming practices are like how the pigs are literally in pens so small that they cannot turn around so i have an award and now i'm wondering was that the genesis award was this like a subset yes yes it is i can confirm at least on the

wikipedia that the daily show blowing the whistle on whistleblowers is the segment it names here and that won the sid caesar comedy award along with american dad colbert rapport and saturday night live that year wow so the reward that originally i did not know what it was it turns out i have is it propping open a door somewhere you know it got some sort of form of display somewhere i i don't know exactly where but yeah that's funny that the simpsons writers think they won a genesis award they didn't and then you don't remember winning one you didn't yeah i don't even know if they still exist the genesis awards the wikipedia stops at 2018 so i think it did stop yeah yeah now it's just you know what's the best genesis album what one other thing about the

world's largest rattlesnake roundup is that this was 31 years ago it still persists to this day it happened in march of this year as well in 2023 there was an article i read of people trying to end it again they're like this has to stop and of course especially right now you are not going to convince texas hunters to change anything based on public taste or values yeah i saw arguments for it basically saying oh it's good for the economy because for a weekend people can have minimum wage jobs torturing animals and frankly i don't buy it absolutely not and also there's other disgusting quotes in there about how they kill them but this is just one non-disgusting one that it says, Matt Good, a rattlesnake expert and research scientist at the University of Arizona, said such roundups were absolutely horrific.

There's a quote for you right there about it. I think, look, not to paint with a broad brush. I know that there are many also fine people who live in Texas. But for the most part, what you need to know about Texas's psychology is all encompassed in the phrase, don't mess with Texas. Because it's like, who is so worried about being messed with? Who is so paranoid and aggro that they have to be like,

hey, our motto is do not mess with us. Like, man, just live and let live. We're all okay. Stop messing with the snakes and maybe we won't mess with Texas. I like the original intent of that slogan to be, if you litter, we'll murder you. But now it just turned into, we'll murder you, period. And all of your snakes.

I do wonder what the George Meyer written one of this would be. I feel like it'd be even more combative with status quo, as I loved about all his scripts back then. This even does remind me of two of my favorites he's written, Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington and Separate Vocations, because in both of those, like with Bart, a thing changes in a child's life that makes them go like, wait, this is bullshit, and you start calling bullshit on things, which is such a cool... I like that he was showing that to children through the simpsons at that time to be like hey you know you should be like bart in this episode and find historical incongruities and say wait a minute both these

things can't be true and piss off you know the local government yeah you're right there was a think for yourself strain in that period of the simpsons that is actually something that you don't see a lot of in television. I think one of the writers said on one of the commentaries, if George Meyer could get one child to distrust a police officer, he knows he's done his job. That sums up George Meyer so perfectly. Also on the directing front with Jeff Lynch, I did want to note, because he shouts out two of the storyboard artists on this, who they're very interesting guys. Kevin O'Brien and Steve Murkowski, who the storyboarders are often unsung on Simpsons. But I want to spotlight these two because Kevin O'Brien, the both of them would leave the Simpsons to go to Iron Giant when Brad Bird starts Iron Giant and kind of just takes a lot of these top artists to work on that. And most of

them don't come back. Kevin O'Brien, he then joined Pixar in the year 2000 to work on The Incredibles. And he is still at Pixar to this day, one of their top story artists. His most recent credit was on Turning Red. So he did the main storyboards for this. And then Steve Markowski, he didn't go to Pixar. Instead, he followed Jeff Lynch to the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, where he worked as a visual effects animator on Spider-Man 2 and 3, and Drag Me to Hell. He also did that one. And up to Doctor Strange and Multiverse of Madness.

So top-tier animation talent working in television right now. By right now, I mean 93. I was impressed by the full rotation we got on barry white at the end of this episode knowing how in that day you know you couldn't be done with computers this was like someone drawing a you know from every perspective this simpsonized version of a real person yeah the directors hate getting the scenes where oh and then a mob appears and everyone's animated and now it's a mob plus snakes so thousands of snakes and a mob fight each other yeah also i don't know how big a sam ramey fan you are dan but me and bob learned

this recently the director of this jeff lynch originally he was supposed to be the director of drag me to hell sam ramey wanted him to direct it, but the studio wouldn't fund that. And so Sam Raimi had to direct it himself. Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge Raimi fan to the degree that like I think I like Multiverse of Madness much more than the average person. Just because I'm impressed by how much Sam Raimi, Sam Raimi snuck into that film. Oh, and last note about In the Preamble for me is that online there is a final delivery script for this episode. And it's actually one of the closest I've ever found. Like normally I'd say it's an 80% the same script when it's final delivery.

This is 90% the same. And there's only a few cut moments from it that I honestly think have to have been fully animated and cut. There's no deleted scenes on the DVD for this, unfortunately. But I'll bring up the few biggies that are in the script. And the script is dated September 25th, 1992, just to let you know exactly when they wrote it. Yeah, I didn't notice a whole lot of ADR on this because I think it's towards the end of the season

and Algean and Mike Reese are not as involved because they're working on The Critic at this point, or The Critic Pilot, they're developing that. Though strangely, at the start of the season and algae and mike reese are not as involved because they're working on the critic at this point or the critic pilot they're developing that though strangely at the start of the script it actually calls for the longer circus couch gag which is not on this episode which i was like wow these scripts i never see the scripts say show this couch gag on it that i was confused by that like watching it to me this episode short. So if you told me who they put the long couch gag in, I would totally believe you. It is still the full-length couch gag, I believe, at the start. They also say this was one of their shortest Act 1s at the time, though they think it's 10 pages on the commentary.

But on that script, I can tell you it's 14 pages. So there, there's the more accurate number. But really what this episode is about, more than whacking snakes, is the first appearance of one of the most beloved characters in the entire series. Yeah, Superintendent Chalmers. I believe the name was invented by Jay Kogan, just because he thought the idea of having a guy named Superintendent Chalmers would be funny. Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein really ran with him,

but their relationship was established here. And I think this really helps develop Skinner because previously he's been very funny. He's been just kind of an authoritarian stuffed shirt, kind of like a fussy older guy. But putting him in this subordinate position, I think, really helped make him more sympathetic. And they could develop a lot more stories with that character than they could with the previous version of Skinner. I'm amazed to hear that this is the first appearance because it feels like they've got the sort of game between them down immediately, the way that they interact. And maybe I'm wrong in remembering this, but I feel like, you know, a lot of the Chalmers Skinner stuff also has some improv between the actors. I don't know if that's, but like what really struck me is like

the little bit later on where he's like where skinner offers the totally like nonsensical explanation that he that the kid misspoke because skinner has a cold and chalmers just goes along with it and the way that they go back and forth i was like is this improv is it like it feels so much like stuff that you know came along later like steamed hams i don't know but yeah for as much as harry sheer has been extra cranky lately and extra not really caring about the simpsons he was recording in person with hank azaria and some of the funniest stuff in the skinner chalmers material here does come out of improv that's so funny to me their reaction like he just accepts it that's the thing like chalmers is so mad at skinner but he also is so quick to accept his

complete bullshit azaria and shearer have such great chemistry here i think this is one of those like magical moments in the show where they write up an already funny idea of skinner has a boss and his name is superintendent chalmers which is just that is funny to say on its own. But then when you have the characters acted out together with the actors, like you discover the real power to it. Like that's why Chalmers is all over season five, including like a very key role in the hundredth episode of the whole show. And that Bill and Josh, especially they fall in love with Chalmers. five including like a very key role in the hundredth episode of the whole show and that bill and josh especially they fall in love with chalmers and you've got such a good point there bob that it's not just that they love how boring chalmers is and he's like the one normal guy in

a world of sitcoms but it's also that it makes skinner pathetic and pathetic skinner is why we truly love skinner as a character yeah the episode begins with them being tipped off that chalmers is on his way they're telling everybody to clean up this is also the only time that skinner could ever fool chalmers into thinking the school is better than it is like chalmers knows it sucks in every other episode and they have a giant explosion of garbage out of bart's desk then we also hear skinner order that Bart, Jimbo, and Nelson, and one can assume Dolph and Kearney come along with Jimbo when he's invited. They're invited to win mountain bikes.

And more great, like, Shearer laughs so good in his maniacal laughter that does not tip off the boys at all. Bart is curious about that fool's remark, but Nelson is so fixated on getting the mountain bikes, even after they're locked in the fallout shelter. I always love that sort of joke instruction where even after the other shoe has dropped, the other person doesn't understand what's happening. And it's very Simpsons. They love civil defense shelters and nuclear bomb shelters. They love civil defense shelters and like nuclear bomb shelters. They love that. But it's not just a funny area to put them in.

It is the explanation for why they are not dead at the end of the episode is that it's in a bomb shelter full of chemical toilets, distilled water and crackers. Yeah, I was wondering about that when this joke was set up, remembering how, you know, the episode ends. I was like, they probably have, you know, K rations in there or whatever. Skinner considers locking them and throwing away the key, which is sort of what he ends up doing. As a kid, though, I didn't get that he was called a horse's, like, they'll have your arse. I didn't know arse meant ass back then. We rarely get to see Skinner being an action hero.

We saw it at the beginning of Lisa the Beauty Queen when he uses his Green Beret training to take out the Disney lawyers. I love how he jumps down from the pipes above when the kids enter the civil defense shelter. It's very cool. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. I love it because it's so unnecessary. He doesn't have to be lurking there in the rafters to pull this scheme off, but that's just what he wants to do. It's like a supervillain appearance, too. Sorry about the ruse, gentlemen.

Yeah, he is locked in a constant battle of wits with his students. So there is one little cut joke from here, and it's cute. They cut to Lunch Lady Doris instructing the kids to raise up the banners, which are then what Skinner points out to Chalmers later and says it was a children's idea so you get to see the banners be hung up in this cut joke but then we get the first appearance of chalmers and i do want to say at the start of this clip really appreciate how good harry shearer makes the sound of using your tongue spit to slick back your own hair. Hello. Superintendent Chalmers, welcome.

Hello, Seymour. So, what's the word down at one school board plaza? We're dropping the geography requirement. The children weren't testing well. It was proving to be an embarrassment. Very good. Back to the three R's. Two R's come October.

What do you think of the banners nothing but transparent toadying they were the children's idea i tried to stop them it's always the children's fault isn't it seymour yes yes it is sir can confirm to you from the script that it's always the children's fault and the response that is not in the script so So that is officially improv. Oh, great. It felt like that, again, because I think when they get off script, they get into this zone where, like, I love how much Skinner sticks to his guns of being a weasel. Like, Chalmers will point out that Skinner is throwing his own kids under the bus and Skinner will just be like yes you know you're right sir I mean it shows Harry Shearer really understands the character to go that way with the improv instead of coming up with a new excuse he chooses to read the sarcastic question of Chalmers as just sincere yeah and it's so like you instantly have their characters right there of skinner with his arms

like akimbo like hey super into chalmers hello seymour just like flat like there you've got it this is a plus comedy gold here chalmers does not believe in the school or the children he's just a bitter realist while skinner seems to just have completely bought into his job. He's like fully on board with being a principal, but Chalmers is just there for the business aspect of it. Yeah, I like sort of the resigned, hmm, when like it turns out that one of the R's, who knows which one, is going to be cut from the system. Seymour's reaction is like he seems, you know, saddened by it, but he's like, well, what are you going to do? I can't stop it. Man, these jokes about 1993 school budget. I would love to see what a 1993 elementary school budget compares to today's elementary school budgets.

