Latest / Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast) / Team Homer (wth Mike Scully)

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Team Homer (wth Mike Scully) · Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast)

• 0:00
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  Speaker 1: ahead and join the family today at patreon dot com
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: slash four finger Discount.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I want to join your team.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: You want to join my what you want to what
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: ist team?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I've had one of my unpredictable changes of hute seeing
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: these fine young athletes reveling in the humiliation of the
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: vanquished fool. I haven't felt this energized since my least
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: bowling men who blow a winning streak. Yeah, call this
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: not good at everything.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Four Finger Discount.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Dude, welcome to four finger Discount. With this week, we
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: are very lucky to be joined by an absolute icon
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: in the Simpsons world. He's a former show runner, he's
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: a former runner, producer, you know it. He's done it,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: and today he's here to help us review an episode
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: that he wrote, it is team Homer and he is
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Mike Scully. Mike, thanks for your time. How are you doing?
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: Oh great? How are you to day? Not only have
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: I done it, I've done it terribly.
• 1:29
  Speaker 5: You're leaving at the most important part of Mike's bier.
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: He's a major shareholder in Mister Boy of Main Street.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: But how are your holidays? Mike?
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: My holidays?
• 1:40
  Speaker 5: Did you actually get me?
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, no, I'm taking some time off. We had
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: the whole family together and we else went skating with
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: grandkids and had just had another grandkid added at the
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: family about a week ago.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Woll congratulations.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So when you say skating, do you mean ice skating?
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Do you mean skateboarding? Ice skating, ice skating? Yeah, I've
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: never been able to ice skate. Can you I skate?
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: See in Australia we don't have ice anywhere.
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: So we have a different kind of ice I've never tried.
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think the combination of my innate clumsiness
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: and having sharp blades of my feet they could possibly
• 2:21
  Speaker 5: sever a finger or two with I'm just not for it.
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: I'm happy to watch other people doing it. I mean,
• 2:26
  Speaker 5: it looks incredibly graceful as opposed to roller skating.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm sweet, I'm assuming most of your time
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: right now, besides being another grand kid in the house.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: But it would be that you're doing Shifting Gears that
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: taking it most of your time at the moment.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: Now, it's taking up none of my time at all.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: Julie and I are not associated with the show. We're
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: not working on it.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, she just created it.
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: We created it. Yeah, we wrote, came up with the show,
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: wrote the pilot, produced it, got it ordered to series,
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: and and then we parted ways.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, because I had actually had no idea that you'd
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: created the show. Because I'm looking at really Shifting Gears
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, well, because it's apparently it's become a
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: big hit. But so how did that all come about?
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: There was a topic we should not broach.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: Have you Have you already noticed I'm choosing my words carefully.
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: Have you noticed I've just crossed off the first five
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: questions on my list?
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Well, shifting Gears to the Simpsons.
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: Then, I guess this would be an inopportunity to say,
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: do you have any Mel Gibson anecdotes from your time
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: on Complete Savages?
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  Speaker 4: Actually that was Mell was a lot of fun when
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: when we did that show. We had a lot of
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: laughs there, and he would sit in the writer's room
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: and like pitch jokes and time, and he would get
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: genuine excited if one made it into the script. You know,
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  Speaker 4: he could have just said, hey, I'm mel Gibson, put
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: the fucking joke in. But he just pitched with the
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: other writers and he directed several episodes, appeared in a
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: few wow and yeah. No, it was a fun experience.
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  Speaker 4: And he one vivid memory one night was we were
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  Speaker 4: working late Julie and I had stayed to proof read
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: the script and he was still in the office and
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: he came in and he said, Hey, can I run
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: something by you? So he said okay, and he gets
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: his laptop and comes in and he pitches us the
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: entire story of the movie Apocalypta, and he had been
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: working on it. We didn't know he was working on it.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: He and another writer had been working on this story
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: on the side, and he just wanted to kind of
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: test the story out on us, and we were blown away,
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: and we were blown away, and then whatever it was.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: Two years later, we see the movie and it's exactly
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: the story that he pitched to us that night.
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  Speaker 5: Incredible And Mike, when you're dealing with five hundred pounds
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: show biz guerrillas like Mel Gibson or even shifting gears,
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: Tim Allen, I mean, is there a commonality to it?
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: I mean, are they are you seeing sort of like, oh,
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: this is there where they are for this reason? Or
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: is it very much a case by case basis.
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: Oh, it's it's it's a very case by case. Yeah.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: You know Mel, at that time in particular, it was
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: just fun. We have we are the same age, we
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: have big families, you know, our kids. We didn't live
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: that far from each other. Our kids were in the
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: same schools, same public schools and stuff, so we already
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: knew each other just like a little bit. And you know,
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: we had worked on some like town like fundraisers, we
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: charity things for. They opened a boys and girls club
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: here in the town and Mel hosted the fundraiser and
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: Julie and I wrote jokes for and stuff, so we knew,
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: he said, So there was already a relationship before we
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: did Complete Savages. So no, it was actually a good time,
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: and he was It was fun to watch him direct.
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: He was really like great with the actors and particularly
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: we had like five young there was kids and who
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: were not very experienced, and he was really good at
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  Speaker 4: kind of putting them at ease and making it fun
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: for them, and so no, it was all all good
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: memories from that show.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Do you enjoy the challenge that the limitations of live
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: action running comedy for live action brings you as opposed
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to animation like the Simpsons?
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: Well I do. Uh oh. I'll tell one very quick
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: funny story about mel Actually it's about my stupidity. But
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: when we were first going to do the show and
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: he was going to direct the pilot, you know, it's
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: a multi caam you know, sitcom with a studio audience,
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: you know, four cameras, you know, shooting the show like
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: a play simultaneously. So we're you know, we were down
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: on the we were talking about the show and about
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: him directing it. I said to you know, I said,
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: it's it's different than movies. I said, You're going to
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: have four cameras shooting at the same time, so you
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: got to kind of know where each camera is shooting,
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: and you watch the quad split on this monitor here,
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: And I said, I just wanted to make sure you
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: knew how like how different it was in movies because
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: he had never worked in the multi camera. So he said,
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: you know the you know, the battle scene in Braveheart.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: I said, yeah, he goes, I had eighteen cameras running
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: at the same time. Oh all right, well then this
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: this probably won't be a problem.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: By the way, we should inform some of our listeners
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: just in case they're unfamiliar with the complete Savages. It
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: ran into two thousand and four for one season. Yeah,
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: your classic family sitcom about forgive me if I'm misrepresenting Mike,
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: but it's a single dad basically raising his five sort
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: of five young sons.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, to kind of get the fun of what is
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: just like a house full of men. I grew up
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: with the show, like my three sons, and I mean
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: those kids were like perfect little you know, gentlemen, and
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: you know they had their you know, Uncle Charlie doing
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: the dishes and stuff like that. So we just wanted
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: to do what would it be like if you really
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: just had a house full of men? Was the idea
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: behind it. So the alternate title was sometimes house full
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: of Homers.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: But yeah, we'll getting back to the question though, So
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: do you do you enjoy the challenge of the limitations
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: that live action brings you when it comes to writing
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: engages With the Simpsons, it's pretty much free reign. You
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: can just write whatever you want, really, can't you.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, It's what I love about it is you get
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: to use different parts of your brain for you know,
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: for each style of show that you're working on. And
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  Speaker 4: I love I like being able to go from genre
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  Speaker 4: to genre. I found like career wise, it does extend
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: your career to not just do one style of show.
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  Speaker 4: But uh, like I had worked on prior to The Simpsons,
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  Speaker 4: I had done all multiicam shows because that's what the
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: American comedy was leading up to that, and then so
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: to go back into multicam was a lot of fun.
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: And because there's certain there are the limitations of you've
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: got maybe three or four sets that you have to
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: make everything work in, you know, different styles of humor,
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: there's you know, there's stuff you just can't do, like
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: an animation kind of you know there. I mean there's
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: always guardrails eventually, financial and time and all that. But
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: suddenly you can do these things that you can't do,
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: and a live action show you can go inside people's heads,
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: you can have fantasies, you can defy gravity. So and
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: then doing a show like Parks and rec which is
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: single camp, is a little more like movie style, shorter scenes.
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: You're able to go out on locations and do stuff
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: like that. So I've enjoyed all those, you know, different
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: the different styles of show. Because the animation. When I
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: got on The Simpsons, it was all new to me.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: I knew nothing about animation and was not a fan
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: of animation at all. Well I was when I was
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: a kid, like growing up. I loved you know, cartoons
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: growing up, but I felt like as an adult that
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: I had outgrown animation until my wife made me watch
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: an episode of the Simpsons and it happened to be
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: Bart the Daredevil, and I like, it was the funniest
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: thing I'd ever seen on television. It completely reversed my opinion.
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's that I was really curious about Mike. I mean,
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: given that you've been, you know, working as a staff
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: writer on various sitcoms prior to coming on board The
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: Simpsons in ninety three.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 11:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm guessing you didn't view you know, David Murkan
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: bringing you on board as you know, just another gig
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: given the show, how popular what the show was at
• 11:17
  Speaker 5: the time. But I mean, did you view it as
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: like a step up and a rival, like I've I'm
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: at the next level in my career, a learning opportunity.
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: How did you see it? Uh?
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I saw it as a giant step up. I
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: mean you can go through my IMDb page and see
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: what I had been doing prior to that, and it
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: was not like a ladder, like a steady climb up.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: It was, if anything, I was crawling down. So now
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: the Simpsons was a giant step forward and terrifying the
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: more I know got to know, like who was in
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: the room and their background. I can't remember, Brandon, if
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: I had told you last time, But before I started
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: on the show, Vanity Fair magazine put out a profile
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: about a week before I started on the show, and
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: it was like the Simpsons writer's room, the dream team
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: of comedy, And so I bought them, Mark Kelly, I
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: just bought it to kind of learn, you know, more
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: about the people who were in the room, thinking that
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: would be an asset, you know, for me to go
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: in knowing, you know, the backgrounds of everybody. But then
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: when I read their backgrounds, I got totally freaked out
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: when I saw like all the like, oh my god,
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: it's a room full of Harvard graduates and you know,
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: and I didn't go to college, and uh so I
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: kind of really got you know, got in my own
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: head and freaked myself out for the first several months
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: on the show and was terrified to talk.
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: So that that's kind of connected to something else I
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: wanted to ask Mike. I mean you, as you said,
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: you dropped out of college and you worked this sort
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: of variety of jobs.
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: Dropped out is kind I literally stayed for half a day.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was technically you dropped out.
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: That yeah, okay, yeah, but.
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: You'd sort of tried it your handed a few things,
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: or you made your made a living doing a few
• 13:13
  Speaker 5: things before heading out to LA to sort of, you know,
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: take a real stab at writing and a comedy. I mean,
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: having that kind of life experience and banking those experiences,
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: do you think it sort of made you a better writer?
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: And particularly when it came to The Simpsons in terms
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: of adding texture and color to characters and situations, Because
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: when you hear about so many writers, even Harvard educated
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: guys like the Simpsons writers and it's like you're sort
• 13:36
  Speaker 5: of in a pipeline. You know, you you haven't had
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: much of a chance to sort of go out into
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: the world and be a person before you actually sit
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: down and start writing.
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: Uh. Yeah, you know. It's It's funny. When I was
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: on Parks and Rec make Sure, the co creator of
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: the show, one day we were talking and we were
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: still getting to know each other, and he had asked
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: me about college, which fortunately did come up during my
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: job interview. And Mike is from Harvard, so he was
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: asking me about school and then I told him, you know,
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: the truth about it, that I'd just gone to community
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: college for half a day and and quit and uh
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: uh and he said, he goes. My god, he said,
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: you see like he goes. When you go to Harvard people,
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: there's automatically an expectation of success from you, the pressure
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: of oh, I'm going to this school, I have to
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: become a success when I come out of here. He says.
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: But you, because people probably thought you were just going
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: to wind up in jail, are dead.
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: Mark Shure, what a guy. Yeah, I'm glad the comedy
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: thing moved on, because his motivational speaking career would have
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: been ship.
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but he was not far off. Yeah, so I
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: think everybody, you know, you hope in the room that
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: everybody kind of brings a little something different. Yeah, you
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: know that you're getting, you know, And a lot of
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: it is based because it's Simpsons, because it's family, it's
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: a lot of the writers are basing it your think.
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: When you're thinking of stories, a lot you're thinking of
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: your family, your childhood experiences you had, you know, growing up,
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: and then you get to kind of compare each other's thing.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: So I found it actually to be an asset on
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: the show, to be kind of the village idiot.
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: Education wise, I'm not going to use that term, but
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: I mean, what do you think David Merkins saw in
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: you and your work when he brought you on board?
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: Did you ever talk about this?
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: I've never actually asked Dave. I've always been super grateful
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: to him because he literally changed my life and by
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: taking a chance on me. But actually, I think now
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: that I think back, David did not go to Harvard,
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: so maybe he was looking to mix up the room
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: a little bit. He had read a couple of my
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: spec scripts. I think he read a Harry Sanders show
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: script and a Seinfeld sample scripts that I had written,
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: and he liked them, and we kind of hit it
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: off in the meeting. And I had actually seen him
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: perform as a stand up comic when I first moved
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: out to LA David was a very funny stand up
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: and I remembered some of his bits, and so we
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: were kind of just hitting it off in the room
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: and it was just one of those meetings where things
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: went well. And I don't know what ultimately pushed it
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: over the line, because he definitely had his choice of people,
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: but it worked out great for me.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: How did it come about? Is it one of those
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: things like getting onto the Simpsons writing team in the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: early nineties. How do you get onto that team? Do
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: you have to know somebody and ask for a spot
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: or do you have to audition apply? How does it
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: all work?
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: My scripts had originally gone over to Gracie Films before
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: they made it to David, and I think I was
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: read by a woman named Polly.
• 16:58
  Speaker 5: Platt who was yeah legend, yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: Exactly, and she I think handed it handed my scripts
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: to Richard Sakai, who read them and liked them. I
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: originally met with them first, so and then they in
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: turn recommended me to David.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Wow, because as you said, look it was the dream team.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: He just feels like it must have been so difficult.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Do you know it was that? Was there a lot
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: of people that you beat to get into that position
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: because someone would have to mean leaving to get for
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: you to get in right or was it just now
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: adding more people.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: I came in at a time when there had been
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: some turnover and the staff from the first couple of seasons,
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: like Jay Cogan and Wally Walla Darsky had just left.