We didn't know how good we had it compared to what we're funding today. Then we cut to the bullies. They're just pissed off that children are going unbullied and spending their lunch money on food. I love that delivery on Jimbo, too. They realize that Bart, though, can fit through the cracks through the vent, which is very good for Bart because very quickly the hierarchy was going to begin where Bart is the bullied one in the room. Like, he is a mischief maker, but he is not a bully. He's often the bullied by these boys. Yeah, Skinner and willie

both forget about the bullies but bart does too instantly yeah you know his life would improve i love that they are cheering him on while you just see nelson standing there with a rock in his hand just waiting and just like the way he throws it is such like there's so much force to it that that had to have like cut Bart's skin yeah Nelson god bless him it's a scorpion the frog sort of like it's in his nature he can't he can't stop himself even though Bart is their only hope they still see an opportunity for bullying and they have to take advantage of it they're all high-fiving each other after the rock hits Bart they're committed to their jobs.

The Simpsons will be right back. The Simpsons is brought to you by 7-Up and Diet 7-Up, the Un-Cola, and your local 7-Up bottler. When you want the taste of Un, there's only one. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more.

Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. Hey, this is Henry Gilbert here saying don't bother the snakes. And a big thank you to our guest this week Dan McCoy from the Flophouse it was awesome to have Dan back for this big discussion of whacking day a real classic episode of season four you guys should be checking out the Flophouse if you haven't yet Dan and his pals are the best on there please check it out and thank you very much to Dan we'd love to have him back anytime and if you enjoy the Talking Simpsons podcast, you should know it's only possible because of supporters at patreon.com slash talking simpsons.

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about who framed Roger Rabbit. You gotta sign up at the $10 level to get all of that ad-free bonus stuff for you today at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. and speaking of rocks and stones we have another little chalmers scene here that i had to get every second out may i interest you in a jello brick sir sir? There's a grape in the center. Well, I'm not made of stone. You're not made of stone.

Brick, you're not made of stone. Shira there was just like, stone. So good. In the script, there is one extra joke here where Chalmers instead, I think it's funnier to just extend the laugh out like that, but the original thing is chalmers eats a bit of meatloaf and asks skinner if he's using any low-cost meat extenders is the term he uses and skinner instantly denies like oh no no no no it seems like chalmers would be all in favor of low-cost meat extenders yeah i think skinner is by just instantly denying it in

that sketch it's like well no you're pissing off chalmers here you should be showing you're stretching the buck on these meatloafs yeah next we see willie he is working on his proud tractor which i thought this was the first appearance of the tractor but it is not it actually is in radio bart and it basically does look like this it's not a showcase the same this is just the one he gets on out of my way a horse's arse and he same. This is just the one he gets on. Out of my way, a horse is ours. And he's riding on it in the middle of the street. This talking tractor. We'll get to that part.

We're not there yet, I guess. But like the little flap on the pipe that puts out smoke. I don't know. I'm not a tractor mechanic. I don't know what this is. I remember as a kid being like, what is this? What's going on here? Why does it have a little cap on it?

It's an interesting visual choice they make i don't think they had done it before or after where when bart is having the fantasy of the tractor mocking him everything shifts to a red kind of color right yeah like it i mean clearly this is meant to be read as a fantasy but it also makes it very sinister as if like i don't know maybe there is some sort of christine style possession going on of this tractor and it you know just hangs around to encourage kids to do bad things otherwise bart is just hearing voices telling him to do something bad yes that's also not good but before that though yes willie is pulled away from his tractor which he leaves idling so that's why bart's able to he doesn't have to turn it on he leaves it on because a beautiful woman reveals herself to him

unnamed scottish lass in the script and before when we did this i would have said and this is the only time willie has ever had sex in the show but now he's married to a similar looking character named maizey mcweldon voiced by karen gillen who he married in season 35 yeah i was gonna say they just got married this year and unlike other marriage episodes it is not broken up at the end of the episode he remains married to maizey mcweldon you know what he it. After so many years alone dealing with those damn kids, finally some happiness for Willie. Most of his story after the golden years was Willie living in a shack and being a violent loner

with a lot of vendettas. And I appreciate that episode. They hire David Tennant and Karen Gillan to play his Scottish foils in it because they did hire some true Scotsmen. And I love that Willie makes the point of that he almost blows it with this woman that she's like, so is there a place a lady can wash her hair?

And he turns it into a story about killing a rat that's in his pool. But she's into it. She loves the rat killing story. You know, this is the Scots spirit, I guess. My family is very, at least my dad and my uncle, are very sort of into the idea of their Scots heritage. McCoy is from Mackay, or Mackay, actually, as they would pronounce it. And I guess they have done the genealogy. It's true. It's not just a garbage family lore. But I am, you know, enough along in my life as an American to be like, look, we're all like white people. We don't have any interesting or unique backgrounds anymore as Americans.

Like, don't hang on to this too much. But maybe I still have had some of it in it because I remember always finding this woman in particular, a comely Scottish lass. It's probably the most attractive woman they had drawn on the show up to that point, maybe including Lurleen Lumpkin. They spent a lot of time making it a babe for this episode. Definitely. It's later in the episode, too, but Jeff Lynch, he enjoys getting into the sexier parts of Simpsons. I mean, the way it's framed of her arrival is through her legs, you see Willie as the camera pulls back.

That would be in a James Bond movie, that kind of shot. Yeah, and they're not like typical sexy gams. They're shapely, muscular, Scottish legs of the kind that, I don't know, Robert Crumb might draw. I also like the reaction shot of willie like he just can't believe what he's seeing he's just like and he takes his hat off like he's like he's he can barely speak then we cut to chalmers and chalmers is correct you pause that scene you can count 50 stars wow and this is where chalmers he interfaces with the other students you can count 50 stars. Oh, Jesus. Wow. This is where Chalmers, he interfaces with the other students.

48, 49, 50. Flags up to date. Very good, Seymour. Now, are these children as smart as they look? Well, let's pick one at random. How about that one? You mean this boy here? No, no, Lisa Simpson.

When was the Battle of New Orleans? January 8th, 1815, two weeks after the war ended. First grade. What's a battle? Let's go. Did that boy say what's a battle?

No, he said what's that rattle? It's about the heating duct. It sounded like battle. I thought of cold, so I... Oh, so you would hear ours as bees yes i understand it's so great they kept the overlapping dialogue which uh there's a lot of cartoons now with improv dialogue or improv style dialogue but that never happened at this time and it just it

feels so natural as the show went on i feel like that's one of the major thing it lost is the feeling that occasionally they would all be in the same room i mean it's the main thing that i like about bob's burgers is that sort of spontaneous feeling that you get from people being in the same area and this is so funny to me trying to track the logic it doesn't make any sense but chalmers just goes with it so you would hear ours is bees and that's not in the script either the so you will hear ours is bees bit like that makes chalmers so special that a character says a ridiculous thing and the scene could just end there but he's like wait wait no let's let's really pull this out here okay yeah later we have

what an odd remark which i laughed out loud at in my apartment despite having seen this episode 50 times yeah i also like they can now trust that the audience is so well versed in the show that if they almost ask ralph a question you know ralph is the dumb kid like it will make them look bad and you need to talk to lisa instead yeah and what lisa says is all i know about the battle of new orleans as well i just know what lisa told me in this one scene here my history teachers the war of 1812 not so important to them you zip right past that yeah yeah it's like i don't know looking at a band's discography and there's like one record you're like you don't really need to listen to this one like war of 1812 feels like that war well it is one we sort of lost too so it makes sense why we would cover it less

don't want to talk about that this is where bart then is exposed to his biggest flaw as right as he escapes he sees the tractor he hears it the script calls it exhaust pipe lid. So that's how I know the term for it. Okay. Well, now we know. No further questions. And he instantly jumps on it and almost runs over many people. Like, this is just great action. There's a reason this guy, the director on this, went on to be Sam Raimi's, like, top visual effects action animator.

Bart gets on it. It instantly goes wrong and he is screaming and almost running over people like it is an amazing action sequence i love this period where things were allowed to still go a little off model when something zany was happening and so like the way the tractor rears up and you know bart's expression changes i'm keen on that yeah even when the tractor hits chalmers we get a big cartoony almost roadrunner effect and the word pow appears i think yes also the talking chicken the way he says he's insulting both of us that's been in my head ever since this

might be in in the script henry lynch brings it up on the commentary that when bart rides by willie and the woman kind of rise up out of the grass because they were making out. Yes, actually, that is in the script. It's right after Chalmers get hit, which I'm glad they cut it because otherwise it would be Chalmers get hit. And instead of cutting straight to his reaction, which is funnier, you cut away to Willie and the Scottish woman. But the scene is they pop up from the amorous embrace willie's like what was that and scottish woman pulls him back down and says tis only bog gas okay not bad but i love the cut from the impact to ow ow ow yeah though when

chalmers bends over his butt doesn't look as good as Skinner's butt when he bent over in Dufflis. When the giant tomato's about to hit it, if we're rating butts here, Skinner has a better butt than Chalmers, I say. This is Bart just being drawn to giant adult asses because we have the tomato scene in Dufflis, we have this,

and then later in Bart Sells His Soul, in Sunday School, the teacher's bending over to do something and he's getting out the slingshot and trying to resist Satan. That's right's right oh Edna Krabappel when they have to get all their school uniform she bends over and Bart doesn't know what to do either because he's so contained by the suit you know I think I conflated this in my brain with also the Skinner one I was like yeah yeah of course there's the scene with like the shapely suited ass bobbing back and forth tempting something to happen to it but I just put them both into one

and yeah of course yeah this is the later one with the tomato but here is Chalmers almost giving Skinner what he's always wanted and this is the closest Skinner will ever get. Excellent. Not a trace of urine. Seymour, you're on a tight ship. Well, you know what they say, sir. Where there's no smoke, there's no fire. What an odd remark. Why, that looks like a 50-cent piece. I'll just bend over and get it.

Seems to be caught between these two flowers. Ow, ow, ow. Seymour, I was thinking of promoting you to assistant superintendent. But instead, that plum goes to Holloway. No, but sir, he's a drunk. And a pill popper. If I could just...

Silence! And why is a cafeteria worker posing as a nurse? I get two paychecks this way. D'oh. There's no detention this time, Simpson. This is the end. You are expelled from Springfield Elementary.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Aw. There is so much in there that is perfect. First off, I want to say that the way he says, instead that plum goes to Holloway, in just a couple episodes, his crusty gets canceled with also the term, that's the sweetest plum about the T-shirt sales.

So it's such a great, like, just way of saying, a plum is the best thing. Just so it's such a great like just way of saying a plum is the best thing just calling it a plum that plum that's just a fun saying that they've snuck in here yeah and i love that chalmers doesn't deny that holloway is a drunk he then volunteers yes yes and a pill popper but what are you gonna do you're not getting the promotion anymore bob has used and a pill popper but what are you gonna do you're not getting the promotion anymore bob has used and a pill popper to great funny extent on this show i think it's whenever we're talking about someone who was canceled or somebody who's you know having rough times i'll often add the and a pill popper to a description of their many problems yeah there's something in the delivery that suggests

like he just needs it to be as correct as possible like no you're leaving something out here this is how much i hate you i'm giving the drunk pill popper your job yeah i also love the idea that this 50 cent piece is trapped caught between two flowers that's why he has to take so long picking it up hearing it just in my earphones without seeing it the way as there he says what an odd remark even hits the k like extra hard to make it really stick with you the funny thing about it is he's not putting too much spin on it he is just noting how it is an odd remark now when lunch lady door says i get two paychecks this way i choose to read that as a meta commentary because doris growl was the script supervisor and by doing occasional voice acting appearances in the show, she was getting two scripts that way on The Simpsons.

And soon she'll be on The Critic actually getting two paychecks. She'll be a regular cast member on The Critic for the last two years of her life. Yes. Wow. R.I.P. Doris Grau. Every time I hear her voice, I'm like, God damn, she was one of a kind. Just inherently funny to hear her say things. Now, Skinner's turnaround is another great animation.

You see it from Bart's perspective of his back, and then you see his fingers kind of clench. And then when he turns around, he just has a dead, resolute face. It's just great. That is the art enhancing Shearer's delivery and showing just how bad and serious this is for Bart here. And it's easy to forget that this was a season one arc of Skinner that they basically dropped by this point. But this is, I think, the last bit of it.

In Bart the Genius and Crepes of Wrath, and those are just two examples, there were stories of Skinner saying, like, can I finally expel Bart? I'm thinking of expulsion. He says all these things. Now this is when it finally happens skinner expels bart though it hadn't happened in such a while that he threatened it that i don't think it has the impact of skinner finally did it he expelled bart it's also it dampened i think a little bit by how hilariously easy it is for bart to come back to school like bart impresses skinner one time and he's gonna just like you know what all is forgiven just a small burst of independent learning really cleaned up all the other pests yeah we come back from the commercial break with a classic ion springfield song and the first thing he says is about how

where are all the munchkins from the Wizard of Oz? They're all in graves. They just show a graveyard. It's such a mean joke. Oh, I did munchkin research, by the way. It's our job. The last surviving munchkin, Jerry Marin, died in 2018 at age 98. So a munchkin lived about 25 more years past the production of this episode. And I will always think of my local city legend in jacksonville florida i grew

up in the suburb of jacksonville and in the senior village penny farms in jacksonville was where mind heart rabe lived where he was the munchkin coroner rolls out the thing and pronounces her not merely dead but really most sincerely dead he lived in jacksonville to the age of 94 in 2010 is when he was most sincerely dead but i'm oh oh god it was all so interesting and heartwarming up until the end i hope they did his funeral like the wizard of oz scene that would have been great i think it's what he would have wanted he spent 30 years as a spokesman for oscar meyer as well as little oscar the world's smallest chef do he make hot dogs or as the world's smallest chef it seems like not a really sort of a chef oriented food but that's true i guess he just grills them but unfortunately i couldn't find no one's uploaded

a commercial of it to youtube that i could find. So it really does tell you, like, if you're under the age of 50 and have heard of Little Oscar, the world's smallest chef, you're crazy. Like, you're a crazy person. Sadly, he just killed the pigs. He was small enough to get under them. That's all it took. It's crazy to hear that he wasn't even the oldest. The one in Jacksonville for me growing up, he wasn't even the oldest munchkin who passed away. That one outlived him to 98 even.

Did they have a tontine? They collected all of the residuals for the munchkin rights in Wizard of Oz. They had to be the last surviving people who were in that movie too, right? Oh, absolutely, yeah. Because they were all like 18 or 19. They were very young people. Yeah, I mean, honestly, this, because they were all like 18 or 19. They were very young people. Yeah, I mean, honestly, this sort of surprised me. I don't want to get too morbid, but I think if you're a little person,

your life expectancy is often shortened by that, but they outlived all the others. Well, unlike their contemporary Judy Garland, they weren't forced to be a pill popper by their director. Yeah, half these uppers, they'll make you dance better. Never stop dancing. Now go kiss Mickey Rooney. Put on that black face.

No, like you like him. Then we get a joke that's sort of stolen by Zootopia of the nudist camp for animals, which is just a funny joke about putting black bars over the genitals of animals. This is when we get introduced to Whacking Day. But first, a look at the local holiday that was called distasteful and puerile by a panel of hillbillies. Whacking Day!

Oh, no, no! In a tradition that dates back to founding father Jebediah Springfield, every May 10th, local residents gather to drive snakes into the center of town and whack them to snake heaven. After exposing Alger Hiss, honorary grand marshal Richard Nixon goes after another deadly hiss. Is whacking day over? Thank you. Thanks for coming out. It's all so barbaric.

One thing that's sad in this episode is how often, and it's a great joke, but Lisa is just this, well, she is able to change it later, but she has such impotent pain this whole episode of just like yeah this horrible thing i can't stop and she's just miserable the whole episode it's real sad and everyone ignores her as per usual i love matt graining tvute, you know, just hatred of Nixon. Like, we're going to work in Nixon long after anybody's thinking about Richard Nixon to kick him again.

And I find that kind of grudge-holding kind of hilarious. Hey, you know, still alive at this point in history, too. I wonder if he was seeing these or people were telling him about it, at least, andumbling yeah he was sadly a rooing into his tea oh and alger hiss a little thing about him so he was a former state department worker he was accused of leaking confidential documents to the soviet union nixon's pursuit of his actually helped propel him politically though hiss was only charged for perjury since the statute of limitations on espionage has expired or had expired for him, which is crazy to think that you sold the secrets to the Soviet Union.

But that was like 20 years ago. So here's a parking ticket, basically. Yeah, I wouldn't expect there to be a statute of limitation on on that. I'm sure like post Patriot Act or whatever, there's no statute anymore. But Alger Hiss maintained his innocence until he died in 1996 and looking it up there's compelling evidence on both sides as to whether or not he was a spy selling secrets to the soviet union or providing them to the soviet union there was one thing i looked up about it that i wondered if he'd been cited recently because of a certain popular movie last year and yes because of oppenheimer Oppenheimer in the movie Oppenheimer goes through a similar,

like, were you a spy questioning? That's one of the central bits of the movie. And I found several reactionary right-wing websites that said, as Alger Hiss taught us, we were right to distrust Oppenheimer and he should have been questioned. So still being cited to this day by wonderful websites like The Federalist. Oh, good.

That's going to do a lot of fun stuff to your search results, Henry. Yeah, I should have put it in an incognito tab. Darn it. Oh, fool. I was a fool. But also, it feels like perfect Schwarzwalder writing that he knows the story of Alger Hiss and its relationship to Nixon and he turns it into a snake pun. Yes. It is funny to think that we're going to make this sort of casual historical reference just so we can get the word Hiss out. And the way Nixon bashes that guy's face in and then just says, thanks. Thanks for coming. Like, it is perfect Nixon too.

There's so many great details like he can't read the crowd also the baton is taken away from him yes though sadly i feel like you would just see donald trump do this now you've seen him do worse and just thank everybody for coming and i guess i'm just saying that satire is dead of course oh don't i know it somebody hire me and they lay the groundwork of may 10th being the date which actually is important for bart's historical note later in the episode that is true and i do want to brag a bit in that i went to simpsons trivia recently in vancouver and one of the questions was what day is whacking day somehow i knew this information which proves i should be doing this for the rest of my life that earns you the right for sure yeah i wouldn't have before doing these notes i would

not have remembered it was may 10th either and after this homer walks into the room and he asked them what they did today lisa reveals that she knows how many drams are in a penny weight which google says is 0.87712 that's how many drams are in a penny weight a dram is larger than a penny weight i like the idea that she's learning all of these sort of esoterical out of use weight measurements i also love how when bart says he was expelled this is laid out perfectly homer says that's my boy he takes a drink of beer and then he swallows it and says beer like they deny you a spit take very intentionally. I don't even think it registered, but that's absolutely what's going on.

I just enjoyed it as Homer's delayed reaction. But, of course, of course that's the joke. Yeah, I think this is the first time I read it as a denied spit take, not just Homer being distracted by beer and then reacting. mean it does make sense for the homer we know that he would just be like to react to this i first need to drink beer like yeah i only when looking at it i was like oh that's the joke it's a spit take joke bart reveals he will just be a 19th century cockney boot black instead which homer rejects. This is him further expanding the character he already tried out in Streetcar Named Marge.

And soon, I believe, this will develop into the character Rudiger. He names himself in... Bart's Inner Child? Bart's Inner Child, yes. Thank you, Bob. And so Bart is sent to a couple schools. Well, sorry, he's only sent to one school.

There's a second school in the script. Okay, thank you, Henry, because this montage feels like it's missing other locations because it feels like it's setting it up for, let's see how Bart does in different schools, but there's just the one. Yeah, Dan is an Emmy-winning comedy writer. You see that this should have more examples than just the one. I feel like there are a few times in this episode where I was like, that feels odd. It feels like there was another reaction somewhere. I think that another part that felt off to me, I don't know whether it's

true or not, is when at the end, Lisa's making a case for snakes and she goes to one person and then she goes, and you like snakes too, don't you, Barry White? And he says, yes. And there's just those two and it feels like there must have been another one at some point being denied the three jokes we deserve per concept i think it's the problem and your sense is correct there dan and i'll get to that one too from the script but yeah first part goes to a fundamentalist christian school and he throws out another schoolyard rhyme just like he did with batman smells so memorably in uh the season one but this joke here it was one where i did know this childish rhyme as a kid i don't know

if you guys knew it miss eric but oh absolutely yeah it's one of the classics i love how credulous this uh religious instructor is you know and how what a sweaty walk it is to allow bart to say this oh yes beans were an important staple food of the israelites or whatever he says you know that he just views everything through his fundamentalist vision and also i noted for the first time that in the front of the class is ezekiel and ishmael the two students who were excused from watching the fuzzyuzzy Bunny sex education video. Oh, they left that school. I understand why.

Maybe this is a newly opened school here. And as he's chased with the paddle, this also speaks to a sad reality of like, oh, yes, corporal punishment still very allowed at fundamentalist Christian schools. And I love the pacing, too, that Marge, she would have left, but she stopped to put on her lipstick. And that gave it just enough time for Bart to be thrown out of the class instantly and make it to the car. Seemingly in that school for maybe 90 seconds, I think. So in the original script, there is the second location. Bart goes to Springfield Military Academy, it's called. And there is a friendly general type who is saying that bart can only join if he signs this paper and bart refuses to sign it and the paper is saying that bart promises not to use his training

for treasonous purposes so bart is thrown out yeah don't tie me down man that makes sense the other the other type of school and you know the other comedy type of school, military school, we don't see it, but total sense. Though that will be a whole episode later in the series, in season eight. So after that, we go to dinner. Bart is saying that he'll just have to have another dream job. And we have one of his many wonderful fantasy cutaways. I love every time Bart envisions a horrible future and loves it. Yes, this gig of testing dangerous food additives that turns envisions a horrible future and loves it.

Yes, this gig of testing dangerous food additives that turns him into a Hyde-style monster. The transformation's incredible. It's so good. This is just more of like, Jeffrey Lynch, he puts in the extra effort on every episode he does. It's why he only directs one episode in the final season he works on, because he puts that much effort into it and it pays off. But it also takes more time and doesn't fit the budget of television animation. Such a plausible fantasy, too, for a kid, because I'm like thinking about it. Obviously, now I wouldn't make this trade. But if I was a kid and I was like, okay, this experimentation is guaranteed to do something

cool to me, I'd be like, yeah, that would be a good job. You'd be a monster forever. And the way the guy says, sweet taste, some monstrism. Great saying. And as usual, when we come back to reality from the dark fantasy, he says, cool.