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: Al Jean and Mike Reese were like doing one day
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: a week because I think they were I can't they
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: had a show called teen Agel or maybe there was
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: the critic. I can't remember what they were doing. They
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: had a deal over at Disney, I think an overall deal,
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: so they were kind of busy with that, so they
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: would come in one day a week, and a couple
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: other people were gone, so there was the show was
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: in like a bit of a turnover, and David, you know,
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: talk about pressure coming in to run the show, you know,
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: like you know, Sam ran, Sam Simon ran the first
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: two seasons, then Al Jean and Mike Reese, but they
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: had all been there from day one. David came in
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: from the outside and had not worked on the show
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: on staff, so his first job on the show is showrunner,
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: which is a tremendous amount of pressure. But there was
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: like after I came on, I think a few months
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: later David Cohen started, and a few months after that
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: Rich Appel and Jennifer Crittenden. So there was like new
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: people coming in around that time.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: And when you started, Kinan was out. He pretty much
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: it wasn't the day you arrived, he said.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: It was, Yeah, it was literally the day I arrived.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: We we shook hands, said hello, and then he got
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: it tap on the shoulder that he had an urgent
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: phone call, and it was the call from NBC telling
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: him that he was going to be the new late
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: night host.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I love that he just disappeared to because I said,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: he can't talk to anybody, Like where do you go?
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a period there because they had told
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: him stay in your apartment, do not talk to anyone.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Did you think of someone What would I do to
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: this guy?
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: Well, we were all kind of, you know a little.
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: As the day went on and he didn't come back.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: There was some concern of you know, look, he should
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: somebody was I kind of should somebody check on him?
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: And you know, and you know, being you know, you know,
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: a room full of comedy writers. We didn't do anything
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: for you know, he could have been dead somewhere. But
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: I think ultimately he might have gotten in touch with
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: David Murk and just to let him know what what
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: was happening. Why he can't say anything about it. They
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: were waiting to introduce him on the Tonight show, like
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: Jay Leno was going to introduce him to America.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: So this show is brought to you by the four
• 20:11
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• 20:14
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• 20:18
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• 20:21
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• 20:26
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• 20:29
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• 20:32
  Speaker 1: slash four figure discount.
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: Mike, you mentioned the position of showrunner a little earlier,
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: and I mean it's a role that you would eventually
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: take on, but I mean looking at the way, look
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: at the role and the responsibilities of it. I mean,
• 20:46
  Speaker 5: did you ever think, Wow, that's something that I would
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: want to do, or something that I could do, or
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: something that I aspire to. I mean, oh, did you
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: have that sort of ambition to take the wheel?
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: No? I actually like never really saw it happening. I
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: mean I had gotten very you know, uh, I you know,
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: learned the show and learned, you know, how to write
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: it from people, you know, like George Meyer and Al
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: Jean and Mike Geese and people like that, and so
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: by the time it happened, I was comfortable. And Bill
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: and Josh had used me and David Cohen sometimes like
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: which they couldn't be in the room. They would give
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: you one or both of us their scripts well with
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: their notes in it, and we might split into two
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: rooms and work on two different things, that kind of stuff,
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: and they would write their notes. And I love the
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: way like Bill and Josh had a fun way of
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: writing their notes. Like some you know, some showrunners might
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: just say you know better better, they.
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: Would just write it better or more funny.
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, and or put giant excees through pages of
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: dialogue that kind of stuff. And they would write stuff
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: like next to a joke zangyear, and it was left
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: to us to fair what does zangyar mean? But it
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: was you know, but it was a very kind of
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: Bill and Josh way of you know, say, I think
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: you know funnier, you know, make this a little.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Punchy, but let's make it better.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it was. It was almost like
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: a little bit of a Mister Burns, you know word
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: like zang year.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: Bill and Josh were suckers for anything that sounded like
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: old timy words.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: They love that. Yes, Well, how did the Simpsons from
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: a pure comedy sense? You said you had to learn
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: how to write this show? How did writing this show
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: different from any other comedy he'd written previously?
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: For starters, it was funny, There was a huge and
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: some of it was just like a self imposed, you know,
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: self inflicted pressure I had put on myself was to
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: not pitch anything you've ever pitched at another show or
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: the or a style of joke you might be able
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: to see somewhere else, you know, which eliminates a lot
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: of things that you're thinking of. To try to break
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: those habits, was to do something you know you haven't done,
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: you haven't done or seen before and which The Simpsons
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: is really good at that style of thing. Or one
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: of the things I did learn too was and this
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: was kind of like a George Meyer joke kind of
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: a thing would be to kind of lead the audience
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: toward what you think is going to be a very
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: hacky style joke that you've seen done a million times,
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: and then at the last second twist it in a
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: completely different direction. So let the audience feel smart, like
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: there are a step ahead of you, and then then
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: jerk them in the other direction. An example would be
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: there was an episode set it was a super Bowl
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: show where Homer guys are at the super Bowl and
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: they get there find out their tickets are counterfeit tickets.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, that's it.
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and they can't get in, so they're trying to
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: think of a way in, and Homer sees somebody coming by,
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: like with a rack full of halftime show costumes like
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: marching band, these glittery things, and then Homer looks at
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: it like, you know, it's like there's there's no way
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: to get in you or is there like really big
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: set up? You see the rack of costumes go by,
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: so immediately you're thinking, all right, they're all going to
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: put on these costumes and have to do a halftime Chorge. Instead,
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: what he does he takes the rack of costumes and
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: hits the security guard guard with the rack of costumes,
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: and then they all just run inside.
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: Literally.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I remember watching that for the first time when I
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: was younger, and I would have been about twelve, and
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you got me exactly, You're right.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so it was learning stuff like that. Yeah, So
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: that that kind of thing was like a really like
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: mind opening for me, like, oh shit, we can do that.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: You took over in season nine. What did you want
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: to protect about the Simpsons that it come before, and
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: what did you feel and needed to evolve at that point.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: It's weird because like at that point when you get to, like,
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: you know, season nine of any TV show, if you're
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: lucky enough to get the season nine. You know, when
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: when I got there, it was the tail end of
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: season four, overlapping with the beginning of five, and you know,
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: there was already talk then of you know, this thing
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: will probably you know a couple you know, we probably
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: got two more seasons left, and then we got to be,
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: you know, thinking of a finale and how to wrap
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: it all up, because that was the mindset. If your
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: show ran five to seven seasons, you had a great run.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Once in a while you get something that might go
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: nine or ten, like a Cheers or mash you know,
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: mash yeah, like, yeah, what's where? The show, you know,
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: was much longer than the war, you know, in reality,
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: but so it was going into it. I mean. The
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: first thing, and I think anybody who's run the show
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: would probably say the same thing. The first thing is
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: please don't wreck it is do not think this, you know.
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: Don't crash daddy's car.
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: Don't. Yeah, don't it's it's you know, Rupert Murdoch's biggest
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: cash co.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: But did anyone say that though? Was that just self
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: imposed fee that you put on yourself again though self imposed?
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you're thinking of the show is great, people love
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: this show. Don't wreck it, you know, and then try
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: to you know, and you can do some stories that
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: maybe you've had in your head and or maybe you've
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: you know, pitched in the past it didn't get on.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: But you want to try to be true to what
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: the show is, but not just copy what's already been done.
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: That's the trickiest part of all. You want to just
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: go back to like, you know, these like classic episodes.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: Let's do the monorail again, but let's make it about
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: a bus something. You know.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Did you feel like you had to change the show
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: in anyway or did did did you go into the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: mentality going all right, now it can make my version
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: of the show or does it does naturally come that way?
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah? I never thought like let's make my version of
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: the show. It was let's keep this you know thing going,
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: Let's find new, you know, things to explore. It can
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: be true to what's been done in the past, bend
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: the rules you know where we can, and you try
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: to take it in some new areas too. I mean,
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: that's just natural thing to want to try. But yeah,
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: it was a lot of like a lot of don't
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: sink this very successful ship.
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: I mentionine having nine seasons under your belt, or the
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: show having under its belt is both a blessing and
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: a curse. I was like, we built up enough good will,
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: enough of a foundation that you know, we know who
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: these characters are, we know what these situations are. There's
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: we've got a bit of lettude to work with here.
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: But also, yeah, what do we do next?
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because when you're thinking of stories, the biggest thing
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: you run into is, you know, is we've done it,
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: you know, or or we've done something too close to it,
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: that sort of thing. So trying to find fresh areas
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: or I remember, you know, looking for you know, things
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: characters that could you could hang a story on that
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: where you could you know, try out different things. And
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: then the trick is how do you get keep the
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: Simpsons involved in the story. Yeah, so you're not just
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: you know, sending this one character off into their own thing.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: So those were always like fun to try when something worked,
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: or yeah, when you found something that you didn't have
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: previously and you know, want to explore that more. We did,
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: you know, there was like an evolution of Pooh where
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: you know, we you know, we had him get married
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: and have kids, and it's like that. There was even
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: talk at one point. I remember going to lunch with
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: the the then president of Fox, and he asked me, like,
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: if there was one character from the show you could
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: spin off into their own series, who would it be?
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: And without thinking, I mean, without hesitation, I said, oh, pooh. Uh.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: He said, well who plays our poo? I said, well,
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: Hank's area And he goes, oh, that'll be he'll be
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: too expensive. Who else? It's like, I don't know what
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: he expected me to say.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Like, it's right, though, the Pooh character is so beloved
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: and it's such a shame that he's just been sidelined
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: now for obvious reasons. I get it, but I don't,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: you know, but he's just he's he was such a
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: cornerstone when it comes to the secondary characters. He was
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: one of the pillars.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: He was one of it's one of my favorite characters
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: because and when they talked about the network brought up spinoff.
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: The reason I thought to him is because he has
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: a completely different take on America than the simpsitive. I mean,
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: he actually is the embodiment of the American dream. He
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: came here nothing, He works literally twenty four hours a day.
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: He's the hardest worry. He appreciates the country in a
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: way that we take for granted.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly right. Yeah, yeah, say all the character all the
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: things that people take for granted, he just he respects
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: and loves it for it. Yeah.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and yeah, did I understand when the issue was
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: brought up, Yeah, I understood it from a kind of
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: a you know, job opportunity level playing field thing of like, oh, yes,
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: if we were putting this character in later in the show,
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: we would have opened the casting up. But you know
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: the the and you've probably heard this, you know, one
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: of the things that studios love about animation is is
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: casting wise, you're trying to find people who can do
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: as many characters as possible, you know, so you're not
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: you see, you're not paying fifty actors every episode, and
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: that's how a lot of these decisions got made. What
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: I loved about, you know, Hank's portrayal of the characters,
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: I thought there was there was nothing like mocking about it.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: I thought he gave the character great humanity, which is
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: why we leaned on him so heavily that character. And
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: so I had my own feelings about that, you know,
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: documentary that I'm not speaking for the show. I'm speaking
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: strictly for myself. Yeah, well, to be honest, when I
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: was watching, I did watch it, you know, you know,
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: I'll sit down and watch this thing and see they
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: have to say and then and there was like it
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: felt like a little more of an attack on Hank
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: than a show about this character's impact on the Indian community.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: But also I remember a sequence where Harry he was
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: talking to his parents about the character and trying to
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: get there. You know, clearly I kind of wanted them
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: to tell like howp who had you know, negatively impacted
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: their life and they didn't seem to have big problems.
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: But it felt like he was kind of nudging him
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: a little bit.
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but didn't It seemed like his parents were roasting
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: him in some as well, as you said like yeah, yeah, well.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: The thing is pretty was very rarely the butt of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the joke as well.
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, he's it was a fun character, and
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: I think all the writers like miss writing him in
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: the show there. I think the ultimately there was kind
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: of no no way was decided on how to handle it,
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: so it just kind of the character kind of fell away.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: But you know, it was a great character, and I
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: thought Hank did a great.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Hank has been out spoken. He says he would never
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: want to voice him again, But I do think if
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: they did find another voice actor who could find this,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: who do a similar voice, I think you can bring
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: him back. I think it's enough times past bring you back.
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: A Pooh, you know, I'd be open to it. It
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: is like weird sometimes when voices change and animated shows.
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: I remember as a kid, you know, I'm watching the
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: Flinstones all the time, and then there was at one
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: point they changed the voice of Barney Rubble and I
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: remember as a kid, I was probably ten years old.
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: It really pissed me off. I just like, it's like,
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: that's not Barnie Rubble.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Well, my kids are big Muppet fans, and the current
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: voice of Kermit, God bless him, sounds nothing like Henson
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: or Steve, the previous voice of Kermit. My kids watched
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: some recent Muppet movie, a Haunted Mansion Special or something
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Disney Plus, and my son went, that's not Kermit, that's
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: the that's the because the guy that voices Kerment now
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: is the guy that played a Kermit villain in a
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: recent movie, and it's the Kermit voice, but it's got
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: a bit of a funny tune to it, and that's
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: just the voice he uses for Kurmit now, and he's
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: got that's not that's that's the impostor from the movie.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Might know.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: No, son, that's that's the real Kermit now. It's just
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: having to deal with it.
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's I think, you know, particularly when you grow
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: up watching something, the voices just get embedded in your
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: head like Okay, this is how they sound to you
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: and so, and you know, we don't like change.
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: And perhaps even more so with voice acting as opposed
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: to physically. I mean everyone goes on about well not
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: everyone because but which is not quite in the zeitgas
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: these days, but the whole h Yeah, we had dig
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: York and now we've got Dick Sergeant all the other
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: way around.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: I've never been that.
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: Bunched up about it. I mean I would come home
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: from school and watch Bewitching and after and it was like, okay,
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: well now it's now it's Darren A as opposed to
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: Darren B. But yeah, I think with a with an
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: animated with voice actors or an animated chart, it's kind
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: of like, yeah, that's that's not hitting right, Yeah, that's
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: that's throwing off my internal barometer.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I hate to disagree with you, but I
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: hated Dick side.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: What what what do we do then when the current
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: voice cast can't voice the show anymore because he's saying
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: people don't like change and it's their roles until they
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: don't want to do it anymore. But can you replace them?
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: I just don't know whether you can.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I don't. I don't know. I honestly don't know.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: It would It would throw me, you know, to have
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: to get you know, used to to get used to that.
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: So I don't know. I guess, you know, we've been
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: lucky to not have to deal with that situation.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Exactly, and hopefully it's a long time from now. But yeah, yeah,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: exactly what would you say? Because people talk about the
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Scully era, what do you what do you think? Personally?
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Is the most common misconception that fans have about the
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Scully era of the show.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: Uh, it's called oh those those four years, it's let's see,
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: probably there was probably there was too many silly episodes.
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: And I don't know if if jerk ass Homer got
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: hung on me or had started happening.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: I mean it does it does get a sign to
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: your era. That's where begins. A lot of people say it, Yeah,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: does that? Does that bother you when you hear people
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: say these things?
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: Of course, you know, yeah, you don't you want to
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: hear that. People are just you know, loving the show
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: that but you know, we go back and it's funny
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: like when I started on the show that was right
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: around the time like the internet had come along, like
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: all TV. Simpsons, that's where it started then. And now
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: they look at like seasons five and six and you know,
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: like when they started that and they're now considered classic, you.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Know people of television.