So he's into it. and then we get another of the greatest scenes in the whole series i think of this scene all of the time they do repeat this like three times of homer telling lisa she's wrong and they're all funny but this is the funniest one Sweet. Pleasing taste, some monsterism. Cool. You're going to get an education. I'm going to teach you myself. Marge, it's too late. The boy's ten years old.

Let's focus our energy on Lisa and the other one. What's your problem? Wacking day's coming. Woo-hoo! The greatest day of the year. But killing snakes is evil. Maybe so, Lisa. But it's part of our oh-so-human nature. Inside every man is a struggle

between good and evil that cannot be resolved. I am evil Homer! I am evil Homer! I am evil Homer! I am evil Homer! And that, I don't know, eight second joke became so memorable that I went online and I looked because they mentioned it on the commentary

This spawned at least three different official evil Homer action figures, and then you see Homer in his Halloween devil outfit in Margin Change, which I think is the next episode It is, yeah, that's right But yeah, it just stuck around in our minds I want to Margin Change, which I think is the next episode after this. It is. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, it just stuck around in our minds. I want to make it clear. I'm not raising an actual logic question, but it does make me wonder.

So this is Homer's fantasy? He's fantasizing a thing that is in direct contradiction with what he just said. There's no way to resolve this. And then he's fantasizing, but of course, inside me, evil Homerer has won long ago he is dancing on the grave of my good side or is this are we to take this that this is the reality of what's going on inside homer that uh all goodness has left this man i think it's the reality of homer's being but i think it's also what lisa is imagining because i love what we cut back from that little sketch, that little tiny bit. And it's just Lisa, her dead stare at Homer.

Okay. All right. I'll buy it then. Oh, by the way, news. In April, they just released an evil Homer Funko Pop. So they're still making merch of this idea. If it wasn't so high price, I looked up some of the old ones too. For over $100 is the best one on eBay right now.

The 2007 McFarlane Toys Evil and Good Homer combo pack. But like $100 is on the low end you're getting for it. Meanwhile, in 2004, Playmates did an Evil Homer, but it's the wrong design. It's like a Devil Fusion Homer, not an actual like Homer in a Devil costume, which is much funnier. Yeah, you know know let's be honest evil characters usually have the most flair anyway but you can't beat for you know style a character that goes around with maracas they say on the commentary it came in very late the evil homer joke but it was worth it whatever extra money it cost for them to add in in the final animation checks

was worth it in the original script there is a kind of funny joke because instead of evil homer homer says but lisa look at this pamphlet so it's it's pamphlet comedy the pamphlet is common misconceptions about snakes in it it lists they can hypnotize you and they can live a whole day without their head as misconceptions and then lisa says to homer do you know what a misconception is dad and he's like no but aren't these terrifying facts yeah not as funny although i do like the sort of bolsters the story and themes i'm sure we'll talk about overall later on but one minor problem i have with this episode is it feels like a lot of blackout gags even more a lot of simpsons yeah especially in the third act yeah they're

enjoying a lot of fantasy wipeaways and visions like yeah they actually in that clip that i played that is 44 seconds long it goes from bart's fantasy to then the evil homer fantasy yeah it's the end of season four this is a very tired writing staff who had to lobby to make a clip show to take some pressure off of themselves and it's still 23 episodes 23 new episodes of tv yeah it's probably short swelters like i'm not gonna linger on meyer's drug and crap i'll just stick in my weirdo fantasy jokes more and more cutaways then we see marge the next morning she's got plans for bart bart i love the drawing of him on that huge pillow it looks so comfortable and my husband he goes to work in his office three days a week and i make my morning workout schedule like i go downstairs with him so i don't

like lounge in bed all day but sometimes i have done the bart oh well have fun at work today you know i have the worst of both worlds because i have the erratic you know self-dictated schedule of a podcaster and i you know work from home with like my quote- quote unquote studio being my office. But also my wife Audrey has a nine to five job, but she works from home. So even though she has assured me several times that she does not resent me, my own sense of shame cannot let me escape the guilt of being in the home doing my nonsense while she has to look at spreadsheets or whatever. I also love that marge is perfect marge comedy that she is so excited that she bought a bell and she's like

giggles to herself and instantly unplugs it the first time it rings like god it's so good and not to project my own mother onto marge as i so often do but that clock my mom has that exact type of clock I have gifted it to her twice she lost it once and then got her a replacement and the most recent one I got her it has get this interchangeable color ties so if you get tired of the white tie on your tuxedo you can make it red you can make it purple is that the official kit kat clock henry i think it is i believe it is the official version of it yes i have one of those i think on the shelf behind me somewhere where it lays broken they're wonderful items but they're also cheap plastic so i'm like can we just you know get a new one but my wife who is much more frugal than I, is like, no, we're going to figure out how to fix it.

So in the meantime, its eyes move no more. Would it shock you to know that I had a Garfield variant of these clocks as a child? Are you guys going to do on your other related show, the Garfield movie? Is that going to be part of your life? No, we covered the first Garfield movie is that gonna be part of your life no we covered the first Garfield movie with we hate movies and that's my fill of Garfield cinematic content I can't have any more that's a wise decision is the Garfield movie on track for you guys at some point I'm assuming oh dear lord you know what I hadn't even thought of it but probably probably I know we'll also probably

have to do if at some point, and that is breaking my brain, the idea that we're going to do that one. I think that's probably a worse movie than Garfield. I'd rather watch Garfield a second time than the John Krasinski movie. I said it before, and don't worry, I did not pay to watch the Garfield movie. There are flashes in it of good animation. I could take out 10 good minutes of that movie, of that 100-minute movie.

I'm looking at the returns, the box office returns for If, and I'm glad that Americans are finally standing up and saying no to John Krasinski. He's gotten away with this for far too long. Yeah, it's got the Krasinski factor, and it's also got, like, I don't need a movie to tell me that, like, I need to whimsically still have an imaginary friend in adulthood. There are many childlike things that I enjoy and keep a feeling of wonder in my life, but also, goddammit, people gotta grow up at some point. Yeah, the premise is slightly psychotic.

Yeah. I'm also about to get my ryan reynolds dose for the year anyway with the deadpool wolverine movie it's like i certainly can't take two ryan reynolds movies just take him in his most uncut form and then they'll do you for the year you need an r rating to hear all of his jokes about how he is gay for another man which is funny of course it's very funny if a man would be attracted to another man it's a very silly and funny thing we see that even when bart is the only student in class he's still the class clown and saying i didn't do it when pranking his mom

yeah and marge has incredible penmanship, it's written with typeset font. That's why it looks that way. But if you take it on the surface, Marge is a great writer. And we were having so many cutaways in this episode. In this next one, I always forget which episode it's in, and it's so good. It's so good. Yes, Abe arrives to speak to the class. Oh, that's right. I invited a guest speaker to speak to the class. Oh, that's right. I invited a guest speaker to talk to the class.

Hello, children. I got separated from my platoon after we parachuted into Dusseldorf. So I rode out the war posing as a German cabaret singer. Won't you come home, Franz Braude? Won't you come home? Yoo-hoo!

Ach, du lieber, das ist nicht einer Bubi! Is that story true, Grandpa? Well, most of it. I did wear a dress for a period in the 40s. Oh, they had designers then. I love Homer almost running them down. I love even more that it happens a second time, that no one has learned their lesson,

especially because it was only on this rewatch that I'm like why are they in the garage anyway it'd be much more comfortable to have class in the house just do it in the living room you have lots of space for it but marge yeah it's it's the marge is so committed to this living room she built with the bell in it but yeah in the second one the reaction shots of all of them screaming is great and i love in the second one, the reaction shots of all of them screaming is great, and I love in the second one, he hits the chair. It flies away like he's destroyed the chair Bart had been sitting in. This World War II flashback is credited to Conan, and I believe it was not too long ago in the front where we had Grandpa's fantasy of being in an Old West paint-your-wagon scenario in which he was the comely lass.

He was the queen of the Old West. Yesyour-wagon scenario in which he was the comely lass. He was the queen of the Old West. Yes, that's right. And Matt Groening hates Hitler jokes, so I don't know how this made it onto the air, but it's very good. Apparently they wanted to use the Marlene Dietrich song, Lily Marlene, but they could not get approval because the licensors rightfully assumed they would be making fun of the song or using it in a silly context in this crazy Nazi-ish flashback. Maybe the rights holders just have a test like, now before we license this, is this for a joke about Nazis? The answer is like, yes, it is.

I don't know who the other guy at Hitler's table is, but there is a great Looney Tunes style character of Mussolini to the right of him. Yes, yeah. I assume maybe the other guys gerbils i don't know but yeah they're all drawn in the looney tunes world war ii caricature style as hitler is too but hitler is so distracting in the shot you're not recognizing the other characters thanks to him well it also has that classic looney tunes thing where a male character only has to put on a dress for another heterosexual male character to go crazy for them like that's all that needs to happen no matter how absurd

that character may look or how obviously there might be coconuts in the bra yeah actually hitler's bashful yoo-hoo with his fingers like that is just like elmer fudd does that yeah well first i did not see the movie cabaret until years later so i did not realize this is also a cabaret reference though they mistakenly remember this at first on the commentary is falling in love again was the song they wanted to license and it led them to remember a commercial that i pulled up just to be like wow you could never make this commercial now that it is a 1998 Mercedes-Benz commercial. It's using like Forrest Gump technology to give you fake old footage of people singing that song while doing stuff with Mercedes-Benz across the decades.

And it like starts in like the teens then the 20s and the early 30s and then jumps to the 50s in color. Don't talk about Mercedes-Benz, what they did from 1933 to 1945. And you could never do that now because back then you could do that commercial and I, as a kid, didn't think about it at all. You post that commercial now on YouTube. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you.

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you guys missed the part where you built Hitler's cars and all of the planes and the tanks. Yeah, everyone's pulling out their phones at the same time the first time that commercial airs and it's over. Though now I found out that the Mercedes-Benz, their way of combating it now is they have their own website that's like one of the first results of when you search Mercedes-Benz, their way of combating it now is they have their own website that's like one of the first results of when you search Mercedes-Benz Hitler, like it's their results. And it is a sober objective, as they can be, of like, they did build this stuff for Hitler. And I think it's them trying to find the most factually correct but non-sensationalist way of owning the top result to say yes we built things for hitler the end like let's not make a big deal out of it but yes we built things for hitler be funny if they're like and here's a list of other companies that built things for

just trying to spread it around yeah we could name a bunch of other giant places that still exist to build things for hitler too you know like why are you getting so mad justin the mercedes benz company look it was the 40s everyone was doing it so after that we then cut to lisa and marge looking at a book as homer arrives in the room with his new whacking stick. And boy, oh boy. Again, this flew over my innocent 10-year-old head. Look what I got, Marge. A new whacking stick.

Whack! Oh, excuse me. Whack, whack, whack! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Bart, I'd like you to read this copy of Johnny Tremaine. It's a book I read as a girl. A book? I think you might like this.

It's about a boy who goes to war. His hand is deformed in an accident. Deformed? Why didn't you say so? They should call this book Johnny Deformed. Now, as a kid when I saw this joke, I thought Johnny Tremaine being set in the Revolutionary War meant it was written back in maybe 1805 or whatever. No, it's a 1943 book,

which does fit with Marge reading it when she was a kid if we take it that Marge was born in 1950 in this timeline of the show. Was it the first Newbery Award winner or is it just an early one i think you're right yeah i won in 1944 but i believe the yeah it started existing in 1922 so okay still early on in the awards but it had been like 20 years yeah i feel like this was you know this was the big reason that johnny tremaine was still like big i feel like when i was in was, you know, this was the big reason that Johnny Tremaine was still, like, big.

I feel like when I was in school is, you know, the Newbery Awards. Like, the Oscars for children's librarians. You just got to push those Newbery books on kids. Not to say that that's bad. I mean, it was great, but. It was never forced on me, so I guess I didn't know it was young adult lit. Right. I do remember that seal on a book did mean, like, well, I guess I should read it.

My teacher will be proud of me if I read this. I said it before, but I can see why Schwarzwalder, I think this is Schwarzwalder putting it in here as like, if he could make Children of America in 1993 read one book, I think it would be one where a boy learns about the importance of the Revolutionary War, of standing up against taxation, and also participating in the Boston Tea Party, which is what Johnny Tremaine does in the book. And what deforms him is molten silver. So stay away from that, kids. It's a cautionary tale. Yes, it's from smelting and not the war.

Yeah, it's the tragic thing. He thinks he's going to be a silversmith apprentice, and then his hubris leads to the smelting accident bart i think is going to be disappointed when he gets to the end of the book and for johnny to participate in a battle a doctor separates the fingers on his right hand so he can fire a musket so he doesn't even stay as johnny deformed by the end of the book. He just becomes a murderer. I never read this as a kid. I did know the facts of it because I believe after I saw this episode as a kid, I then saw the 1957 Disney version on TV somewhere of Johnny Tremaine, which is basically all of these plot points. And the only famous people in it are sebastian cabot and richard beamer who was tony in

the original west side story film i remember liking it okay as a kid but for as newberry winners go it's no westing game that's my pick that one didn't have a joke on the simpsons so i don't know what it's about i was looking through the list and all i recognized was the giver that's what i definitely read in uh grade, sixth grade, something like that. Me too. The Westing Game's kind of a mystery, but it's a mystery that's good for kids because it's more like weird word games are the key to what's going on. But it's a very clever book. I like it a lot.

So kids out there, turn off this podcast because there's been a lot of swearing and then go read the westing game uh johnny deformed not on disney plus though there is a dvd out there that disney will sell you oh man what the hell that makes me think there must be like i don't know a native american character and it played by a white man or something why would it not be on disney plus they had all that other crap though actually they have delisted a lot of stuff on disney plus since when it launched with everything we're in the period where they're like and now we'll quietly take everything away because it costs too much to host this stuff but also you won't be able to find it anywhere else so it's hell with you i guess they poured molten silver on the johnny tremaine film negatives disney plus used to have

two really good documentaries about Marvel. No, three. There's three really good ones. One directed by Paul Scheer, another by Gillian Jacobs, and another on the history of the Toho Spider-Man.

They were all so great, but they were released in a time when if they were taken off of the service, they could be counted as a tax loophole. So they are gone. I am hopeful that they got archived by the Marvel fans out there, but you can't watch them on Disney Plus anymore.

Yeah. The one silver lining to all this stuff that's going on that we're sort of talking around, both as someone who has worked in TV and as someone who likes having media available, is like it does seem like we're slowly drifting back towards like okay we're going to take these off the services and then we're going to license them to people again like we used to which is the way that actual money gets made and availability happens yeah i was just seeing another show that nobody watched on hbo max now is being on Netflix, and Netflix is promoting it like, brand new show, you didn't see this show. So Bart is distracted so much from the book that he is not watching Itchy & Scratchy.

This is just like John Swartz, Walter Roldan, Itchy & Scratchy, and Marge as well. And they are so excited to make this JFK parody, they don't even give it a title. Yes, they fully reenact the shooting of jack ruby which wait lee harvey oswald jack ruby he went unshot sorry yes itchy is jack ruby in this right and this is 30 years after it happened when this aired the script does have a telling change i will say it does not have the guest director card for oliver stone it just is lee harvey oswald being shot i think this is me putting on my conspiracy theory hat like oliver stone would that they put in that because the censor told them you cannot

parody just an assassination and so by putting in the guest director card, they're like, ah, we're parodying the JFK movie. Yeah. I mean, this is not an Itchy and Scratchy. I particularly like either way, with or without the title card. It's like, is this a joke or is this just a reference to a thing? I think it's a shock reference.

They're like, wow, they're doing a joke about one of the darkest days in American history. It feels more like a Photoshop joke than an actual itchy and scratchy cartoon where you can go online and see the shot Lee Harvey Oswald put into many different contexts. Right. It's one of those two things you see on the Internet. Look, we put two things together. Don't you like it? Because we've recontextualized it. We put one thing next to another thing and in the time makes fools of assault department here this joke being about a crime that happened 30 years earlier when it aired would be the equivalent of doing a bronco chase joke on something now because that was 30 years ago this feeling great about that

then we see bart is reached the end of the book he's reading something that i think look i didn't pay for a kindle version of the book i couldn't search this text but i believe it to be the real line from it because a recurring statement in the book is a man can stand up it is the theme of the book a man can stand up fighting for what you Bart's saying that, and it's like, wow. I found another quote of like, there shall be no more tyranny. A handful of men cannot seize power over thousands. A man shall choose who it is, shall rule over him. We fight, we die for a simple thing, only that a man can stand up.

Now I see what you're saying about Tremaine, where it feels like this is Schwarzwalder being like, how can I steer this into a libertarian message rather than a message against killing animals? Yeah, when I read it without the innocent eyes of a child, this is a staunchly nationalist American libertarian statement being made in this book here. Marge then suggests that we could continue this learning at old Springfield town, which had previously been seen as where Homer made a crappy candle.

Yeah, he was the candle maker in I Married Marge. So it's still sticking around in the original script. There's a good joke I wish they'd have kept in where Bart says, that old fire trap? I thought they were closing it down. And Marge says, not until June. Though it's also just funny that Simpsons creates a world where they have oh they're now on the east coast and they're an original colony because they have a colonial Springfield in town on top of all the other things we know about Springfield yeah you know Springfield's a TARDIS it's bigger on

the inside and this is where Homer almost runs over them again and this time says doe the second time and great screaming animation as well and speaking of great animation if you ask the guy who will go on to animate spider-man moving wonderfully if you tell him you can parody bruce lee's nunchuck sequence from enter the dragon him and his team gonna go all out he's boasting that this includes real kung fu this scene i assume with homer's whacking stick moving like the nunchucks that's it though then again homer does do a real move of like when he flips backwards and then hits the thing behind him without looking that also feels like i've seen that in a specific kung fu movie includes real kung fu sounds like a sticker you would put on this episode

that makes sense though like it does feel more like nunchuck moves than like it looks weird with a club but you have unlocked it in my brain like oh i can see how this would work if it was a slightly different weapon and we talked about how great the improv was between skinner and chalmers there's a little moment here that definitely feels like the actors are together. And it's so great. Although it is describing one of Homer's darkest moments. Yeah. It starts with only Schwarzwelder in his script could say, and then Homer comes within one inch of bashing in Lisa's head.

Like, only that would be in Schwarzwelder. And then this is among the darkest things Homer has revealed. No! Dad! What? Dad! Everyone likes Wacking Day, but I hate it. Is there something wrong with me?

Yes, honey. Then what should I do? Just squeeze your rage into a bitter little ball and release it at an appropriate time. Like that day I hit the referee with a whiskey bottle. Remember that? Yeah. When daddy hit the referee? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like she's

just giving up. Like it's already dark enough that when she says, is there something wrong with me? Yes, honey. Like that's just so mean. This moment in Homer's life happened in front of his children too. They witnessed it. This could not be depicted in a funny way, so it has to be talked about as something that happened in the past her resigned yeah it's so heartbreaking but also like weirdly sweet like she's sort of wanting to allow herself to be comforted by her dad in the only way that i guess he's equipped

to offer but she's like this is horrifying the descriptors let you paint such a picture that homer was at some sporting event where a referee was at he brought his own whiskey bottle and just drank out of it openly to the point that it was empty and could then throw it at someone and then what happened afterwards probably more horrible things like that's probably where it just got worse from there and then homer remembers it as a good story to make his daughter remember about how to deal with anger correctly this is just over explaining the joke but it it's a perfection if evil homer wasn't in the previous scene that's so similar to this i would say this is the peak of homer in this episode then we also get another of my favorite lines i think we've brought up on this podcast a lot too.

We've described people as duh-duh idiots before. Panicky idiot number one is not the same as a duh-duh idiot because that's a guy who's panicking but doesn't know what to do. But she's describing more of like Moose from Archie comics. It's such a realistic depiction of a desperate actress. Like, no, I could do that. Okay. There's no point in arguing.

I can see that you have something in your head. Yeah, it's a great little moment where the actor briefly wants her to reconsider, but then just kind of gives up. Yeah. And the body language

is she pushes his headshot back and he puts his hand on it and saps it like, okay, all right. And, you know, they're right on the commentary to say that barney's joke in this act is basically the same joke he has in act three but it's such a great joke yes him being the town grunt no i'm the governor yeah this is the sign of some of the best writers on comedy back then are very tired because there's two great jokes of barney being drunk and they forget they did it twice

though Dan as a professional comedy writer how watchful are you of like wait we did this beat twice and it's not meant to be twice it's just we wrote the same type of joke twice in one like script or scene you know I mean my type of writing was for a daily show or that's what we called it although you know eagle-eyed viewers would notice that it was only on four times a week but it really was such a volume forward show that a lot of that we would just be like i don't know they'll cut it if they don't like it they'll cut it you know someone higher up the chain will do that decision let's put in both jokes and whatever one's best we could but you know but we would keep an eye out of like, are we just belaboring one thing?

Would it be funnier if we just moved on? That was more the kind of thinking we would do. Actually, Dan, this has come up recently too on the podcast. And Daily Show had their own share of Arby's jokes in your time. What did you think of the Simpsons also dunking on Arby's back then? Like, I could eat at arby's yeah that one sticks in my head so much they're like i'm so hungry i could eat arby's oh you must be really hungry just like the murmur in the crowd i think that one's so effective just because it's such a

left field drive-by shooting at arby's like they don't belabor that as like a thing in Simpsons lore they're just like we can all agree that you have to be pretty desperate to eat at Arby's right which is not even necessarily true like I don't love Arby's I don't hate Arby's I just Arby's is merely a fact of life you know but yeah I think after his time with The Simpsons, Bill Oakley has gone on to defend Arby's. And he said that it's a funny comedy word, the term Arby's. And then my own opinion is they have the funniest looking sandwiches. It's just like a sloppy pile of meat between two buns. Yeah, I was at The Daily Show during the heavy Arby's attack era.

And I think it was just a fun thing for writers to do. And then when Trevor was on, we did a lot of Spirit Airlines jokes. And that was much more grounded in the reality of it being a bad product. Those ones really worked on me. Anytime I would see Spirit Airlines suggested for any flight thing in its search,

I'd be like, well, obviously I'm not doing that. Southwest for me, the slightly better option. I was me the slightly dependable southwest yeah good old southwest nothing beats that this tale of fort sensible is another i forget this joke every time it maybe got cut out from like repeat on syndication or something but it's a great springfield story too of just they are celebrating that they did sacrifice their leader for their lives like they just like yep and how i love that yeah the pride of like the rational choice like guys don't you see this would be the rational choice because i feel like i would be that person you know you can have your moral absolutist stance in this situation but it's going to get us all killed let's just do what they want to say what's for reasonable or whatever it is and apparently i'm assuming since

this is colonial town then this is like a revolutionary war thing then the british troops were true to their word and they did kill the guy and then let everybody else live. Yeah, you know, in the fog of war, a win-win situation. Then this is where Bart discovers the chilling truth that the history books have been lying to him about. This is Jebediah Springfield at the Battle of Ticonderoga. Next. And here he is killing a snake on the very first whacking day in 1775. Hey, wait a minute. That was the same day he was at Ticonderoga. How could he be in two places at once? Uh, um, you see.