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's funny like stuff that they hated
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: at the time. I always kind of maintained that they're
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: and maybe this is just a self defense mechanism because
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: you know the show. The style of the show is
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: that every episode resets at the end to the status quo.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: They're not continuing storylines, you know, like it's I don't
• 37:24
  Speaker 4: think there's so much good seasons and bad seasons. I
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: think there's you know, great episodes, and there's bad episodes.
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: And I did my share of bad episodes.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: What would you consider a bad episode? Do you have
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: anything the on this your mind?
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: It's I don't like to single out episode because people
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: worked so hard.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Exactly, and people mild And one thing I've found being
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: a parent is I've learned that when you're a kid,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: you're not critiquing the Simpsons, you're just watching it. Right, So, yeah,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: kids are watching the current current season thirty seven episodes
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: and they love them, they watch them, they watch them
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: on repeat. Now it made me realize, finally, you know what,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the Simpsons isn't the Simpsons that I grew up with,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: But the Simpsons is now the Simpsons what my kids
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: want to watch. It's every the show evolves because it's
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: a kids show the end of the day. It's adults
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: can enjoy it, but it is a kids show. And
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: my kids love the new episodes. They love the old ones,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: but they'll often go, can we put the new ones on?
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Whether it because it looks in high definition or not
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: too sure, but they love the new episodes, and I
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: just have to go, I had my era. I grew
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: up with my show. This is their era of the
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: show now, and they will look back in twenty years
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: and go, how good were those episodes?
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's true. I mean there's a lot of
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: that too about like Saturday and Night Live because it's
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: nine fifty years and it's like, you know who was
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: your favorite cast? You know what was the best and
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: the general the consensus says your favorite years of SNL
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: were the years like you were in high school and
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: you watch the show every week, you kind of discovered
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: the show and so those automatically become your favorite seasons.
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: And you know, for the Simpsons, I think you know,
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: a lot of you know, kids discover it, like you know,
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: maybe they're seven, eight, nine, ten years old or now.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: I think a lot of kids discovered like their parents
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: expose them to it's yeah, yeah, yeah, because they grew
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: up with it. So I think it's kind of when
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: it's all like fresh and new to you, it can
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: be your favorite. You know, it can be your favorite show.
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I think like you're saying, like even now
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: that I think they're doing tons of like really funny episodes. Yeah,
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: you know, I know.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: I can do it, but that's doing one does the
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: show runner.
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: Yes, I think the show he's like not afraid to
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: like take big swings or break the form and experiment.
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: And I think that's, you know, a way you know,
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: to keep a show fresh and interesting, you know, and
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: not repeat yourself. You're you know, they're you know, they're
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: up to whatever eight hundred episode. You know, you've got
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: to try new stuff.
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: Mike, you mentioned we're talking about sort of jerk outs
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: Home before, but I wanted to talk a bit about
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: Homer because I read a quote from you saying Homer
• 40:12
  Speaker 5: comes naturally to me. That's what you said. And I mean,
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: we're here today to talk about Team Homer. I really
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: like Homer in this episode. I mean you get his
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: flaws but in a funny way, and you all say,
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: more importantly, you sort of get his virtues. I mean,
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: I think it's great how sort of positive and proactive
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: he is throughout the EID. I mean, what comes to
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: mind when you think of Homer.
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, the the John Schwartzwelder line about writing
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: Homer as you're you know, think of it as you're
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: writing for a dog who can say his name. That
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: being said, there's I think we all kind of write Homer.
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: There's like elements of our own dads in there, uh,
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: you know, and also too, I think, you know, when
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: he is like caring. I think there's some like wonderful
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: and even during my years, they're like Homer Lisa episodes. Uh,
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: and I had some fun like Homer and Marge, uh
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: you know stuff. But I think, you know, I guess
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: the you know, the feeling is like Homer. Sometimes it's weird.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: You go back to like the early like maybe season
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: one of the show, where Homer was an angrier guy
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: in a little kind of a meaner character, and then
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: he evolved, you know, into kind of like the dumb
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: and lovable that the dog version of horror, you know,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: which wasn't there from the beginning. And then you got
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: to find new ways to do it. And I remember
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: we were having conversations season five about, you know, we
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: got to stop doing these food jokes with Homer. We're
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: leaning too hard on the food like this, and you know,
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: and sometimes you go away from it for a while
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: and then then somebody comes up with a great one
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: that we haven't done before, and maybe a slate twist
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: on it, and then you wind up putting it back
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: in again. So you know, sometimes the stories lead more naturally. Personally,
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: I would get bored if Homer was constantly doing the
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: dumb thing that he has to apologize for at the
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: end of the show.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: This show is brought to you by the four figure
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: discount Patreon, where you will find over one hundred hours
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: of bonus podcasts, including exclusive Simpsons reviews and commentaries, as
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: well as exclusive episodes of Going Down to South Park,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Tales of Futurama, Bob's Pods, Speaking of the Hill, Talking Sefeld,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: the one about friends and so much more. So go
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: ahead and join the family today at patreon dot com
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: slash four figure discount.
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: So that was actually kind of the the episode and
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: season fourteen, which was technically the last one that I ran,
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: like Aljean, because there was a delay in the schedule.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: I think there was actors negotiations going on and the
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: season started late, so Al wasn't going to have time
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: to do all twenty two, so he asked me if
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: I wanted to do one, and that became the how
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: I spent my strummer vacation.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite posts was called Golden Ear Episodes.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: It's fantastic the use of the guest stars and that
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: was so great.
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was. And one of the things I love
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: about that episode is I wanted Homer to do something
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: really kind of like cruel and insensitive, but not have
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: the show lead to him apologizing at the end of
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: the episode. I mean it took. I had that idea
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: kicking around for a long time. I had the first
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: act at the show in my head for a long time.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Is that the always in the Taxi and events of
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Betty's family in the taxis that that one?
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: Yes? Yeah, the line, and then he sees himself on
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: the Taxicab Confessions style show and says that basically how
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: getting married and having kids crushed all of his dreams.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Basically, I mean, I mean, you say cool, insensitive. He's
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: kind of just saying what a lot of us were thinking. Yeah,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: it wasn't saying it to his kids. He was just
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: getting stuff off his chest.
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then them watching it and then him trying
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: to like explain it to them in an apologetic way.
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: In the moment he says the line getting married, Oh god,
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: I don't want to fuck this up. Oh marriage is
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: like a coffin and each kid is another nail, thinking
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: that this is going to get him off the hook
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: because that's a line I've actually said to my family,
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: and then I stuck it in that episode, and so
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: I did not want the rest of the show to
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: be Homer realizes he screwed up and is trying to
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: make amends, and ultimately everything works that fih when I
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: finally had the thought of Marge realizing, you know, he
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: actually has a point, even though he said it in
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: a horrible, hurtful way, know what he meant exactly, Like
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: he does give up a lot for us. You know,
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: he does do this, and it was kind of a
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: fresh take on that kind of a story where and
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: they wind up actually surprising him with this gift of
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: going to rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. So that was
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: just my way of not doing of him being jerk
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: ass Homer and then not spending the rest of the
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: episode of him apologizing for it.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Plus, I gave you a good reason to make me
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Jagger and Keith.
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: Richets Absolutely no, that was kind of my you know,
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: fantasy camp.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Did you have did you have fuck a bucket list
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: of people you wanted to meet via the Simpsons? All right,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: we need to get this guy. I need to get
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: that guy on.
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's funny. Originally I was writing the episode,
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: there was a real I had heard this guitar player
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: named Leslie West who's passed away now, and he had
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: a band called Mountain in the nineteen seventies. They had
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: one kind of big hit, Mississippi Queen, and he was
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: running I heard him on Howard Stern being interviewed and
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: he was promoting this thing he was starting called rock
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: and Roll Fantasy Camp, and he was having like it
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: was going to be like Alice Cooper and I think
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: cheap trick, and I forgot who some of the other
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: people were, and I thought, oh, that's what the whole
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: thing kind of came together of Mark's realizing Homer has
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: a point and we're going to give him this gift. Well, anyway,
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: we started working on it and were breaking the store.
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: We broke the story like that day. It just kind
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: of fell into place because we had never done like
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: Homer having a point, I was saying something horrible about
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: his family actually having a point.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: At the same time, it's true, but he shouldn't say it, basically.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And so I was writing the script with those
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: kind of people in mind to do it. And Denise
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: Surcott from Gracie Films used to work in the music business.
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: She got a phone call from a friend of hers
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: who was like a road manager tour manager for The Stones.
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: He called her up and said, listen, you know the
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: guys are going out on the road next year. Is
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: there some way that we could like get them on
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: the show, you know, and do something that would you know,
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: tie in with what you know, the time that they're
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: actually going to be out there. So I suddenly we
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: realized that Holy shit, we can get we could get
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: Mick and Keith like on the show.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: You got Crevits.
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Costelle, I think.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah. It was a really like fun group
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: that came together once making Keith were involved, you know.
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: And Petty I've always loved and always thought he was
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: really funny, funny guy. He did like a semi regular
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: character on King of the Hill for a little while.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and.
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: Oh that's you know. And he also like he had
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: been on Gary Shanling's first show and the Larry Sanders Show. Uh,
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: so I knew he was funny and I was a
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: giant fan Alvis Costello, I loved Lenny Kravitz also was
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: a fan of and that came through Mick was working
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: with Lenny Kravitz at the time on a solo album
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: or something, and he asked if if Lenny could be
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: in the show, Like, yeah, sure, absolutely, I.
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: Just love the wolf for these conversations.
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: That's how it kind of all fell fell together. I
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: think the one person I kept from the first draft
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: of the script to what it became was Brian Setzer.
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: And other than that that, we we started, and we started,
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: we wrote some extra segments. There was you know, there
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: was a bit for Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, because you wanted to then to come on
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: without going to and then didn't.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: No, we were going to send it to them. I
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: wrote stuff for them and a couple other people, and
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: then we just realized this is getting too big. It's
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: going to be too hard to get all these people in,
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: so we had to cut it down. I did ask
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: Bonnie Rait to do it because thought it would be
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: fun to have a female in there, and Bonnie was like,
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: I'm no actress. I do my thing. But I wish
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: I had gone further on it. I in hindsight, I
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: was like, oh, I should have gone after like Chrissy
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: Hind or somebody like. That would have been great to have.
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: But you know, Debbie Harry, Oh, Debbie Harry, See, that
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: would have been you know, the you know, it would
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: have been. Yeah, it would have been so great to
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: have a lot of those people in. But anyway, you're
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: really good.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like your ear was used guest stars really well.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: I particularly loved your use of the Who as well
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: in the episode that had the the town divided into
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: two Oh yes, yeah, yeah, I thought it was fantastic.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: But with Team Homer. Though you mentioned it, we're here
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: to review Team Home. She probably get to Team Homer.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: It's always been It's always.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: Was defending I was too busy defending jerk ause Homer.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: It was a whole podcast doing that. I think I'm
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: all he is. But it's one of my favorite episodes.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: This one. I think it's just one of my favorite
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: eras of the show. I think is when I first
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: discovered The Simpsons season six, seven eight. But I think
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: for two reasons this particular episode is I love the
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: sports ones, and you've written a couple of the sports episodes.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of sports episodes of The Simpsons.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: But I also just love seeing characters who wouldn't normally
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: see hanging out together teaming up for something. That's what
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: we get here. Yes, you know the pin Pals. How
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: did you? I've always wanted how did you? What was
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: your process for getting to which characters were going to
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: make up the original pin Pals with Ottawa, PuO and Mo.
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: So great question. I mean, I already like love like Homer,
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: and Mo was kind of a favorite of mine. I
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: knew guys like that when I was a kid. We
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: had a bar very close to our house where there
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: was bartenders like that, and uh, but Otto seem like
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: a fun you know. It was just like characters who
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: don't cross like Homer and Mo were already friends, but
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: like Homer and Otto don't cross paths a lot. And
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: and we also just thought it would have who would
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: be fun to add to the team. It's like, like
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: you said, it's getting characters you don't often see hanging
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: out together. It's weird because I rewatching the episode. They
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: act almost like they don't know who Otto is.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: That longhead freak long freaky.
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: But it's great because you've got all these other teams
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: that either brought together by their work relationship, Like I'm sorry,
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: this Springfield Police frame is is just a fantastic name
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: for teams all they've banned by religion, old their home
• 51:56
  Speaker 5: wreckers or Stereotyeah, but yeah, all these people are like, well,
• 52:01
  Speaker 5: they're all of the set, they all naturally fit together.
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: And then you've got the pin Pals, who are, yeah,
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: sort of this disparate group who have just sort of
• 52:08
  Speaker 5: come together out of necessity or out of sort of desperation.
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: It's a contrast, I think, Yeah, and I had forgotten
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: the inertial shirts. They had that, just the T shirts
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: with it's scrawled. Yeah, I'm completely forgotten that because I
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: got used to like the shirt you have on the
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: Fox started merchandising and I never saw a penny front.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: I'll send you one of these.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: The first time I saw it was in a store.
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: I had no idea they were even merchandising.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how much The Simpsons is merchandise now. I
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: feel like there was a good while there where it
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: was just your basic merchandise, you know, the family on
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: T shirt I think, but now they're really going to
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: more nie stuff like the pin pal shirts. And I
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: know a while ago they did pin Pals bowling balls.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: But didn't they give the cast and crew bowling balls
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: at the time when this episode?
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, I still remember the day. They're really cool,
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: like they're low balls and red writing it's the Simpsons.
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: But there was one day where they brought somebody to
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: the lot to drill all the balls for everyone's finger size.
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: That we all lined up to get our fingers measure
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: for the balls.
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Mike, there's bowling all over the world. I mean
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: even Australia has bawling alleys. But it seems to me
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: like a I know, but it seems like a very
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: American thing, like the great American equalizer. I'm wondering. Yeah,
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: I mean, even if you're not great at bawling, you
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: can have a great time while you're bowling. I mean,
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: is that was that? I guess I'm asking why bowling?
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Well, it was, I know, you're bowling with the kids
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: at the time, a beatle something, you said.
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: But yes, because I grew up in Massachusetts where we
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: have something called candlepin bowling, which is bowling if the
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: balls are smaller, they're almost like cannon ball size. Uh.
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: And the pens are shaped differently. They're called candlepins because
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: they're kind of handle ish shaped, I think. But anyhow,
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: this is in Springfield, mass Yeah, where I grew up. Uh.
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: And so as a kid, I did it a lot,
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: and then when I started, you know, having kids, it
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: was one of the things we would do together. U
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: still do it. We still do it now. But also
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: I remember when I was thinking of the story bowling,
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: there was a lot of bowling in like the early
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: episodes of The Simpsons that Barney's Bowlerama was kind of
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: a regular place you would see in the first few
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: seasons of the show, and then it kind of fell away.