I'll blow the whole deal. Get him out of here. Roger. If you want to learn more about whacking day, there are many fine books in our gift shop. Bart is untangling the Jebediah Springfield lies that Lisa will take on in Lisa the Iconoclast in about three years. You're right. This is setting the seeds. Another theme of the show. Yeah, the lies that have been told about history over the years. And the capture of Fort Ticonderoga was a deed on May 10th, 1775. So I have to assume Bart only knows that stat because it is mentioned, either it's mentioned in Johnny Tremaine,

or he's done further reading on the Revolutionary War having read Johnny Tremaine. Yeah, he's like, maybe there were more deformed people in this war. I got to find out. And it's when a small force of Green Mountain boys led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold surprised and captured the fort's small British garrison, according to Wikipedia. The heroic Benedict Arnold. You don't hear about this side of him. Was Ethan Allen the paint guy? What's going on with him?

You know, now I'm wondering if it's the same as Sam Adams beer that they took this other patriot named paint after. That's for a commenter to tell us. I totally identify with Bart here. It's like this is one of these empowering moments you have as a kid where you like read one book and you're like, wait a minute. This thing you're telling me in this presentation isn't strictly true. Like slaves built this thing or whatever is one of those fun. It feels good as a jerkyky nerdy kid to be able to point these things yeah and it's a useful impulse that then needs to be quelled as you grow older

to correct people look it's a dark path it can get you on yeah i mean when it's your job to learn everything about pop culture you risk ruining so many parties when you show up. It's a danger of just going to a party, which has happened to me many times, or a doctor's appointment. And you say what your job is about Simpsons history. And you're told in a very friendly way by a person who just wants to make small talk. Wow, the Simpsons predicts everything, don't they? And you either have to be a jerk or try to be a normal person and just have a conversation. And it's tough. I'm pulled at in two directions.

I could say, well, actually, I co-hosted an entire hour-long symposium on this at SF Sketchfest. You don't really want to hear what I have to say about this. So let's both smile at each other, nod, and move on. What about local sports can we divert into instead here? I think you'll find that I know pleasingly little about that topic. Just smile and nod. Yeah. There's one other bit from the script that I do wish they kept in.

It is after Bart is pulled away, then just stamp the ticket, man, which he's credited as in the script too, which is in the guy who's the jerk who just says, Just Stamp the Ticket to Dad at the leftorium. He spots that a model of Jebediah Springfield is playing a Game Boy, and that that is also an inconsistency. Oh, we missed some Just Stamp the Ticket Man content. I'm very sad about that.

It'll be a little while until we see him again, I think. Then we cut to the quickie mart where apu is doing a poorly thought out promotion that involves his entire store being smashed horrifying sad i love the design on that chippo's bag i feel like it's the first time we see it and it's one of my favorite recurring fake brands in the simpsons world this is then another cut scene from the script where Patty and Selma are excited about whacking day about to start because they are on their last jug of snake wine. They say a very disgusting joke.

And, uh, we also go to the shooting range for the cops and they shoot a light bulb instead of the target. Then we close out the scene with lisa talking to lovejoy and we find out that he cites a part of the bible that he can't represent to her that supports whacking day and graining doesn't like it on the commentary because i understand his stance he's always felt that if you just have lovejoy lie then that's just the cheap joke to do with a religious figure.

Obviously, he doesn't love organized Christian religion, but he thinks it's a cheap thing to do with your comedy figure. I think he also didn't like that they made Hibbert an actual bad doctor, too. Right, yeah. I think he's right about Hibbert and mostly right about... I watched this joke and it's funny to me, but it's also sort of weird to me i'm like why is reverend lovejoy so i guess he's you know just part of the mob that always is springfield he loves the tradition of whacking day so much that he's literally just lying making up scriptures but it felt a little off model to me in a way that i understand though it also feels like a george meyer kind of thing of being told that there's something in the Bible

and then saying, can I read the Bible? No. Yeah. Speaking of biblical things, or well, I guess actually this is a German Christmas tradition, O Tannenbaum. It actually has little to do with the Bible, but we have a parody of O Tannenbaum

as we hear the boy tenor who the script is. As a kid, I thought this was Martin because I think they draw him off model, but it's just Boy Tenor in the script. Oh, whacking day, oh, whacking day, our hallowed snakes go cracking day. We'll break their backs, gouge out their eyes, Their evil hearts will pulverize. Oh, whacking day. Oh, whacking day. May God bestow his grace on thee.

I don't know if you guys thought it was Martin when you saw it. I definitely recognize Dan Castellaneta's voice. He does a good high-pitched choir boy singing because he did the same voice as homer in homer's heart attack flashback when homer has a beautiful singing voice and then his voice changes and it ruins that entire future for him that's just a few episodes before this yeah that was him so he he does have a nice tenor we'll hear even more of it in homer's Barbershop Quartet when he sings his Barney. Little moves in this, though. I love the pulverized, the way he just grinds the baton into his hand.

It's great. That is great. Yeah. Amazingly. Then comes another, I guess I'd say sound. I mean, it's a word, but this has also been stuck in my head forever. Here you go. Official Wacking Day parking parking ten dollars per axle

oh i love this guy he's just so easily influenced by homer's enthusiasm that he just no thought to what's going on and how much it's going to cost him and i guess vaguely foreign as well yeah well also it feels like you would think he's from like a former eastern bloc country that's recently you know the ussr has just fallen in 93 so that's how i imagine it now as a new immigrant to america who brought his crazy European car with him, and Homer's cheering. He just reacts like somebody whose English is not his first language. He's like, cheering! Yay! Hooray!

It just is, hooray! His vaguely European array is echoed in my brain forever. It goes down the line. Homer's enthusiasm makes him happy, which makes me happy. And now I get it as the extra joke or not extra joke another intended joke i'm just so distracted by the guys who day that the joke is

homer's sign just says parking ten dollars the guy pulls up and then over says ten dollars per axle and so the guy has to give him 20 it was lie. And then a guy with nine axles shows up and owes Homer $90. This is when we get the snakes, snakes everywhere bit. Gene and Reese openly admit, oh, that's the same joke. We did it twice with Barney in the same episode. Oh, well. Wouldn't be a Schwarzwalder script if the Kennedy stand-in of Mayor Quimby didn't do some political shenanigans of pre-wax snakes to look like he's a hero i love the resolution of this at the end of the act it's great and i love how dan responds

with a beautiful like very conspiratorial and the snakes are all sort of like nicely wound up like you know it's like a briefcase of socks or something yes the next scene though incredibly sexually charged because the penis-like snake baton appears and by the way i love how the bag that it's wrapped in just has the word snakes on it it's very fun it's homer's hand holding the baton and then marge unsheathes it it is such a phallic baton i mean and phallic in a very specific like it doesn't look like a penis per se but it definitely does look like a sex toy and its position the way homer holds it is in front of his crotch it extends from his crotch in the area when the way he is holding it when he's looking at marge and says so should i do it

slow or fast and it's very cute on the commentary that david silverman the supervising director and jeffrey lynch the director saying now you didn't try to make this very sexual, right? We would want that. And then Jeffrey Lynch is like, no, no, not sexual at all. Though it's all there in the performance in this next clip. Well, Marge, should I whack slow or fast? Slow, then fast. Dad, please, for the last time,

I beg you, don't lower yourself to the level of the mob. Lisa, maybe if I'm part of that mob, I can help steer it in wise directions. Now, where's my giant foam cowboy hat and air horn? That is one of the funniest drawings of Homer in the whole series. That drawing went on to make about, I don't know, 100,000 internet avatars. It's the perfect avatar. Homer's smiling face and expectant in his hat.

It's so perfect. I think it has extra impact because they end the scene right there. It's just you hold on his big dumb face then end of scene and it's i you know one of the strongest i think satiric moments in there with him saying the thing about steering the mob which is you know not far away from actual rationalizations people make all the time and then coming out with this goddamn hat and hair worn. Yes. Like the biggest doofus. Homer would have said the same in the Capitol on January 6th. He would have said he's going to steer him in the right direction.

People were dressed as crazily as Homer at that event too. Actually, he's not crazy enough to fit in with the January 6th mob. Now, I'm glad they cut this joke because it would have hurt the funniness of just ending on that shot of Homer. Because in the script, the scene continues and he says, Bart, are you coming? And Bart is too busy reading the book he's reading later in the episode. And he says, no, I got to finish this book. And Homer says, all right, but tonight you're watching two hours of network TV as punishment for reading. And this is when we get a special guest appearance.

This is basically a sequel to the Leonard Nimoy joke in Monorail. But let's hear from our special guest. And now to open this year's festivities, here's our Grand Marshal, the prophet of love, Larry White. Barry White. No, it says here Larry White. I know my own name. Yeah? Well, we'll see.

Ladies and gentlemen, my unlimited love to y'all. It's truly an honor to be here at this... Hey, what is this all about anyway? It's all about snakes. Oh, God, no. You people make me sick. Were they even listening to me? I don't think so.

Just wonderful. Yeah. Barry White, so yeah, I believe he passed away in like 2003. He's been not with us for about 20 years. So he wasn't on the show to promote any new projects. They heard he was a fan and he would want to be on it, so they asked him to. Though his album that following year 1994 would be his biggest album in 15 years that album was the icon is love the hit single from that album was practice what

you preach and just like freak me it has become a dentist office grocery store song that you will hear like once every eight months now do you attribute his resurgence in popularity was that ali mcbeal related i feel like that was a real theme on that show is that there was a lot of Barry White. And I feel like it kind of brought him sort of back into the world a bit. I think this episode made millennials aware of Barry White. Maybe some Gen Xers, too, because his career seemed to have peaked in maybe 1979. And he was floundering for a bit and this was his real resurgence so i mean i didn't know about him as an 11 year old at this time yeah i know i'm like okay this man with a low voice but you know then he started singing can't get enough of your love at the end i'm like okay i like this and he

delivers the lines he's great he's very funny in it, I think. He appears in Crusty Gets Cancelled two episodes later. So I think that really drove home for me, like Barry White's a big deal. He must be one of the most important singers around. He's in his safe and sexy square. I think he had a general resurgence in the 90s thanks to comedy writers, you know,

having grown up in the 70s are now adults in the 90s and writing scenes. Because I looked up some of the other stuff that got big in the 90s and writing scenes because I looked up some of the other stuff that got big in the 90s for him. And yes, Ally McBeal, definitely. Also, Chris Rock did a duet with him on the Space Jam album. If you buy the Space Jam album,

you will hear Chris Rock sing a song with Barry White. That makes sense because he walks that line of like, he's genuinely good. Like the songs are good, the singing is good, but also he epitomizes this is like pushing far into like this guy's sexy because he's got a low voice who's gonna say low voice things to you and like that's very funny too i think part of the appeal of him or what makes him interesting is that he does not look like the kind of singer that usually sings

these kind of songs like the singer freak me yes yeah he's not a movie star looking guy but he is and also i think i've rediscovered why he was so loved by people who grew up in the 70s as a comedic figure or as a comedic starting point and it's how he's used in this too when i listened to the original released recordings of Can't Get Enough of Your Little Baby, and also You're My First, My Last, My Everything, I forgot that both of them start with about 30 seconds to a minute of just him talking to you and saying, yeah, that's right, you're going to do that. And it's just this great long description to set up the song.