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: So I wanted to kind of bring that back again,
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: to just put the bawling back in the show because
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: it had already been established.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Plus you also had the episode from the first season
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: with Jacques and Margins.
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, so that I knew there was stuff
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: we could you know, refer to, and it was already
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: in the world. It wasn't like Homer discovers bowling. It
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: was you know, we could kind of jump in faster, and.
• 54:58
  Speaker 5: It just seems like a quintessentially Siminson's kind of sport
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: or past something. You wouldn't see him playing tennis or
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: squash something like no, but they would bowl. Remember the
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: Flintstones Bowl right, Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it was a big part of the Flint Stars. Yeah, yeah,
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: exactly exactly. And then and walking in when it's you know,
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: when you do go out with your friends, the worst
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: thing that can have is you walk in and it's
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: league night and then you can't get a leg.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: I love that you established here. That lunch Lady Dodgs
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: is apparently the mother of Squeaky Voice team, which apparently
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: was canon for about thirty seasons and then they changed
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: it last year.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, that surprised me when I saw when
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: I'm rewatching it, I was like, oh, should I completely
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: forgot that?
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: And that this actually ended? I think it was two
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: weeks after Doris passed away.
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: Oh is that right?
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: Past away? December thirtieth, and this edged member the week? Yeah,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: this December January seventh, I think it was. Yeah, so
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: this was her first appearance post her death.
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: Oh wow, wow, Now she was so funny.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: She was a script supervisor right right.
• 55:59
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, but they they had loved her voice and
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: they had already used her. I think before I got
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: to the show, she was already established. So yeah, she
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: was super funny.
• 56:09
  Speaker 5: I'd like to ask about Mad Magazine and it's, uh,
• 56:12
  Speaker 5: it's prevalent influencing this episode. I mean, is it a
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: shout out from the from the Rod has Room acknowledging
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: that this might have been a bit of a formative
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: influence on our sense of humor because it's it's both
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: sort of paying tribute to Navidol. So it's like one
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: of these gags are pretty hackneyed.
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's it. But no, it definitely was. There
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: was like a lot of love in the writer's room
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: for Mad Magazine, and you know, it was kind of
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: when you were a kid. It was kind of like
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: your For me, it was like a step up from
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: comic books, like, oh, you know, this is different. And
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: a lot of times I remember buying them and it
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: was really for like the cover or like something on
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: the cover, or I'd open it up and see what
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: the parody was, like what the big and it was
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: always something with black you know in the title or something,
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: and then I would start to read them as a kid,
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: but they were so worthy, uh these things, I would
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: always lose interest.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: While I remember being a keep watching this episode. I
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: would have been, as I said, like seven or eight
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: maybe and going, I don't know what BT's laughing at here.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: I don't get.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: But I was a fan of like snappy answers to
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: stupid question because it's there.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Just were you great at them? I know, well you
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: were saying that, like we're saying that the bowling idea
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: came from bowling with your kids. Do you have some
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: of the what do you think some of the best
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: episodes that stemmed from real life experiences of yourself or
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: someone else in the writing room.
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: Oh gosh, I mean yeah, speaking for myself, Yeah, the.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: You know, bar shoplifting Proud, It's probably up the top
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: for me because I did the exact same thing. I
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: got caught stealing a magazine, and my mum's reaction was
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: exactly what Marge did. He and I went, this is
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: what happened to me.
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: Yes, I mean emotionally, it was exactly what my biggest
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: fear was. That didn't ultimately happen, but my big fear
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: was my mom finding out. So I got to kind
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: of play out my fear of what might have happened
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: had she found out about it.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Well, you got it right, because that's exactly what my
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: mom did. She was just disappeyed.
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you, thank you. I mean once, like all
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: the episodes, it's all like it's such a like collaborative
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: team effort, uh to get this done. I remember when
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: I went back to watch on Disney Plus, I didn't
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: I had forgotten that in the air order like Team
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: or Homer airs right before Marge being not Proud or
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: vice versa, and I was like, wait a minute. I
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: had to think, like, how did that happen? Because Team
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: Homer is a David markin episode and Marge being not
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: proud is Bill and Josh, And then I remembered that
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: they had we had overlaps for a while, you were
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: doing holdover shows, and that was like Mrkin had he
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: was doing some Alan Mike did a couple and then
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: like season nine is kind of a hodgepodge of there's
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: twenty two episodes. I think sixteen were me and then
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: there's a couple of Bill and Josh, a couple of Murkin,
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: and a couple of Alan Mike's all spread throughout season nine.
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: It's like popping up in different places.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: You get assigned to Principal and the Pauper, and it
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't you. It was Bill and Josh.
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: Right, yeah, oh what do you mean, It says me, no, no.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: So people always go, ah, yeah Scully season nine Principal
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: in the Pauper. We hate that episode, and it's like.
• 59:36
  Speaker 5: Josh, Mike Scully, innocent princip The Simpsons is like, well
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: it wasn't Scully.
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah shit, I'm mean for some other ones, but.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But but you also wrote Lisa and Ice,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: another sports episode that I absolutely love, but they have
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: two completely different endings. Really, these two sports episodes here
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: I love. I'm more of the emotional ending kind of guy.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: I like that.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: What what do you prefer? Do you prefer those emotional
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: endings like that, do it for her or the button
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Lisa flashback, embrace it into the hockey game, or do
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: you prefer ones like this? I mean or does this
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: to depend on what story is being told.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: It really depends on the story being told. And because
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: I think and I the emotional ones, I think sometimes
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: like stay with people longer. But I think if you
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: do it every week and you just kind of know
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: it's coming, people expect it. Yeah, You're you're just expecting it.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: I think when you have different styles of endings, the
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: audience doesn't know, so you can still surprise them, you know,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: with with like a really sweet emotional moment and just
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: end the show there, or you can go a step
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: beyond and do a joke ending, you know. So I like,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: you know, for me personally as a viewer, I like
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: not expecting to know because American sitcoms, particularly like I
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: would say, yeah, in the eighties, you could almost like
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: time like clockwork of where the emotional moment was coming.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: You know, where the and literally the networks would say
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: to writers. They said it to us once on Savages,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: ABC said where's the ABC hug? It's like, oh, man,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: did you buy the wrong show?
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 5: Well, it's funny. I mean I think if you tried
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: to put an emotional ending on on Team Home, yeah,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 5: where the you know, the pin Pals will have a
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: nice group hug and everything like that. It's like, I
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: think the audience would kind of think, I don't think
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 5: the pin Pails are hanging out after this. I think
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 5: Home is going to go and zemail with the bar.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: I think he'll go see I think we go see
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: up with the Quickie Maut. But yeah, these guys aren't
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 5: hanging out after hours or anything like that. I think
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: they've they've had their run.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: I love it they I love that they bail on
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: him as well at the end.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: But having said that, you you really have built up
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: some genuine emotion and genuine connection between these characters in
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 5: the Leader as well, which I think is it's really
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: marvelus that you have that bait and switch at the end.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: Now to see the bonding you know of the team
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: and also the you know, Burns wanting to be a
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: part of it and the friendship thing you know like
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: that it actually means something to him, which makes Homer,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: You're kind of blurting out, you're off the team. I
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: love for once Homer actually stays on tasks.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Homeless episode is actually very responsible because he's torn because
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: he wants to help. He's almostmost like the unspoken captain
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: of the team of this point team, and he wants
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: to do what's best for the team. But he also
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: has the dilemma of well, this his boss. He needs
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: to stay employed, and this guy the boss is responsible
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: for them having the team in the first place, So
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: what do I do? And he was going to form
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: the sword for the team for the bit of the
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: team and say you're off the team. But by that
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: point moment and who had been swayed by the pinpalace jumpers.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, And actually that that joke of of Burns,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: you know, talking about how much it means to it
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: to be in a normal like a sitcom of that time,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: you knew Homer was there. You know, Homer's there to
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: kick him off the team. What would happen is Burns
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: would say whatever his lines are there and the person
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: would not kick him off the team. They would be
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: unable to do it. So the fact that Homer just
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: like lets him finish the whole thing because you're off
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: the team, It's like, once again the audience thinks they
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: know where we're headed.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, there are some yeah, just dynamite bits like that
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: or just edits as well. I mean, it may be
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 5: one of the most perfect cuts I've ever seen the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 5: Simpsons episode is you cut to Homer and margin Bed
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 5: and just say no, I will not pay you five
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: hundred dollars for six I'm.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: I had to stop.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 5: I had to stop the show for second and laugh
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 5: at just like a minute because I just thought, first
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: of all, that's a great line, but it was just
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: editing so perfectly. Yeah, all those great rug pulls, there's
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: so many in this episode.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: She doesn't have that kind of money to spend on sex.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: Homer really values his sexual prowess.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 5: Nineteen ninety three.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: It's one of the constant constant themes of the of
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: the show that we love is that it seems that
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: Margin Homer, their sex life is rocking all their faults aside.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: It seems they might have their faults that in their fights,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: but it seems like their sex life is pretty strong.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: It seems like Homer's a bit of a dynamo in
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: the sack. This show is brought to you by the
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: four figure Discount Patreon, where you'll find over one hundred
• 1:04:46
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• 1:04:51
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• 1:04:59
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• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: ahead and join the family today at patreon dot com
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: slash four figure discout. Getting back to the emotion of
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: this episode, I do think there's a lot of emotion
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: in there, cause you're touching on how Burns want to
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: be part of the team. I do think we do
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: see a vulnerable side of the evil Burns here where
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I remember as a kid watching this thinking was Burns
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: always going to fool them? No, I think he actually
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: enjoy being a part of this team. And it wasn't
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: until the end where he saw them with the troph
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: and he went, wait a minute, no, no, I want
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: that to myself. Actual Phil Luca gets involved, trademark change
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: of the Heart, that line that he said, I mean,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: I've always been worthy, but this is the first time
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: I felt rich.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 5: I mean that feels like Gary Cooper in Pride to
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 5: the Yankees or something like, Oh, that's really touching, that's
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: really good. And then you get wrong foot, then you
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 5: get rug pulled.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: As a writer, how do you know when to not
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: add a gag to the end of an emotional scene?
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: When do you know to let the emotion sit? Oh?
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: Man, that's always hard, Particularly if you happen to love
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: the joke that comes. You can try to like rationalize
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: to yourself, well, no, it doesn't hurt at all. Right,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: you're still getting the impact of both. But sometimes, and
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: I'm guilty of it too, is sometimes that joke, even
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: if it's a good joke, undercuts the nice moment that
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: you just had. And you know, you try to you
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: hope you make the right decision, but I wish I
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: could say I always do, but I can't guarantee it.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: It's always tricky. It's always tricky.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: Do you enjoy being ou to tap into that more
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: vulnerable side of characters like Burns?
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's more of a challenge, you know,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: to get the audience to care about a character.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: Like that and believe that he's actually caring. As well.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and to find a reason that feels like that
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: could be within that character, like to you know, because
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: Burns is so isolated, you know, he leads such an
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: isolated lifestyle that being with these you know, being part
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: of a team would be a new feeling for him.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Do you feel the character of Burns evolve to a
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: point where he wasn't intimidating anymore because we don't have
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: to season twenty one now and it feels like no
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: one in Springfield really is scared of Burns anymore. Where
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: in these first you know, twelve seedons or so, it
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: felt like he was still scary to them and they
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: didn't want to They didn't know what he's going to do.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: So it's like we just won't we won't offend him,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: or we won't bother him. It got to a point
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: where it almost felt like Burns was a wimp.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I think I know what you're saying. Yeah,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: because we were always trying to, you know, to find
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: a story because we love the character so much. To
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: find like, if you want to hang a story on Burns,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: you have to find that emotion, that emotional thing that
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: carries you through to make you care about him. So
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: that's you know, so when that happens, you have to
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: kind of soften some edges on the character. Maybe that's
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: what you're referring to it. It happens too like doing
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: a story maybe about mo or Krusty, we would have
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: to find we'd have to kind of round off the
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: edges a little bit just to get the audience to
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: buy in and care a little bit more. But you know,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: Burns is always a great you know, he was always
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: a great villain. And there was years where, you know,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: we did like a lot of the episodes where Homer
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: quits his job to go after some new occupation that
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: he says, yeah, that, and we would do the scene
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: of Homer quitting the job, and then we'd done it
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: so many times we finally stopped.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: Doing it to a point where he just went audiences
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: are just going to believe this regardless now, So I'm
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: not going to even bother making the attempt to do it.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so you would save two scenes. You would save
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 4: the scene of where he goes to Burns to quit
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: the job, and then save the scene where he has
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: to go to Burns to beg for his job.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Nothing beat nothing in top when he plays burns
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: his head like a bongo, then literally burns the bridge
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: behind him. That's that's the pinnacle. He can't get better
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: than that, right.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's I think that the burning the bridge I
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: believe is a Schwartzwelder joke. I believe it's Swartswelder episode.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 4: And I can't remember if this is the same episode
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: or not where.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: That's where he goes to work at the bowling Alley.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: It's that one.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: Oh no, this might be a different one. I can't
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: remember what it is. And Marge says, you know, can't
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: you get your job back? And and the Homer goes
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: not the way I quit. It might be one where
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: we didn't even see what he did.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't say no, that's right, Yes, no.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: It's it's a that's one of my favorite Sportsworld jokes.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: But even most shows are softer side him. We do
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: see softer side of Moth throughout, you know, throughout the show.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: But it's a big part of what makes the Simpsons
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: so great, I think, is that there are so many
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: characters that aren't just the main family, that have so
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: many levels of depth to them.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah. No, it's when you can find those and it
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: doesn't feel forced where you can kind of buy it
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: and find a way to feel sorry for this character.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: You know that those are it's it's it's fun when
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: you can do it. You know you have to do it,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: but it's fun with if you can find something that
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: really feels like, yeah, I could believe that whatever that
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: that insecurity or whatever we're going to tap into is
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: inside this person somewhere, even though we've never seen it before.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and when you find a way to phrase it like,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 5: you know, I'm better than that. Well that fancy storeboard
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 5: did and stuff's loaded with nutrients.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: Now rewatching the episode, I did love there's such a
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: great mix of kind of angry mow and wildly insecure mode.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: You spend years resistant, you have to punch him in
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 5: the face, and for what Well, yeah, of course the
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: two sides of the same coin. Then yeah, they're naturally
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 5: part of his personality.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Do you go back and watch these episodes and feel proud?
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: I don't like, actually go go back to watch like
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: to do something like this just to refamiliarize them. But no,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: I'm super proud of you know, the whole like series,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: just to have been a.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: Part of it.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great feeling to have been part of
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: the show and like to meet you know, all the
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: you know, the great you know, writers and actors and everybody, directors,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: you know, everyone that's worked and been a part of
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: the show and made their contribution to it. Yeah, it'd
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: be crazy to not be proud of it. You know.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: What's one thing you find is it just feels like
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: everyone who worked for The Simpsons loved not just working
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: on The Simpsons, but loved working with each other.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a it's a very respectful writer's room,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: which was not always you know the case, you know,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: particularly like in the eighties and stuff that. And yeah,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: because writers rooms, you know, they're made up with a
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: lot of different personalities and and you know sometimes in
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: the eighties some of those personalities might have been you know,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: coked up a little bit. So, you know, I kind
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 4: of came in as that was fading out.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 5: How do you feel about that money?
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: I think it was good for me that it was
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 4: not part of my experience. I was more hearing stories
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: about it than actually like witnessing it. A lot of
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: writers from I mean, there will be arguments and you
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: try to be the Simpsons room is incredibly respectful, and
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: particularly for a room that was very big, Like when
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: I got there, there was over twenty writers on the
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: show and yet everyone you know, we did have arguments
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: for sure, but you know, you really you're crazy to
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: not listen to somebody's opinion because they're good enough to
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: be on that show and you want to get the
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: best out of everyone helping you, and you hope they
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: feel the same way, like when you're working on their
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: script that everyone's contributing to each other's stuff. So it's, yeah,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: I got nothing but positive feelings about the show.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 5: It sounds like there's mutual respect and mutual admiration in
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 5: the Yeah. Absolutely, because there's nothing worse than sort of
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 5: getting feedback or having to give feedback to someone's like
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 5: I think you might be a bit of a medium
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 5: talent there.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: There's also the element of everyone knows how long has
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: to do this all the time with me. Everyone knows
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: how lucky they are to have this particular gig too,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: So it's like I don't want to screw this up.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, but can you recall.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: A gag that name names that you had to fight
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: to get on the show? That actually did make it
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: through that they someone in particular did not want it
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: on and you had to fight for it and eventually
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: it got through.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: Oh oh, like in the writer's room, you man fight,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: you know, it's it's never been my style to it,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: like flash, Yeah, I don't like if one person doesn't
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: like a joke, but the rest of the room is laughing,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 4: then like usually the joke will it will make its
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: way in for that reason alone. But you know, you
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 4: also want to listen to if someone does have like
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: an opinion, you know, like a negative opinion. You want
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: to know where, you know, where is it coming from.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: But I don't know, I've always felt like, Okay, you
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: don't like that, here's here's something else, or you know,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: we'll come up with something else. The room is good enough,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: We'll always come up with something else, so I don't
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 4: worry about that. I just don't honestly remember any big
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: you know, big big fights. I mean there were you know,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: awkward moments or maybe somebody fights a little too long
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: for a joke or.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: Something background sawing guy that no one's gonna even say.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you also too, you remember, you know, particularly once
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: we were like working on you know, computers in the room,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: like you get for each joke it's in the show,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: you usually have two or three others that are equally
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: as good, so we save those jokes in case during
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: the process the joke that was picked to put in
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: it doesn't work, so you can go back instead of
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: starting from scratch, you can sometimes like have it it's already,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: like you click a box on the script and other
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 4: jokes pop up that you pitched, you know, six months ago,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: which it can be a time saver.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: Can you recall how long it took you maybe not
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: long at all, before you felt confident enough to say
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: I don't think that works when you were in the
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: Simpsons writers room.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, when you're running the show, you have
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: to say it, you know, because you ultimately have to
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: make decisions on stories and jokes and things like that. Yes,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: because because on that show, like I said, I look
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: around that table and there's, like you said, nineteen Harvard
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: graduates and you know, the village idiot here. So I
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 4: always had a rule to myself too, if they were
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: all laughing at I'd like, if if the room was
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: laughing at something, I would, you know, put it in
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: and to be honest, there was there was a There
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: were occasions where I didn't even get the joke, but
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: these all these writers who are way smarter than me
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: are laughing. So I'm gonna go, you know, go out
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: on a limb that it's probably a great joke and
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: put it in and I'll look it up later to
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: see what it means.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: Do you think the casual viewer, though, is watching the
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: show through your eyes someone who didn't go through all
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: the Harvard's and whatnot, a college graduate, or they're watching
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: through the eyes of these riders if you don't get
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: that gag, do you think the casual view of the
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: Simpsons is going to get it?
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I can't be like bogged down with that.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: If I know, like somebody is going to find something funny,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: and there may be somebody who doesn't. I mean, that's
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: just kind of comedy in general. I think, you know,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: there's sometimes you're putting in stuff, like you know, on occasion,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: like just for the room or for a very small
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: group of fans, but you know that small group is
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: going to love that.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 5: They're going to be quoting it twenty years from now.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, there's an episode Oh shoot, I can't
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: remember the name of it now. Homer is like on
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: the internet gossips thing. The third act is basically a
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 4: parody of the sixties TV show The Prisoner. Yes, yes,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: and that's a lot.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: Of Mister Rex episode that's one for us.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of that third act. There's
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: a lot of George Meyer and I laughing our asses.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: Of twelve year old me going what on earth is
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: going on?
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: But we kind of knew it going in, like this
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 4: is not going to be for everybody.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: But who cares at this point?
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: Right? Yeah? It was if we didn't parody The Prisoner,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 4: who was going to do it?
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: Exactly?
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: It correct me if I'm wrong. I'm almost certain. When
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: I last spoke to you, you said that you were
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: the first showrun to introduce normal working hours for the staff.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah? That was kind of one of the.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: Work life balance is important to.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 4: You, Yes, because a lot of the you know, there's
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: a lot of like can be in a writer's room,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: there can be a lot of like goofing around time
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: during the day, and sometimes if you subtract that at
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: the they're like, wait a minute, how many hours did
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 4: we actually work and then you realize, oh, instead of
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 4: going home at ten or eleven, we could have been
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: out the door at six, uh and having dinner at
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 4: you know, when I started on the show, I was
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: the only one who had kids, so you know, it
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: was I hated, like, you know, missing dinners with them
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: and that kind of stuff. So it was kind of
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: a goal of mine around like season nine, to to
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: try to get the hours a little under control and
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 4: prove to the staff that, you know, okay, we're not
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: going to screw off. You know, as much as we do,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: we'll screw off, but not you know, it'll be more
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: you know, control digressions, and we'll do good work and
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 4: we'll you know, get out at a reasonable hour, and
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: if we are here at night, there'll be a solid
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: reason for it. Yeah.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 5: I say that goofing around as you put it, I
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 5: mean that's kind of like priming the pump though, killing
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 5: the soil. Yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily. Yeah, we're
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 5: just missing around for missing around's sake. It's like this
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 5: is going to lead somewhere. I mean often oftentimes it doesn't,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 5: but sometimes it really does.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but I would it would be like
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: you know, a five or ten minute digression digression versus
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: a half an hour digression.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 5: Okay, you're being more efficient than your fucking around.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: Do you think if at all that impacted the show
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: in a positive or negative way?
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: Well, definitely, spouses on the show, we're very abregiative.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: People start having kids.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 4: But also, like I think at that point some writers
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: had started having, you know, kids and drawing. I love
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 4: when you find a great story that comes out of
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: like family life and if and it was kind of
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 4: like Phil Rosenthal, you know on Raymond. His theory, you know,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 4: is if you're just at a TV show all the time,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: all you're going to eventually all your stories are going
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: to be about working on a TV show. And you
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 4: know that show, you know, had like amazing hours, you know,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: like we would be out of there. Phil would treat
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: like if it was four in the afternoon, Phil would
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 4: talk like it was two am. You know, he'd be like,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: come on, come on, come on, we got to get this.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: But you know, the shows came out great, you'd go
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: home and you'd have dinner with your family, or you
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: could actually make plans and have a life outside of
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 4: the show. And sometimes those things wind up leading two
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: episodes or moments in episodes.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: And a lot of those are more emotional moments as well.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: Which real life sort of moment excited you the most
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: when you realize this could be a story? Do you
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: do you do you ever recall when you was sort
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: of at home and you went, wow, this would be great.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: Do you do you have any of those memories?
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: Oh? Man, I know I stole shamelessly from the family.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: There was definitely say, oh man, I'm just drawing some blanks.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: But because we were always like pulling two like from
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: our own childhoods, there was a lot of those. Oh
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 4: I know, like the last tap dance in Springfield was
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: at that time, our daughters were heavily and to dance
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 4: classes and you always start out with tap and yeah,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: stuff like that, and you know we had to buy
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: taps for all the kids.
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: Is the tap tapa tappits?
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, that definitely, you know, came out of the family,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: And I'm sure there's many more, or there's moments for sure,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 4: or vice versa would be my family using the show
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: against me. Like one day I told one of my
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: daughters and my daughter Taylor, to to clean her room
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: and that. You know. When I got home that night,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: I said, I'm going to be checking this room has
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 4: to be clean. And I get home and I, uh,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: And first thing I asked her when I come in, Uh,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: I said, did you clean your room? And she goes,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: did I want my what now? And when your kids
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: can make you laugh like that, like there was no
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 4: way for me to be mad, and she hadn't done it,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: but it was such a huge laugh, you know, like
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: those kind of moments. Uh, you know, you always like
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: remember those things and it's fun to know, Oh, they're
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: actually paying attention to the show.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: We also as a parent, now you hate those moments
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: where you go, I want to be so annoyed by
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: you right now, but you're making me laugh and I can't.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And it's it's always you love, it's always
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: fun like watching TV with your kids. But when you
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: see them respond to something, you know, like a small
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: are like a clever joke or something like that, not
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 4: the more you know, not just Homer getting you know,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 4: hit in the faith or like that. When you see
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: them start to respond to like a word you know,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: play or the cleverness and something, it's you know, it's
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: a point of prime.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: Well what my son now, he's just turned seven, but
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: it was the first quote he ever did. We parked
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: the car in town the other day in there in
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: the city, and he goes, Dad, remember we're in the
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: itchy lot. I was like, whoa, we quitted the Simpsons.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: I never'd been more proud.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my favorite favorite moments of Team Homer. For me
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: in particular, this is one of the ones that it's
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite gags. I didn't discover until I
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: was a lot older. But it's the home records. I
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: think that is just fantastic having Jacques pretty cashmir Mindy
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: and Lewlin Lumpkin, Lumpkin just all references to previous episodes
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: that of characters that have spoiled the marriage of Homer
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: and Marge. I think it's just fantastic.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a fun day. I remember we were trying
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 4: to come up with that was like a rum thing
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: of like coming up with who are these other teams?
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 4: We need to see them? What are their names? Who
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: could it be? I wish I could remember exactly who
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: pitched out. I don't. I don't think it was in
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 4: my draft or or it was given to me when
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 4: I went out to write the draft. But what I
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 4: love about that one is it just kind of goes
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: by silently.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, unless you know, you know, If you know, you know,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: but otherwise it's not. Yeah, I think it's fantastic. But
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: I did love just just the team names in general,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: and we only see about four or five of them
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: into they must have. Was it just a huge list
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: of teams that just didn't make it into the episode
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: or was it just was it hard to think of
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: these ones?
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 4: I think it was hard to think of these ones.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 4: I think we considered it ourselves lucky we got these.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: But the stereo stereotypes is one of your favorites, wasn't it?
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 5: I enjoyed that very much.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: This show is brought to you by the four figure
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: discount Patreon, where you will find over one hundred hours
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: of bonus podcasts, including exclusive Simpsons reviews and commentaries, as
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: well as exclusive episodes of Going Down to South Park,
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• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: the One About Friends, and so much more.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: So.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: Go ahead and join the family today at patreon dot
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: com Slash four finger discount.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 5: But look another favorite man is up. Superintendent Chalmer's a
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 5: unique way of writing a perfect tens. I'll start with
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 5: the zero and now a vertical line to indicate d one.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 4: Yes. That is another like kind of Simpson's staple that
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 4: I learned, you know on the show is Yeah, they're
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 4: called like arch jokes, like really where the saber? The
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 4: setup is just so labored, Yeah, to make it happen
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: where you're going so far out of your way to
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 4: set this joke up. Yeah that I love that moment. Yeah.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 5: Also, there's a I won't call it jerk outs Homer moment,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 5: but because it's it's sort of is in some ways.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 5: But it almost didn't feel like Home. It felt more
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 5: like a like a Jackie Gleason character or something. It's
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 5: the suckist suck that ever sucked thing. But when he's
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 5: on the phone doing that, but he's like, I gotta go,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 5: my damn WIENI kids are listening, and he's like, we're
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 5: not wins. Why are you dressed like that? I mean
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 5: that felt like something out of the Honeymoon. I just
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 5: it was so great and the way that Dan was
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 5: delivering that line, it didn't it felt like Homer, but
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 5: it also felt like, not, Homer, sorry, I'm normally I'm
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 5: normally a little more articulate than this.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: He's very, very much a leader at this point, he's like,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: well that's the Yeah, he's got it.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 5: He's bravado, gotvado. Yeah, because normally be like, oh, I've
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 5: got to apologize with the kids of a calling, and
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 5: when it's like, man, why are you dressed like that?
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 4: I think it's also a great example of like one
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: of those moments, and then like writing the show of
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 4: how things get built and people add things to it
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 4: like the sukkist you know, you know, the sakkist sucks,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 4: that ever sucked, sakis, a bunch of socks that ever suck.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 4: That was in my draft, I believe, And then when
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 4: we were rewriting, I think Mrkan added the you know,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: my damn ween, our kids are list and then I
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 4: think somebody else added the then why are you dressed
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: like that? It's a great example of the TeamWorks that
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 4: goes into writing a show.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 5: They made us.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: I think I think Moe was the stand up for
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: me and this. He had two great lines. The first
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: one for me was that he said home. It says
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: we can't leave now because then we'll never know how
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: badly they'll beat us. And he says, yeah, that's the
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff that'll haunt you. And finally, because I've
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: found my I think I've caught myself saying this once
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: in just in day to day life. Call this an
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: unfair generalization, but old people are no good at everything.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 4: That was Actually that was from my script. The reason
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 4: I remember it is because I did repeat it on
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 4: Parks and rec there's a scene where Nick Offerman. The
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 4: setup is the same, the butt of the joke is different.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: It's about con tractors, so who were like built houses here?
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 4: And I think he's Nick Offerman's character. Ron Swanson says,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 4: you know, like, call this a sweeping generalization, but all
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 4: contractors are crooked. It's the exact same formula, but you
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: know it works.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah, don't mess with a winner. I did, but I
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 5: think one is going to step on your one of
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 5: your trivia questions, which I'm looking at.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: Next question, you there eating the paste? My first question,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: how many additions does Mad Magazine put out every year?
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: Special editions?
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: No idea?