That's why, guys, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross both have two different characters made up separately of the guy who just does a long intro to a sexy song and never actually sings the sexy song. Amazing. I mean, he is a genuinely comedic figure, I can see why, too. I think he understood that. There's a good spiritedness that comes through especially in this performance i also learned that early in his songwriting career in the late 60s he wrote a song for the banana splits tv show in 1968 called doing the banana split i know what i'm gonna do after the show look that up that also sounds sexual

i tweeted it yesterday because I couldn't believe it. I was like, yeah, so if you want to watch Hooper Blooper Snortin' the fourth one, if you want to see them dancing to a Harry White song, look up doing the banana split. He then steps away. Nobody cares. And the snake killing begins. They're driving them all into town. Though, yes, the only snakes we see killed on screen because

even the old lady that bashes a snake it's off screen the only dead snakes are the ones shot by the not fat tony affiliated mobsters it's really missing fat tony this is before they decided that fat tony is all the mafia in springfield yeah he's not back until season six i think it's weird they went so long without him i think it is the homie the clown right i think so yeah it's bart the murderer and then homie the clown and then he becomes a regular oh this is where the very sexy miss springfield says gentlemen start your whacking and flew right over our heads yes then they are asked to animate thousands of snakes and in the script is something they mentioned on the commentary which is as they're walking through town there's a giant wave of snakes and otto basically is left surfing on the snakes he goes whoa man i'm surfing on him

and they seem to think they did get full color animation which cutting that is cruel to the animators yeah yeah at least use it in a commercial or something we also see mr largo disgusted by a bug and then overwhelmed by snakes which then there's a funny dig at dave merkin on the commentary with that too yeah they're wondering if he's based on dave merkin because dave merkin is also a man who is bald in the same sort of way although he has a mustache they have to like oh like no no no no no no we were making fun of our fellow writer dave merkin they want to be very clear. This feels like the first Mr. Largo joke since season one. Yeah, yeah.

He hasn't had much to say ever. I feel like the last time I can think of a joke with him is that Lisa made a patch with him on the family quilt with him and bleeding him Murphy on it. Yeah, that's like he's not even present in the scene. He's Stitch. He's a Stitch. I think the show rightly decided that there really wasn't anything

particularly funny about him. Leave the band director humor to Funky Winkerbein, another thing that's also not very funny. Hey, Funky! Sorry, Marge saying that to the Funky Winkerbein. When Dan said that, I thought, that's what Funky Winkerbein's about? I read it for about a decade. I mean, at least one of the main characters was a band director and i believe in my heart that this is a comic that was written because they're like well band

directors need something to paste up on their wall to give them this that's a good enough audience that'll cover it i think it's part of the crankshaft universe if i'm not mistaken it is yeah we cut back home and bart is reading the Truth About Wacking Day written by Bob Woodward. Again, joke flew over my head as a kid, which more Nixon comedy in this too, I guess you'd say. In this scene, if I could be fair here, maybe a little cruel, I think this contains the worst possible joke of the classic era of the show. And I think it comes from very tired writers. It's Bart's joke about oprah i don't think it's meant to be read as bart can't tell good jokes or bart is telling a tacky joke here on television i think we're meant to take it as a sincere joke about oprah

which people were having a lot of fun with at the time in my opinion it's always been like oh you could have done much better than this this feels like a married with children style jab or something like that i just watched the episodes i dug I dug out my DVD to watch this episode because I'm taking a Disney Plus break and I slid off my brain. What was the Oprah joke? When they're talking about how to get the snakes in one area,

the joke is the snakes will be here like Oprah on a baked ham. Yeah, that's sub Tonight Show monologue. And Henry and I have been analyzing these jokes long enough. Henry, would you say this is a Mike Reese joke? When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.

So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit dejaden.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care it feels like a mike reese joke to me it really sounds like mike reese yes it does though also that here's extra context to make this seem even meaner oh so seven months before this on oprah's talk show she visits springfield she does a full like talk to interview people working on the simpsons i flew to la and interviewed all the

simpsons people and then i get to go to springfield and they did two minutes of original good animation of Oprah meeting the Simpsons in their house. Fully made, but it's sort of it's never on any official Simpsons release because I think Harpo owns it. Maybe they're Oprah's production company. So this is just months after they worked very close with Oprah on something. And here they are doing a cheap oprah fat joke so i do wonder if did they come away from it not liking having worked with oprah and wanted like like poker back honestly if it was just personal spite i would respect it so much more than like i feel like at the period it was just considered a crime not to be slender yeah this is number one for me

in terms of bad jokes from this era i think number two is the guy throwing uh the naked pictures of whoopi goldberg down the bottomless hole but even that was an adr joke so it felt like they needed something and they put that in at the last minute this the lip sync matches up so it felt like the fat oprah joke was set in stone and they rolled with it that's not funny but i'm amused by them reversing the animation to have it zip back up. At least the visual is funny there. This is not anything, really. And it's in the script. So, yes, they really believed in this Oprah Baycam joke.

But, yes, they realize they need bass music to get the snakes to come, which Al Jean says is dubious science, then they see that they have only high-pitched albums like Alvin and the Chipmunks and A Castrato Christmas. But fortunately, Barry White just walks by the door and he'll do anything for a lady. Mr. White, can we borrow you for a minute? Anything for a lady. Don't bother the snakes. Leave all the snakes alone.

Ah, yeah. Oh, oh, babe. I mean... My darling I Can't get enough of your love babe Girl I don't know I don't know why Can't get enough of your love babe Some things I can't get used to

No matter how I try It's like the more you give, the more I want And baby, that's no, that's no lie Tell me, what can I say? In here! What am I gonna do? How should I say? In here! What am I gonna do? How should I feel? Fortunately, the Simpsons have a karaoke version of Can't Get Enough of Your Love on hand,

so you can sing along with it. This joke is much more believable in today, where they could just pull up karaoke version on YouTube and then have it just blast to a Bluetooth speaker on their front lawn. Well, some of it's karaoke but also apparently lisa can play the bass i'm one of her musical talents so yeah the commentary they go like okay i guess she plays the bass now huh all right and we could talk about the performance again this feels like a very late in the season role very tired they don't think of a way to get

barry white out of the show because when the mob interrupts his singing he is off screen and then we never find out where he goes or what happens to him when the simpsons go in the house barry white please he's helicoptered away who knows it just there's no good exit for him and i feel like that's missing here he says my work here is done fades away yes he should beam out or something. Yeah. And he did them the favor of singing a new version of Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Baby, so they didn't have to license somebody else's version. I would guess they just only paid the songwriting license in his performance. And Jeffrey Lynch says he wanted this to look like a cheesy 80s music video, so that's why there's a turnaround a big pan up

multiple like fades in it he wants it but to animate something like a cheesy 80s music video you have to go way beyond the complexity of a tv animation budget so he did this expensive, more complicated animation to make it look cheesy. Wow. Yeah, yeah. I mean, watching it, it does, like, you can tell. You're like, okay, we've got normal Simpsons animation, normal Simpsons animation. Like, now here's this big showcase for the silliest thing. But it must have been such a pain in the ass especially at that time in in tv

production yeah we get this matrix shot of barry white we're just spinning around him as he starts the song yeah and this is before computers could at least help them with perspective and viewpoint like this is all in camera it's incredible and also at the same time they're having to animate thousands of snakes all going into the simpsons house or the very least hundreds of snakes. Yeah. They also continue a bit that Maggie, just like with the bears, can use a pacifier to pacify any wild animal. That's her special D&D item. Then a literal record scratch stops the song, like just goes by so fast that you don't view it as like a cliche.

But watching it this time, I was like, wow, they actually stopped the song with a record scratch. The old cliche. Then Bart reveals that Wacking Day is a sham. And like most American pastimes, it is rooted in racism. People of Springfield, Wacking Day is a sham. It was started in 1924 as an excuse to beat up the Irish It is true, they took many a lump But it was all in good fun

Now wait a minute How can you people turn on snakes after all they've done for you? I'm an old man I hate everything but Matlock Ooh, it's on now Mrs. Glick, who killed all those rats in your basement? Snake did. And you like snakes, don't you, Barry White?

I love the sexy slither of a lady snake. Oh, baby. Hooray for snakes! Hooray for snakes! Look at this, everyone. Twelve dead snakes. Boo! I'm sick of you people. You're nothing but a pack of fickle mush heads.

He's right. Give us hell, Quimby. So that elderly Irishman appears again in Homer the Vigilante next season to also approve of the historical mistreatment of the Irish. And a fine job you did, too. When Abe says, i chased the irish out of springfield and not four right yeah he's he's been assimilated enough that he's like ah it was all in good fun and he's the one who wipes the tear out of his eye when he hears barney

singing in the barbershop oh yeah well they joke on the commentary that they're like oh the irish are the only like ethnicity they could make fun of. But I do love that it like so much of American history where you learn like, oh, this past time, if you actually follow it backwards enough, like it's related to a lynching of some sort or some other horrible part of American history. Though in this case, the Irish lynching, I think, too, it is Swartz Welder intentionality that he says it was started in 1924 because that is when the Immigration Act of 1924 began as well, which led to a marked increase in white British Isles and Western European countries being allowed visas into the U.S. While meanwhile, Asians were barred from coming to America and other visas were very much restricted. So 1924 would be when there was an escalation in Irish immigrants to America. Well, I saw this when I was 11 for the first time. That's when it aired. And I remember the next day at school, the kids who knew a little more about

sex were all whispering to each other about the scene in which all the snakes were headed into the sunset. And the comment was like, you know, that's supposed to be right. So yeah, they're going for another dirty image right there. I was so innocent, even rewatching it this time. You have reminded me of this before, Bob, and I forget it every time because I just see like, yes, it's snakes going towards the sun. That's all it is. Nothing more.

Yeah. The scales are falling from my eyes. If I can comment on Born Free though. So we hear a little bit of Born Free. It's the titular song from the 1966 film that won the academy award that year for best original song so originally sung by matt monroe here it's credited to gene merlino who we might have talked about before because he just passed away this year at 95 he was a prolific singer and he sung both south of the border on the episode camp

crusty and then much later he sang the song jellyfish on a star is born again and i know we must have talked about him at one of those episodes henry we brought him up before then yeah he's like a session musician who i believe alf clausen liked using i mean he does a great sinatra ish or i guess just lounge singer style voice. I was going to say it was through your podcast. I learned that that was not Sinatra because he does such a good job aping Sinatra in that episode. He's so good at Sinatra that he can save a lot of money on not having to pay for the Sinatra version. I hope he got a Sinatra bonus of like, you know what?

You saved us like $100,000 on buying Sinatra. So here's like 10% of that. It's a kickback is what I'm describing, I guess. Beautiful. There's like eight other things from this too. Like, first off, when Abe says, oh, it's on right now. Matlock was on right now. If you were watching this when it aired.