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: Answer at seventeen your.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 5: Screens right there, man, I can say, according to Milhouse,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 5: who is Mad magazine sucking.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 4: It to Oh, Spiro Agnew.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, let's.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 5: Par Arastra and Friends gives gives a nutshell breakdown of
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 5: whose Spirouggnew is was.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 4: Oh, he was Richard Nixon's vice president who eventually had
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 4: to leave office in disgrace. There was a scandal. Uh,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 4: well money or that it was. I forgot exactly what
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: the whole thing was, but yes, he left the Yeah,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: it's a name you never hear anymore in American politics.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 5: And it feels like the kind of name that's made up,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 5: I mean, light up. But at the same time, it's
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 5: like it feels if you told me this name had
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 5: been created especially for the Simpsons game. Yeah, I buy it.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 5: Spiro Aggnew, it's.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: He was a big He was a big comedy reference
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: on shows, even like when I was a kid, Like
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 4: there was show Rowan and Martin's laughing, just like a
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: variety show. And I think to me, yes, they Nixon
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 4: actually went on the show and said Socket to me,
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 4: which was a big deal. That. Wow, they got the
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 4: president to say socket to me. But yeah, and Spiro
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 4: Agnew was like a big comedy reference because it was
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 4: just a funny name.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 5: That's it.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 4: It's just kind of faded away.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: I've got I've got a follow up question to this
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: trivia question. The trivia question is Skinner was forced to
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: live on a thin stew made up of what ingredients?
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 4: Oh shit, I remember.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 5: It's got fish, brawnze and four different kinds of rice.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 4: I remember four different kinds of rice.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, vegetables and coconut milk. But I want to talk
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: about just those Skinner war memory moments. Were you a
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: fan of those? Did you have plenty of those just
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: sort of sitting on a whiteboard somewhere that you just
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: wanted to sort of put into an episode when it
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: felt right, or how did they work that?
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 4: I think that I believe happened, Like during the rewrite,
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: somebody pitched that I don't recall who, But no, there
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 4: was no like it was created on the spot. We
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: had no like like treasure trove of war memories. It
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 4: was just something because I know they wanted to do
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: that shot with the the way the lighting changes and
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 4: the blinds put the lines on his face.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 5: The couple are apocalypse now lighting. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 5: It's a great gag, but ways presented and makes it
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 5: even better.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I like it. Because even though we're kind of
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 4: stepping out of the show for a moment to do it,
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 4: I think it was worth doing.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: Did you feel you couldn't do those after the Principle
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: and the Poper episode? Do you feel he couldn't do
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: those anymore?
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 4: I can't remember if we had a conversation about it
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 4: would have been weird to definitely do one like shortly
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 4: after it. I can't say if there's been any since
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 4: that time. I actually don't remember.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: Did you expect a backlash that came from that episode?
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: Because Bill and Josh had no idea, They didn't think
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: people would care, and they're surprised by how much backlash
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: came from it. But what did you think when you
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: first heard the pitch?
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 4: It was I love the idea and the like the
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 4: source material it was based on. I love the idea.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: It was like kind of a thing that you know,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 4: I remember like thinking, gee, I wish we had done
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 4: this early if it was going to be done earlier
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 4: in the show, you know, like in an earlier season.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 4: It did feel a little like, well, you know, the
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 4: character is so well established now and had been leaned
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 4: on very heavily, it might have been you know, it
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 4: might have just been too much. Maybe the audience. You
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 4: never know, like and particularly pre Internet, you still weren't well,
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 4: this wasn't pre Internet, but it was you know, early on,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 4: and you don't know, yeah, how attached to like certain
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 4: characters people are or what parts of that character they
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 4: are and where can you ben those rules and just try,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 4: you know, do something different for an episode, because I
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 4: do remember it was it was a funny pitch when
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 4: when it was pitched, Yeah, it was like very really
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 4: like well thought out.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: Do you think a lot of the issue came from
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: that many people may not have understood the source material.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: Do you think if they understood what the parody was,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: they might have been in on the joke.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 5: It's not really a sort of direct lift telling a
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 5: return of Martin Gear, which was remade around the same
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 5: time as like they did an American remake Some mus
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 5: Be with Richard Gear and Jody Fossil. I think was
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 5: the early nineties, so it could have been fresh in
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 5: people's minds.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I couldn't remember like how big of a hit
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 4: the movie was, you know, the Richard Gear, But I
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 4: don't know. It's just one of those things you take,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 4: Like I said, that you get. Sometimes you just take
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 4: you take big swings. You take the swing, and you know,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 4: sometimes it just doesn't work out, or you'll you'll run in.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 4: Sometimes there are people who love it. You tend to
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 4: hear more from people who don't like something.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you know, I'd like to I'd like to
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 5: rewind as quickly to Skinner's numb flashback there, because it's
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 5: funny you mentioned before about how you know the writer's
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 5: room would come together on a gag or you haven't
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 5: men would laugh at it and be like, I'm not
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 5: sure we get this. I love Skinner saying will I
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 5: had a good laugh, but up with many skirts, even
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 5: if I didn't quite understand the.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, now, the Skinner is such a great character, and
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 4: Harry Sheer does such a you know, incredible job. You
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 4: know with him, you're like, you just kind of maybe
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 4: that's you. You buy this guy so much. You know,
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 4: you're like the living with his mother and all of
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 4: the things he he doesn't understand, and he's just so
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 4: befuddeled and but yet trying so hard to do a
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 4: good job. You know, it's funny you asked before about
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 4: things from pulling from the family life that wind up
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 4: in episodes, and it's in this episode that holds the
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 4: b plot. This the subplot about school uniforms.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: We haven't haven't touched on that yet.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, my at that time, my kids were in school
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 4: and their school was talking about going to uniforms. There
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 4: was a lot of like uproar about kids dressing and
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 4: appropriately we have the pants hanging too low and you
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 4: know the girls with you know, the crop tops and
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 4: that kind of stuff. Like you know, there was like
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 4: some parents that were upset and there was a lot
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: of talk going on about switching to the uniforms, and
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 4: my kids were really upset about. In the end, it
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 4: wound up being voted against. But that's where that came from.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 4: It was talk in our house at the time. They
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 4: came home one day really angry that this was a possibility.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: So I didn't realize as a kid until I watched
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: this episode. I always thought they just don't wear uniforms
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: on The Simpsons because in Australia we have to wear
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: uniforms when we go to school. It's just part of
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: what we do here. Wow, And that's why I was
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: always like, why that's so annoyed by it? We wear uniforms.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: Isn't that a big deal. But you know, as you
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: were saying in the commentary, it's very important for people
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: to know where you are in the social leta when
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: it comes to how rich your family is.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 4: Well there's also too there's like kids want a a
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 4: shirt with like a band name, so yes, exactly, which
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 4: also was happening. You know when my kids were in school,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 4: they had that the underachiever and proud of it or
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 4: who the hell are you like that? I mean they
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 4: were it was banned from schools they were in.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: So you so you knew of the Simpsons, but you
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: just didn't give it a chance because it was an
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: animated show.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, because I had seen the shorts on the
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 4: Tracy Allman Show.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: And then they're not great. They're not great, And like
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: I said, I.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 4: Felt like, well, yeah, I watched cartoons when I was
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 4: a kid, and so I wasn't big on the on
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 4: the shorts. And then I heard they were turning it
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 4: into a series, and my initial reaction was a half
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 4: hour of that every week. Oh my god, good, good
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 4: luck guys. So another thing I was wrong about.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: But all right, well, the usual ed of team Home.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: It was January seventh, nineteen ninety six, written by yourself,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: Mike Skelly and directed by the legendary Mark Kirkland. Now
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: the top three films a little bit we do here.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: Top three films at the US box office when this
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: episode aired, Number one was twelve Monkeys, Number two was
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: Grumpier Old Men, and number three was Jim Mungy. Goodness man,
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: that's where we were, knew jamand this year, Yes, you'll
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: be fan twelve Monkeys, right, George Monkeys is fantastic. Yeah,
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: Grumbyer old Men, Wald Mathow and Sophia Lauren together at
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: last Ye. The episode kicks off at the Android Dungeon,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: but finds Mad Magazine the special edition, and they talked
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: about stocking it to the spirit of agnew Gar. I'm
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: already touched on. How you know, big fans of Mad Magazine.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: Mad Magazine reappears in Was it this episode you worked on?
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: Was it the City of New Orfic's Homer Simpson? Was that?
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: Was that one of your episodes?
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 4: I worked at it. I didn't write that one, but
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 4: I worked out. But that's that's a Bell and Josh episode, right,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 4: I think so.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: I think it's a carrier from season eight. I think, yeah, yeah,
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: I think it's the premiere episode of season nine.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 4: I remember correctly, that's where where Yeah, that Bark goes
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 4: into the Mad Magazine officers thank and you see you
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 4: kind of in his head what he's thinking, it's going
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 4: to be.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: Versus Alfred sticks that he's head out the window at
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: the door.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But of course Bart finds the iron on in
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: the magazine, which March thinks quests dangerous men of laughter.
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: Homer stuffs up the folding, the folding. That's what I
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: remember most about the Mad Magazine because Mad Magazine for
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: me felt like the cool magazine, because my friend's older
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: brothers read it, and we would always be looking forward
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: to getting the folding. It would have been folded and
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: been folded in correctly. I can never really get it properly.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: I never really understood the jokes anyway. I to get it.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: But I think Homer just thinking he understands the folding
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: is just perfect.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the oh eighty eller, I get it.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 4: I can't help but see that and think of how
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 4: much work it was to come up with the words
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 4: that you could fall together.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: And going to ask that, Yeah, how difficult was this folding.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because you know, we do a lot you know,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 4: we used to do a lot on the show of well,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 4: we've always done tons of signed jokes, but we went
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 4: through a period of doing signs where letters could fall
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 4: off and make a different signay motel thing. Yes, yeah,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 4: those became really difficult. It was easier to do just
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 4: a straight funny sign that to come up with a
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 4: serious sign and then have letters fall off and spell
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 4: something up.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: But we now cut to Moe's businesses stinking tonight No, Barney,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Lenny and kyl Now this is obviously just a way
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: to get them out of the episode, right, because normally
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: they would be on Home as bowling team on machining.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, that's yeah. I was a little shocked
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 4: to hear the mention of their mistress. They were so
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 4: they were married and they had mistresses.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah apparently so. Yeah, but he closes up the just
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: before the Quimby's are going to be there to drink
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: each other under the table. Yeah, big fan of QUI
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: love the Quimby's.
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, same here because I grew up in Massachusett's.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna drink you under the table, Homer pleads. You know,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: your kids are probably there, probably wondering where their daddy is.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: We're gonna be somewhere else we can go, think most
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: think cuts to the bowling alley and yeah, so as
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: you say you can't get a lane on league night,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: we've already touched on lunch lady Doris being his mother,
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: I have no son. Then Moe goes on his rant
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: here about how he tries his hardest not to punch
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: people on the face, and only we treated like dirt
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: and not that fancy storeboard dirt. And then they got
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: the idea of the team a lot the animation here
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: of Homi gets the idea and the bowling like goes
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: Bubby's head and a poo, you want to join the team,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: and they had a fourth bowler. It's of course Otto.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: Now the running story here for Otto is the core Machine.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: Was that always in the script?
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 5: The cor machine?
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 4: I believe it, Yes, Yeah, it was. I think that
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 4: was always in there because we knew the payoff.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So did you come up with Otto first or
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: the claw Machine first? Because feels like a kind of
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: character you would go, he seems the kind of guy
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: that would play the claw Machine. Or was it Otto first?
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: And then you came up with the corn machine concept.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 4: I think we might have had Auto kind of from
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 4: the start, and then the claw machine. It was an
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 4: observation on those. They're always in bowling alleys. There's always
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 4: the climate because my kids, you know, the endless amount.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 4: For some reason, they never get that it's rigged, you know,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 4: even though you tell them flat out.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: We say that.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 5: Though.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: There was one time, about two weeks ago, we went
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: to a bowling alley. It's funny you say that, and
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: there was a machine there and my kid really wanted
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: this transformer plush and I said, you're not spending money
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: on it. It's not going to pick it up Bubble Union.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: It's because the one guy. And I said, look, I'll
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: do it just to prove that it doesn't work. And motherfucker,
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: I've picked it up and I got it. And I
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: was like, damn it. The one time I proved that
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: these things don't work and I've fucking done it.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 5: That's ironic, life lessening.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 4: That's great. Yeah, I think we are. My feeling is
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 4: we probably had Auto but wanted him doing something because
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 4: like how they were, they were that long hair freak.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 4: They're just pointing. So we needed him to be doing something,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 4: and I think we put him on the claw machine.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 4: Then later on, as we were breaking the story, I
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 4: think the idea came for the claw machine falling over
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 4: to be the thing that you know that ultimately winds up.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: You know it's so ludicrous, but you believe it for
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: it's the Simpsons. Yes, yeah, how long did it take
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: you to come up with what he was going to
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: be going for? That loves to harmony gum?
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 4: Somebody pitched it in the room. We were just talking
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 4: about like the all like the weird stuff that's in
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 4: those things, And uh, I can't remember that was based
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 4: on anything real, but it just or it just sounded funny.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 4: There was always there were little toy harmonicas in those things.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 4: I can't remember why. It was the lobster part of it.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 4: I don't recall.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 5: You would never ever ever play cash money for that
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 5: thing in the real world. But getting out of that thing,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 5: all of a sudden, it becomes like the treasure of
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 5: the Ciram.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: Are going to ask exactly but he needs a five
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars registration fee, which she doesn't have. Stahmmer and
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: Margins were touching earlier offering five dollars for sex.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 4: No, I will not pay you five hundred dollars for sex.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 3: Oh come on March. You're getting jumping in return, and
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 3: I'm getting a bowling team. It's win win.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: It suck, and I don't have that kind of money
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: to spend on sex.
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: Now, the line here was, she says, and I had
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: that kind of money to spend on sex when this
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: I watched his first with reruns when it was on
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: reruns in Australia, they would cut out that line, and
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: it wasn't until it wasn't until I got the DVDs.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, what what this happened?
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: So that was my first realization that syndication and it's
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: out a lot of jokes on The Simpsons.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 4: Yes, well, if it's like American TV when the show first,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 4: this is before you know, DVDs and any of that stuff.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: Yeh.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 4: When the show would repeat in syndication, like a year
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 4: or two later, they to add more commercials, they would
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 4: chop out like another thirty or forty five seconds.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: That's a lot a lot of time.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 5: So it's cut the time, not the content.
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, I think sometimes though, I think they
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: were for the raunchy stuff away. Yeah, but she suggests
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: that mister Burns should sponsor the team, and he says,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: you already asked fifteen hundred dollars for him last week?
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: What for going to get the third degree from you? Two?
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: And then Bart reveals he's down with Homework shirt, And
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: even as a kid, I'm watching his going I'm not
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: sure a right would break out with down with homework,
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: But I liked the idea.