Yeah, this is the debut of the short-lived Matlock run that I think, again, Bill Oakley and Joshua Einstein, it's one of those things they really ran with to define how do we mock old people they love matlock i now know the specificity of it is that matlock was beating them in the ratings matlock got a 13-1 to this episode's 12-2 in the ratings that night so that was driving him crazy to lose to matlock every week on thursdays they were fine with losing to Cosby or Cheers or whatever, but Matlock beating him pissed him off. He puts young people in prison where they belong. If you'd like to try syncing up watching the episode of Matlock that aired against this, it was a two-part special,

The Final Affair from Season 7 of Matlock. Was the murderer George Goober Lindsay? Disappointingly, at least according to the IMDb, there are no fun guest stars in it. Nobody famous is in that episode. It's just a boring two-parter of Matlock. Just George regular Lindsay. Now, the snake did thing with Glick,

this is where there's another cut bit from the script, which you had said, Dan, you know, there's got to be another beat here yes after lisa asked mrs glick what the snake did for her she then turns to mr burns and says mr burns didn't you plant a snake in the mailbox of that investigative reporter and burn says yes but how did you know that i'm glad you pointed that out henry because in the animation move when they go to barry white it kind of centers on mr Burns for a second and then goes to Barry. So I felt like they were setting something up for Mr. Burns, or the joke was the camera was on Mr. Burns, but Lisa talks to Barry instead.

So, yes, they must have fully animated it. And the best they could do is Bart says that to Mr. Burns, and he's centered in the shot for like three frames or whatever of what's on screen. And that's when it turns to Barry White so you can see just the littlest bit of that Mr. Burns line yeah thank you for clearing that up because I was like there's gotta be something here I mean like I probably noticed the same thing subconsciously in the editing but also just like the way the line read goes like and you like this too right you know it just feels like there had to have been more the sexy slither of a lady snake is also that's what finally convinces them to give up on their almost 70 years of doing whacking day in town hearing barry white say the sexy slither

of a lady snake they're like hooray for snakes which is why they're deservingly called fickle mush heads by quimby which they agree with and they want him to give us hell, Quimby. One of the best examples of one of the best things about The Simpsons, just how it is utterly ruled by mob mentality at all times. And then to wrap up everything in a nice little package, we have to know that Bart goes back to school. Also, another great joke of it feels like the first time of this show pointing out to the audience, yes, we did have a crazy first act that we've completely ignored the rest of this episode.

Bart, I'm very impressed at the independent learning you've displayed here. Thanks, Seymour. Yes. Anyway, as a reward for your studying, I've decided to welcome you back to our school. You'll be reunited with your chums, Nelson, Jimbo, Doc... Oh, dear God! I guess I've always used violence as a way of getting attention

Yes, yes, me too Faster, Willie, faster! Now we give them the bikes, no one soothes. What if they're dead, sir? Then we ride these bikes to Mexico, and freedom, Willie! Freedom! Freedom! He'll turn you into a first toll booth. You know, Mexico was a common escape destination in this era of the show. I recall at least two other jokes.

One of them was Otto, after the Ferris wheel breaks down, he goes to Mexico in the school bus. And I think there's one more other thing. Oh, yeah, in Camp Krusty. That's right. Tijuana. Oh, and when you said Otto, actually, that rustled up a third one in my mind, Bob. When the meltdown's about to happen and Apu tells auto, like, you know, Bart's in the back of your bus. But he's like, oh, I was about to go to Mexico.

That's right. So there's at least this is the fourth Mexico escape plan going on here. And again, I'm not actually worried about the logic of the joke. I'm not doing a xylophone made the same sound twice here but it is funny to me that they're like well ride these bikes to mexico's like well you have a vehicle you're driving the the bikes to the school like why would you switch to the bikes but that that only makes it funnier and i think in the shelter we might get the first joke about kearney being secretly old because he has visible stubble after how, I don't know how long they were down there. You're right.

You're right. I take that as intentional too, of like that he is older than even the school-aged other bullies. Like, well, even having Jimbo in school with them, it's very real now, but it almost felt like, wait, when they first introduced Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney, they seem like middle school or high school students that Bart looked up to and then they eventually just turned into classmates of bart to use them in more scenes but they always look like they were designed to be at least 14 and

if you want to know more about kearney our friend of the show the real jims has a 20 minute video about the mystery of kearney's age finally finally, finally, I can crack that case. It's been the one thing that I someone has set the record straight. Them being locked in there together. It actually helps them in many ways. Like they become better people and it gave them time to think about all they've done. So, you know, it works out all right. Skinner didn't kill them, though. It's him reminding the audience. You also forgot that we didn't wrap up these characters like so what seems like bad writing actually is leads to a great joke yeah he's been in a new kind of radical therapy where you just lock a bunch of people in the basement for a while i think and then you know

later on jigsaw of course would expand upon that that's true jigsaw should have just had a mountain bike at the end of it and carrie elwes would have totally agreed to all that was happening oh and last compliment i have for this scene is that the gradient they go out on like that is a beautiful sunset on it and that had to be you know airbrush that was not digital effects that was an actual i would guess a background designer in korea at the studio at acom painted that background in a perfect gradient. Yeah, we're not used to seeing that kind of coloring on the show. It's pretty rare because it's more expensive. I think that's actually part of why it lodges.

It's a great joke, but it's lodged in my brain because it also really looks beautiful. And the last bit for the commentary I meant to mention before too is that on the commentary which was recorded while they were working on season 14 which we're covering now they are pleading for al jean to make barney drunk again and they must have won because he just is pretty much drunk all the time from season 15 onward the thing i thought you were going to mention henry is that on the commentary al je Jean said that one of the writers on the show had a grandmother who sung for Hitler. And he will reveal who that is on the season 14 DVDs. And I've listened to almost all the commentaries. That has not come up yet.

Who could it be on the Simpsons season 14 writing staff? Who would have had a German or Austrian grandmother who would have sang for Hitler? Now this is more digging we have to do. We just ask Al Jean on Twitter. Sorry, Dan. Oh, sure. He'll tell us. Get your YouTube

Kearney investigative reporter friend. I think he talked to the real Jims. Yeah, we'll pass that along to him. This one, yeah, I feel that things get like a tiny bit weaker towards the end of season four, but there's just so much

landmark stuff in this that I can't find it anything but solid gold. The introduction of Chalmers, all of the great bard and marge stuff fun environmental message and also barry white being one of the great guest stars from these years of the show so yeah i don't like everything it does contain what i think is the worst joke of the classic era but i can forgive that thanks to all the fun stuff mostly chalmers and skinner in the first act i i see this episode too as good as it gets in the late end of the season and we love the episode the front but also it is

a very weak script this feels much better than the front as far as like a written script and then on top of that jeffrey lynch his team went above and beyond with the animation. Like if this had average animation, we wouldn't remember this as strongly. I think it made every joke pop and sing, or they'd even just add extra jokes to it, just in the layout of a scene. So I want to give extra credit to Jeffrey Lynch and his animators on making this one work even better from a very good,

very good John Swartzholder script descript any great george meyer concept any final thoughts dan uh yeah for me this has like an iconically strange and memorable premise and a great cameo from barry white and there's a lot of individual jokes that i remember really fondly it's never been one of my favorites of like the classic period but like that's fine because to me you know from around season three to say season seven even though there's good stuff in all the seasons like for that span i think the simpsons was probably maybe the best show ever so for me to be like this is maybe not my favorite from that time is still good my problem with it is what i said before that it feels like a lot of blackout gags it feels disconnected particularly the last act is

sort of disconnected joke scene after joke scene so it doesn't have kind of the narrative through line that some of the better episodes have it doesn't have the emotional heft it does have the satire of you know the mob of springfield and just sort of the horrible things that we do for dumb reasons dumb reasons of like well we've always done it but it falls more short for me in the other areas it's why everyone turned to matlock that night after this was, who flipped their channels to Matlock instead of watching Martin, which aired right afterwards, I wonder. Thank you so much, Dan, for being on the show. Please let us know where we can find you online and more about the Flophouse podcast. So if you've enjoyed my sort of jet lag, sleepy energy, but were like, I wish there also was sort

of a higher pitched, fast talking guy and sort of a muscular dude who also talked with Dan, then that would be our show, The Flophouse. We talk about bad movies. We try and go into it with the spirit of discovering maybe we're going to like the movie. We don't just want to dunk on things. We're all fans of movies and you don't have to have seen the films. We explain the plots to the movies. So in a way, it's a public service. If you're curious about a bad movie, but you don't want to watch it, you can hear us talk about it. And hopefully we're funny. People enjoy it, it seems. Flophouse Podcast is what it's called.

You can find it at flophousepodcast.com. As noted before, I have previously written for television and will do again in the future, goddammit. But right now, podcasting is what I've got, so I'd really appreciate it if you're interested for you to give us a try. No, I just really enjoyed your Matrix Revolutions one. It was great, even though

I was gritting my teeth. Oh, it was very funny. It was very funny. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for joining us, Dan. Thank you so much. I really enjoy it every time. Thank you so much to Dan McCoy for being on the show. Please check out flop house podcast it's great if you want to support us though and get over 150 bonus full-length episodes on top of that head on over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and sign up at the five dollar level once you do you'll unlock over seven years worth of patreon exclusive content shows about futurama king of the hill mission hill batman

the animated series and the critic and that five bucks a month also gets you regular new monthly episodes of both talking futurama and talk king of the hill and that is all happening at the five dollar level only at patreon.com slash talking simpsons there is a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you can access all the five dollar stuff naturally but that 10 bucks a month also gets you access to one mega long podcast once a month about a movie. What's going on there, Henry? Bob is talking about our What a Cartoon movie podcast where we go into an animated feature film just as in-depth as Wacking Day. And that often means talking for over five or six hours about an animated feature film.

Such as we just did that with Mulan as part of our summer of Disney Renaissance continuing their year us talk all about the complex history of how Mulan was made and how it holds up 26 years later and before that we have had a really fun year this year of us covering Futurama Bender's Big Score, the first Futurama direct-to-video movie, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1990, Bambi, we had another Disney classic there, and we have almost six years now of what a cartoon movies of us covering. So many different Pixar movies, the rest of the Disney renaissance, a bunch of anime too, like Studio Ghibli films, and End of Evangelion, and Akira. I could list them all, including our longest one ever, six and a half hours about who framed Roger Rabbit and not a detail spared.

Sign up today at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons to see the huge amount of stuff you are missing out on at the $10 and even $5 levels. So I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And my other podcast, by the 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 and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and Henry what about you follow me on social media at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g or at talking Henry on Instagram and if you're following me and Bob on social media, please follow the official accounts of At Talk Simpsons Pod. It's our network of podcasts official spot

where you will learn when new stuff happens on our free feed. On the free feed, on the Patreon, if we're doing live shows like we've done in the past, tons of cool stuff. You'll stay up to date if you follow At Talk Simpsons Pod in pretty much all the cool social media places. And don't forget that all of our free podcasts are hosted at TalkingSimpsons.com

Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 14's Mo Baby Blues, and we'll see you then. Hey, what gives? Where are the mountain bikes? Sorry about the ruse, gentlemen. You're being swept under the rug for the superintendent's visit. Enjoy.

How are we going to get out of here? And when are we gonna get our mountain bikes? Would the world judge me harshly if I threw away the key? No, but the PTA would tear you a new arse Wise counsel, William But the potty talk adds nothing Aye, sir You're both taking underpants wearing lily hugger Big O' Tire's Biggest Black Friday Sale is here Aye, sir. You're both taking underpants wearing lily hugger. Make an appointment online at bigotires.com or stop by one of your locally owned and operated Greater Colorado Springs Big O Tires today.

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