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 4: That that actually was the joke for us was because
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 4: we were trying to think of, like I can I
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 4: can't remember what the pitches were. We were trying to
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 4: think of something first kind of like genuinely shocking, and
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 4: we were like most of the stuff that you would
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 4: come up with we couldn't show on TV. And then
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 4: we kind of doubled back to what if it was
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 4: like super lame but just something kids would agree with?
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 5: All the shirt makes a good point.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 4: Yes, watching it again, like crabap reaction of horror as
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 4: it's revealed and the kids just like you know, rioting
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 4: and tipping the desk over and it bursting into flames
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 4: and all that stuff.
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 5: Is that everything is so heightened for something so anodyne. Yeah,
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 5: that's the job.
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: But even like the scene of Ralph obviously not in
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: Bart's class, but he threw him in there hitting the paste.
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: That's another scene that was chopped from this episode in syndication,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: Ralph eating the paste, whether momea some sense of going
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: kids are gonna watch you and think they can eat paste.
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: That was that was that was cut out. But then
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: we get Charmers, who's about to give Skinner for the
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: first time ever a perfect ten and he does zero
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: first to the vertical one to indicate the one. But
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: then the kids start walking over his head and Skinner
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: discovers that Bart has the down with Homework, down with
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: homewick shirt and you know straight away it's from Mad
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: magazine because as you're touching on earlier, or we were
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: touched on earlier, the up with mini skirts designed for Mad,
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: which he or the good laugh even though he didn't
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: rely understand it. This show was brought to you by
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: the four Fingered Discount Patreon, where you'll find over one
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: hundred hours of bonus podcasts, including exclusive Simpsons reviews and commentaries,
• 1:46:01
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• 1:46:09
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• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: ahead and join the family today at patreon dot com
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: slash four figure discount. Burns is now getting his nails
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: filed and asked for some more ether I leave the rag.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: But he has the hallucination and thinks that Homer is
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: popping fresh. Now you were touching on and believe it
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: was you in the commentary that you really had had
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: this vision of squishing pop and fresh when you're a
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: kid watching the commercials Or was that David Murkin.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 4: I mean, we grew up with that commercial. But American
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 4: might have had a thing about squeezing.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, you know, because he came up with the gag
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: about being poked in the eye. That was a murking
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: gag poking the eye.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 4: Oh, yes, that's very American.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: Yes, I love I love Dan's acting and Homer sort
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: of he's agreeing and like laughing carry also on it
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: kind of hurts as well.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 5: Can we please just stop this? You're poking me in
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 5: the eye. There's only so much you can put up
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 5: with five hundred bucks, he'll take one or two. Who folks,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 5: in the eye. By the way, forgive me for being ignorant.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 5: I'm guessing Popping Fresh is like a brand of marshmallow.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that was actually the character name. I believe that
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 4: one of the Pillsbury dough boy Popping Fresh. I feel
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 4: like they called him that. Oh god, I'm not I'm
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 4: blanking on that.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: This is where we go. Hey, Google was about Popping Fresh,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: but it does that the name pop and Fresh has
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: one of the best payoffs of all time. A little
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: bit later in the Episodehen Smiths is trying to find
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: the I.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 4: Think that actually was the character name from the commercials
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 4: the Pillsbury We called him like the Pillsbury dough Boy,
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 4: but I think they gave him a name that was
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 4: actually said in one of the commercials where he would
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 4: jump out of the product and then they would say
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 4: Popping Fresh.
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: Wildly known as the Pillsbury dough Boy mascot for Pillsbury company. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah,
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: but we don't have that here in Australia. It was
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: just some random pop and Fresh Okay, sure, I thought
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: random imaginary friend that mister Burns had that That's why
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: I saw when I was a kid, I was like,
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: you guys.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 5: Have riven off the stay up marshmallow Man going on.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: But he has this hallucination thinks Home is popping fresh
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: gives him the money. He races outside Home of Do
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: and says, you know, Burns is doped up or dying
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: or something. Moleman runs in to get seventeen dollars I
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: think for a replacement Brissoning. Yes, he thinks of the
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: TV Lepricorn and he drills into his head to gease
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: likey charms, poor mommy. Then we cut to the pimpals
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: riding their logos on their shirts, and I think that
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: just that establishing shot there is enough to set up
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: that these guys aren't going to be a maybe not
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: on the level of bowling wise as the League bowls,
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: but just not going to be treated as equals either.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, it does feel like people who do.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: League bowling there is this era of just unnecessary arrogance.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: You know, they had their uniforms and they think they're
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: high and on the bowling lanes there god, you know.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there was a time here. I feel like
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 4: in the late seventies early eighties there was like there
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 4: was like a fashion thing for a while of people
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 4: wearing bowling shirts really to like out to like a club.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 4: You'd go see a band or somebody would wear a
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 4: bowling shirt. It became like a style, and I feel
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 4: like two and a half men, Charlie Sheen would sometimes
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 4: that's right, yeah, wear these things. Yeah, and maybe Kramer
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 4: on side.
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: I can't remember he did well, he was speaking of lobs.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: He had the shirt, didn't he.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I remember having a couple of those bowling
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 4: shirts too, and going out with my friend. And you know,
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 4: the big joke was it would have somebody else's name
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 4: on it, like like I'm wearing a shirt with that
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 4: says Stan, and my name is Mike.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 5: I sort of got a reboot in the late ninety
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 5: sort of around that hole, just a swing dance era.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 4: Yes, I think you're right.
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, Ben's born in one of those shirts.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: But so that they walk in, they get mocked by
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: the TV stars what was their team called the Channel
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: the Channels, the Channel sixteen. Anyway, they're just in.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 5: He gotta suck.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: Then a poo wants to leave. He can't, he can't
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: handle the harassment. Homo says, we can't leave now because
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: we never know about the obeatiest. That's the kind of
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: stuff that will haunt you. Then they bowling and bumble.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: We men taunts them and most that about me?
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 5: That about me?
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: And otto, don't don't joke, don't choke. I knew I
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: was gonna choke. And Moe groused at him. But this
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: is where Homer gets the idea to let's win via support.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: Let's let's support to each other.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 4: Well that's a funny looking strike.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 3: Come on, guys, let's be the team that supports each other.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 5: You can do it. Auto, you can do it. Auto
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 5: help each other out. Now that'll be romado.
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 4: You can do it.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: You can make this fair. I give you free gelotto.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: They're back to my place where I will get your plato.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 3: Don't are ricado, mister rabato.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: You can do you can do it, guy, I made
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: the spear.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 4: We won.
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: Those are five dollars, apiece. Did you have fun writing
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: these little random songs in the Simpsons.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, anytime you're doing something like a little different than
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 4: what you normally do on the show, it was fun
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 4: to come up with these little you know chants. These
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 4: It was kind of a very positive, you know type
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 4: joke for the guys to do together, and the fact
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 4: that Homer was leading it.
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was also deliberate choice to leave out seeing
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: Otto get the seven ten split.
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 4: You know, I I was wondering there. It was a
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 4: weird moment when I rewatched it. So, I honestly don't
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 4: know the answer to that.
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: We I think it workes Money's like, hey, guys, I want,
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: we want.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 5: Mike. You're among friends, you can tell us. You really
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 5: just put Auto in there just so you can name
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 5: check dumb rig Out and mister Roboto. It's all right,
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 5: everybody does a bit of reverse engineering. It's fine, the
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 5: classic moment. Loved it.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't put it past us, to be honest.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: I do love this next bit of Home of trying
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: to retell the story to Mark but how he thought
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: of the the chant that won the match, when really
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: she's more infatuated by the fact that I got the
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: seven ten split. He's phenomenal, But I'm the one that
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: the whole team idea.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Now, Marge is always fun when she's kind of
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 4: obsessed with something. You wouldn't think she would be obsessed
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 4: with potatoes. Yeah, like the Auto one and the other
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 4: I forgot what episode where she has Melhouse's teeth.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: Lisa or nice, Oh that's rights.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just like so unexpected from her.
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: And when Millhouse comes to collect them, Yes for now
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: Skinner and lunch Lady Doris are revealing the new school
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: uniforms and I loved her. I love Doris's delivery of
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: seance and the brand of clothing you see it.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 5: I'm sorry I gave a shout out to mister Boy
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 5: of main Street before, but I just think that's such
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 5: a great name. I mean, it kind of sucks. It's
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 5: the suckiest thing that ever sucked. Actually, in you know
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 5: the twenty twenties, that everything's so homogenized, you know, everything
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 5: is the gap where everything is uniclo or whatever. And
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 5: you used to have in little towns, you'd have like
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 5: that's where you go for your men's where you'd go
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 5: to mister Boy and get your first suit or something
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 5: like that, run by some family that's run up for
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 5: god knows how long. But mister Boy of main Street
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 5: and mister Boy for girls. But you're right about Doris's readings,
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 5: that whole fashion pray thing and Martin coming out and
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 5: just being an absolute little flouncing Yeah.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: The Pinpals now beat the DMV regulation Kings. There's time
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: for the Springfield Police Framers again. WI can be an
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: idiot's let's snake go. They forfeit. Now they get to
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: second on the ladder pretty quickly. And the only even
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: as a kid, I couldn't quite understand the logic of
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: so there was second and then they started losing a
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: bunch of games, but they're still in the championship game.
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: I couldn't work out that logic.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 4: Oh God didn't.
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: Really it doesn't matter though, But then the Holy Rollers
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: they've won at five years in a row because the
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: Homo thinks we're gonna win the championship this year. This year.
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: I do love it when Flanders gets to play villain
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: and he's not being an out and out villain here,
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: but he is the villain because he's better than these guys.
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he's got the deadly sin of pride.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah that's true. That's true.
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but they think they high mind just has never
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: been caught wearing no pants in church. As Moe says,
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: then Lander's leaves one pin behind Homer mockx And this
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: is an example of a classic gag you could not
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: do in live action. So Flanders talked to God, God
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: knocks over the pin and then zaps Homer through the
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: bowling machine.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that's it. It's a very cartoony joke.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, but Lisa then ranting about the uniforms,
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: and then they overhear using the word suck before he
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: touched on this, and then we get the nothing's gonna
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: stop us now another great cut stop everything for bowling. No,
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: it's bowing. I love the payoff to the bowing later on.
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 5: Yes, there's so many great setups and payoffs throughout this episode. Yeah,
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 5: there is.
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: Do you find that important that you had to sort
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: of have a payoff for every gag, that you didn't
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: just have a gag for the sake of a gag.
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: Everything had to have a reason for being there.
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 4: It wasn't so much that we felt we had to
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 4: do it, but if you had a way to make
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 4: something not seem so random and and use it and
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 4: actually pay it off, it just made it for us.
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 4: I think it was just a little bit richer. Yeah,
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 4: we could have done some other joke that had nothing
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 4: to do with the other, but you know, it's always
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 4: that thing, like it's not quite a callback which sometimes
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 4: we shy away from. But it's something to make it
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 4: look planned when it wasn't.
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: Why would you shy away from a callback?
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 4: Sometimes it's something we do, like I think just generally
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 4: in comedy, you like pick your spots and you don't
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 4: want to fall in. It's an easy habit to fall into,
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 4: so you just want to be careful that you're not
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 4: doing it too often. But then when you do it,
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 4: it's worth it.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: You want to feel like you have to do it. Yeah,
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: I guess so, yeah right, yeah, Then Smithers looks up
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: to think, who could it be that mister Burns got
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: confused with? He has now mentioned earlier. Pops freshened Meyer
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: is never mentioned again. He's never seen again, but he's
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: so iconic, Pops fresh and Mayer. I want to know
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: his backstory. Do you ever find yourself when you we
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: create characters like this, that you would create a backstory
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: for them in your own head?
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 4: Now, well, particularly like that particularly joke just came out
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 4: of the room. Somebody hitched that. Yeah, so yeah, there's
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 4: no time for that. It's you just you know, you
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 4: needed a funny name, and someone came up with one.
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 5: Well, Dann it does one of the art who spin off.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 5: He just wants the pops fresh variety.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: Burns then says it's time to shut them all down.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: We cut to the pimpals beating the home Wreckers, which
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: I think is just fantastic. Then Burns and Smiths arrived
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: to spoil the party, and he turns out he's not
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: going to shut him down. He saw all you saw
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: them defeat the home Wreckers, and he wants in on this.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: He wants to see I got the exact words. Basically,
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: he wants to feel the feeling of making people feel
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: bad by defeating them in bowling. And he wants to
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: join the team because he hasn't felt this energized since
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: his last bowling And now the team they don't want
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: mister Burns on board, and Homer's like, well, look, because
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: he's in a predicament. Here again is his boss. He's
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: a guy sponsored. Let's just give him a shot and
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: if he really stinks, he'll be easy to tell him no.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: The animation here is absolutely fantastic of Burn's struggling with
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: the ball. I just think the animation in general was
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: just great, and this I think Mark Kirklan did fantastic
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: job just making the bowling alley, so I no interesting,
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: but just the animation of Burn's trying to push the
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: ball and the little final detail of the tongue on
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: the ball. When he's passed out, Smithers realizes this Racingdad
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: kicks the pins over Homer's board. It wasn't an easier
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: I think before had those moments where it's like, I'm fucked.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: I had to do this. I'm sorry.
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 4: Now Mieric and his team did a great job, and
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 4: I was loving There's a shot of Burn's fingers over.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: The atone sort of gros and the sound everything is
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: just that. It's great. The kids are now at school.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: They're all broken walking through the hallway blinking in unison,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: and Skinner loves that sound, and missus case he's making
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: sure the desk is parallel to the real Rear War,
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: but can't remember what he's supposed to do in this situation.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: Nelson can't remember how to say ha ha. Then Otto
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: has now been kicked off the team, so he's gone
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: back to the corn machine. He says, you'll earn their
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: respect by getting a Harvard diploma, which is in the
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: machine as well. And now Burns just cost them their
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: third game in a row. They've lost to the Stereotypes, which, again,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: as you said, the Pooh line at the end of
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: that is fantastic, isn't it. Basically they're joining their team
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: now they're having drinks after. I think this is actually
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: a really sweet moment where you realize that Burns just
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: likes being a part of this unit. He feels like
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: part of the team, and it's seeing vulnerable side it
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: wouldn't normally see. Homer says the next week is the
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: championship game, and burn says that the only ship that
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: matters is friendship.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 3: Mister Burns, next week is the big championship game.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah, is that silly championship? The only ship with the
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 6: damn is friendship. Look, here comes the friendship ceiling, yoie,
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 6: and here let me get that friend.
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 3: Oops, mister nail. Well that's leprosy for you.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: I thought this was great. This is the perfect example
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: of sneaking as many jokes into a line as possible.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: It's not so he drops the what's the friendship in
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: the beer? It drops into the beer that's annoying itself.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: He then reaches into the beer annoying again, realizes he's
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: lost a nail right, another chap that's leprosy for you.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: That's four jokes in the one sentence. How many how
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: many hands can you put on these house? It just
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: keeps going and going and going. But then it ends
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: with again great direction, great animation of a Pooh and
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: most looking your way going, dude, something needs to be
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: done here. We can't have him on the time. We
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: want to win this championship. Now at the school. This
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: is the this is the scene where the So how
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: did it take you to come up with this ending
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: where the water was going to be? You're out the
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: fact that they were color fast?
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 4: Oh gosh, I I remember we did. It was definitely
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 4: like Room created, and I wish I could remember who
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 4: actually came up with. But yeah, we did need a
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 4: kind of a quick way out of it because it's
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 4: a subplot. You know, you don't want to spend a
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 4: lot of time on it, but we wanted it to
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 4: be visually funny. I don't remember any of the other
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 4: things that were pitched as a possible way out because
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 4: it was whatever thirty years ago.
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: But do you think subplots are important for Simpson's episodes
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: in particular? Because at Lisa or and nice. You didn't
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: really have one, but this one here you did it.
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: It was important because could you not flesh out the
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: A plot for a full twenty two.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 4: I think sometimes it's it's a matter of, yeah, you
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 4: either don't have enough story, you know, for the for
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 4: the A story, so you need something else, or like
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 4: the family characters don't really fit in the A story,
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 4: so you're looking for something else, you know as a kid,
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 4: And I think in this particular one, it was like
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 4: the whole family kind of didn't fit in because we
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 4: had Homer with his you know, his friends, plus we
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 4: had Burns. There wouldn't have been a lot for the
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 4: family to do. And like I said, I had the
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 4: story about school uniforms, so I think, you know, I'm
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 4: sure Mercan said, you know, it should be something that
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 4: involves the kids and that, so that's probably where that
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 4: came from.
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: When you were showrunner, did you come to a point
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: where you sort of thought it doesn't matter if the
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: main family are really front and center for an episode.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: What point did you feel in the Simpsons might might
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: have been before he became shown, where you realized they
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: don't have to be front and center all the time.
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it depends on the story that you're doing. You
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 4: do try. Like when we would have the table reads,
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 4: we didn't like it if there was like a character
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 4: like one of our like core, like one of the
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 4: family members who only had a couple of lines in
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 4: the episode. We would look for ways to kind of
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 4: beef that up a little bit if we could. You know,
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 4: we always felt it was better if you could get
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 4: if everybody had, you know, something to do in it.
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 4: Once in a while it just doesn't work out, or
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 4: like you're in editing and the show's too long and
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 4: then you might have to take away some things there.
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 4: But we always we did try, particularly you know, back then,
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 4: you know, we always tried to make sure that all
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 4: the family had plenty to do.
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, as I said here, it starts raining the
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: kids closed up or what would you call it, psychoedemic
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: psychedelic acid. Yeah, it's the same store. He bought his
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: mother's close he raised it off and I got to see.
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 5: It's a very Woodstock kind of moment. And yes, there
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 5: that's a real sort of visual homage to Woodstock.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: Home is now sad because the team is going to lose.
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: He spent so much time building that trophy case. Now
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: this again we've touched on the commentary. We've touched on
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: it before, me did that review may years ago. The
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: trophy he wasn't original trophy. The original trophy from the
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: original airing was I can't pronounce his name's hang hanger
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: is no. Yeah, tragically was murdered.
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 5: I believe I think he was shot to death. Yeah,
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 5: he was the He won Best Supporting Actor for his
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 5: role in the Killing Fields.
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there was fear that once in syndication that
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: people would think, oh, Homer, The joke was Homer killed
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: him to get the trophy, which exactly.
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it suddenly gave it this backstory that we didn't want.
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 4: So yeah, we switched.
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, makes perfect sense. Yeah, and Donamichi is a new one.
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: Then Marge then.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 5: I just think it's hilarious that he tries to flush
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 5: the march.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: Brought the toilet. Then the Holy Role has arrived for
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: the championship game. Moh has a plan, except this time
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: it doesn't work out well. So he's going to take
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: out burns his leg much.
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 5: Like it's the Tanya Harding Nancy Kerrigan. When when did
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 5: that actually happen? Was that how early in the nineties.
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 5: Was that was it? Was it a relatively recent incident?
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 4: It was, Yeah, it was, it was, And then like
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 4: see this would have been like ninety five, so yeah,
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 4: it was just like Prey a couple of years before,
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 4: and it was still very much in the news because
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 4: of the trial. And yeah, the guy the Tanya Harding's husband,
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 4: had a great comedy name with Jeff Galooley.
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 1: But mo fixes mister Burns is le yes and now
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: he's actually going to be able to bowl. This show
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: was brought to you by the four Finger Discount Patreon,
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: where you'll find over one hundred hours of bonus podcasts,
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: including exclusive Simpson's reviews and commentaries, as well as exclusive
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: episodes of Going Down to South Park, Tales of Futurama,
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: Bob's Pods, Speaking of the Hill, Talking Seefeld, the One
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: About Friends, and so much more. So go ahead and
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: join the family today at patreon dot com slash four
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: Finger Discount. And he says we've got to kick him
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: out of the team. And this is where he reveals
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: as like as I'm wearing the Pinpals, he reveals the
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: pin Hell shirts that he's gone out and made for them,
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: which is a really sweet moment. Mister Burns, he's he's
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: a kind person here. You know, we're seeing the best
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: of Burns and even moment appoo like the change that tune.
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 3: Mister Burns a's team captain. It's my duty to inform
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 3: you that.
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 2: I almost forgot.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 5: I brought you all a little something.
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 3: Ah, would you look at that the pin pass I've lashed.
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 3: I finally have a garment fine.
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 5: Enough to be married.
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 2: And I've always been wealthy, but this is the first
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 2: time I ever felt rich.
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 3: Now you were about to say something to me, you're
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 3: after team.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 5: We had what.
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 4: He's just ribbing your mondy.
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, but the Holy Rolls all bowl their strikes as
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: mister Burns, he's balls on his way down, which was
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: really hard to direct. Mark said in the commentary that
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: trying to make it naturally look at the ball was
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: going all the way down slowly whilst they bold strikes.
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, then yeah, we get that really fantastic shot
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: of the point of view from behind the pins, and
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: you think it's mister Burns great, amazing, And now the
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: Holy Rollers are head by one pin and there's only
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: one battle left. Mister Burns and again as we get
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: the fingers on the on the on the fan and
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: just there's a shot there where it's going. The first
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: one's a gutter ball, and then it's going along the
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: edge marks Mark causes a specific type of shot. I
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: can't remember what he says in the commentary, but when
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: the ball's rolling along the edge of the gutter.
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 4: Oh, I don't need to know that had a specific name.
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: This is something something shot which is really difficult to pour.
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: But it just looks fantastic the way it's rolling looks
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: it genuinely feels like an You somehow managed to make
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: it feel like an action movie. It's very cinematic. Yeah,
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: it's very cinematic. Yeah, But at the same time, Otto,
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: you know whatever, you got a hold of it. It's big,
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: and turns out it's the screw of the machine. Mister
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: Burns's ball knocks the two pins, Otto tips, the machine
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: over rocks the whole place, the two pins fall over.
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: They win, They win the trophy, but it turns out
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: that mister Burns just wants the trophy now for himself
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: because he's had the trade much change of the heart.
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 4: All right, Well, the second change of the heart came
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 4: out of It wasn't planned like when we did the
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 4: first one to do the second one. It just we
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 4: got to that spot of the story during the rewrite,
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 4: We're like, oh god, it's going to take we have
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 4: we would have to come up with some more like
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 4: emotional real reason of like why why is he now
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 4: going back to? And then I believe it was Mrkan
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 4: who came up with the line I've had another one
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 4: of my unpredictable changes.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: It sounds like Merkan was the real go to guy
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: in this time.
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 4: He's very funny guy.
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's another one I want to kill off my
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: bucket list at some point. But what was your original
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: ending to Did you have an ending to this? Scout
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: you first your first draft?
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sure it did, but I don't remember. I
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 4: haven't looked at the draft in the years. Yeah.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: Did you keep the drafts? Do you keep all these
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: drafts from back in the golden ear?
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 4: I have some. I have a lot of boxes that
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 4: I have to go through.
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: I feel like they could be a Simpsons museum of
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: this kind of stuff, you know.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, which we were out thinking about at the time.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, like I think Bill and Josh were great
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 4: about saving.
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 1: Josh in particular everything.
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I think this stuff in his garage.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think David Cohen has a lot. But uh
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 4: like for a long time I was saving all like storyboards,
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 4: and now I just have a few. But they take
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 4: up so much room. They're so they're like phone books.
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 1: You know, well, I'll I'll give you my address. You
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: just send them here. I'll pay for the posts far.
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 5: Or you know, you could put in a good word
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 5: with the with you know, Jim Brooks and that grading
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 5: and the Segars in Australia who would be happy to
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 5: curate the Simpsons for.
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: A very salary.
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 4: I started to see stuff now and I look at
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 4: it like I wonder, like what my kids like after
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 4: I die, Like they're gonna what do we do with
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 4: all this crap?
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: But then again, obviously the episode ends with Homer that
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: the big embraced, so we don't need that trophy. We
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: got each other, no custom, Homer trying to steal it.
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: They change down Homo. If you can't do it, no
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: one can. My favorite one, the whole bizarre, I think
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: is autogone. I guess no one can. And they all
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: run and leave, having to be to be eighting.
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that might have been God, I would have to
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 4: go back and find it. I think there was a
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 4: different ending, And I feel like we during a rewrite process,
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 4: maybe at the animatic stage or something we lost, we
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 4: got rid of what we had and came up with
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 4: that faster ending that you could just cut to of
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 4: him stealing the trophy bag. But I can't remember what
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 4: the old ending was.
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: Well, this one, this one's perfect. No editing in this episod,
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: all right, So that that is Team Homer.
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: Obviously, Michael kept you along with a very very appreciative
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for your time. But before we
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: let you go of it's my pleasure. We see the
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: idea the.
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 5: Sun has definitely gone down.
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: Now the next day, so we ask everyone, you know,
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: it's nineteen ninety eight or whatever you want, it's it's,
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 1: you know, late nineties, early two thousands. You've been asked
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: by Fox to put together a five episodes Simpson's Marathon
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: for a Friday night. Which episodes are you choosing?
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 4: All right? And well, I did ask you a follow
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 4: up on this, I said, you did? I said, do
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 4: they have to be shows? Just prior to that?
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: But you said that they doesn't matter. It's just as
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: I said, we usually get guests on who stopped watching
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: the show in the nineties, so we just go ninety eight,
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: ninety nine. But you do it, want any era? You
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: want five episode marathon.
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 4: All right, I'll rattle off five. Bart sells us all.
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: For what reasons?
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 4: I just remember like when Greg Daniels pitch that story,
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 4: it just sounded like so emotionally rich and you could
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 4: see the potential for comedy, but also it just I
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 4: don't know, it's just one that I think really holds up,
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 4: and the animation is terrific on so it's just one
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 4: that kind of stayed with me because I hadn't been
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 4: there all that long, and I remember thinking like, Wow,
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 4: this show can really go places into areas that I
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 4: would not think of for an animated show. Summer of
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 4: four foot two.
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: One I love.
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 4: I remember like a lot of talking in the room
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 4: about that, about like going on a va a summer
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 4: vacation to a place where there's somewhere else, yes, and
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 4: there's kids there who don't know you.
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 5: You've got the opportunity to be whoever you want.
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 4: To be exactly. Yes. It was very a very relatable
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 4: emotion natural Born Kissers. It's fun. I love when Homer
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 4: and Marge are in a jam together where it's not
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 4: Homer versus March. They've kind of well, and you referred
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 4: before that they have kind of a rock and sex
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 4: like and the two of them and this. Yeah. And
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 4: also because the network it was I think we may
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 4: have talked about this one. It was the first time
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 4: the network sent a note like, not on a specific joke,
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 4: but on the entire script of like, we don't think
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 4: you should do this episode right back, too bad, yeah,
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 4: which just made us want to do it more.
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember when that was first market in Australia.
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: It was the first ever adults only Simpsons but at
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: seven but at nine thirty PM, and I was like, well,
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: you're not watching that one st my little VHS on
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: the sly. Yeah, And I watched it, going, God, that's
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: not bad.
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 4: Oh, and I should say too, like Summer of Fourth
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 4: for two I believe was Dan Graney. Natural Born Kissers
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 4: is Matt Salvian And oh shoot, now I forgot who
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 4: wrote this. This next one is recently it's oh, come on,
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 4: all you faithful.
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the Disney's Plus Special.
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I thought it was terrific and it was
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 4: fun to I just watched it as a viewer. I
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 4: had nothing to do with it.
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 1: That must be great. Yeah, yeah, and to do.
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 4: Like an hour long episode that doesn't feel like an
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 4: hour long like you know, a lot of times when
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 4: comedies go long, you can feel the padding, you can
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 4: feel what should have been cut, and this show just
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 4: didn't have it. There was enough story and it's a
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 4: great Christmas episode and we're still close enough to Christmas.
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 4: People should go to Disney Plus and watch it. It's
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 4: a terrific episode. And I'm forgetting who wrote it? Now?
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 4: Is it Carolyn All?
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: Meaning maybe she's one of my favorite seamson draw Does
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: I love Carolyn? To meane?
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, she's She's great.
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: I look at the writer. Yeah, thats your fifth episode
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: for your marathon, and this one you will not have.
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: It was Carolyn, by the way, it was Carolyn. It was.
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a terrific episode, and I had the pleasure.
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 4: The other day I happened to be on the lot.
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 4: I dropped by the lot and went into editing with
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 4: Matt Selman and Christine Nangele for what is going to
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 4: be the eight hundredth episode, and I'm not going to
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 4: say what the plot is or tell anybody anything about it,
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 4: but it was fun to see it. It's in the
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 4: color stages and it was hilarious and it's a really
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 4: fun episode and everybody should check it out when it
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 4: comes on.
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: Well, we've got Matt coming on the show tomorrow, so
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say, hey, Scully told us all about
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 1: the end of the episode. That's a great I like
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: that you've you've expanded here. It's not just what people
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: call the Golden era, it's you know, it's a bit
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: of new bit of all because the new episodes are
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: genuinely great. We've we reviewed the premiere episode of season
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 1: thirty seven. We thought it could have been up there
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: with like a season seven, season eight episode. We thought
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: it was really great.
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that was I had a really hard time,
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 4: like it's so hard to come up with five. It
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 4: was like, yeah, it would be almost easier to come
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 4: up with fifty.
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, or Mike, thank you again for your
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: time here reviewing team having it's been absolute pleasure. It's
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: been what sixties in between episodes. Let's not make it
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: sixties again?
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 4: Hey, Yeah, absolutely I've come back anytime. A lot of fun.
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Mike, Thanks very much, Mike, all right, thank you,
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 4: Bye everybody.