'The Simpsons' Draft: Best Episodes, Characters, and More

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Speaker 1 I'm Sean Fennessy, and this is the Prestige TV podcast. We have a very special episode today.

Speaker 1 Celebrating Stupid TV, Be More Funny, How the Golden Era of The Simpsons Changed Changed Television and America Forever, which is the new book by my colleague, Ringer, senior staff writer Alan Siegel.

Speaker 1 He's here with us. We're going to draft Simpson stuff today.
We have two special guests joining us from The Midnight Boys and The Ringer.

Speaker 1 It's Charles Holmes from ESPN and from local Eastside LA, Nina Kimes, friend of the Ringer, also huge fans of The Simpsons. So we're going to talk about the show and the book a little bit first.

Speaker 1 Alan, congratulations on the book. Why'd you write this book?

Speaker 5 Simpsons has been part of my life since I was seven years old. My parents at first did not want me to watch.
They watched an episode with the belly dancer and they were like,

Speaker 5 our little son's not going to watch that. They canceled it for a while and then the craze was just too big and they relented.

Speaker 1 My origin story is extremely similar.

Speaker 1 For whatever reason, my parents who were not super restrictive around what I could watch, but for some reason there was like an energy around the show that was like, this is the devil's music.

Speaker 1 Like, you will not participate in this animated program.

Speaker 1 And so, even just reading the opening bits of your book, I was like, huh, this feels familiar to me, this like this sense that there was something dangerous about a show that ultimately is like wildly sophisticated, incredibly entertaining,

Speaker 1 you know, endures so long. Charles, you're a little bit younger than Alan and I.
What is what is your background with The Simpsons? I remember the day at summer camp vividly.

Speaker 1 It was elementary school, and there was these two bully kids, and they they look at me and my brother and they're like, You've never seen The Simpsons. And I felt like the biggest fucking ass.

Speaker 1 Like they were laughing, they were pointing. And I was like, I had the calculation in my head.
I was just like, I'm never going to be good at sports.

Speaker 1 Right now, the cheekbones, they hadn't filled in.

Speaker 5 I didn't have the beard yet.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to get the girls. I'm like, but I can watch fucking TV.
And I spent a summer just downloading Simpsons, King of the Hills, South Park, anything that was funny.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I will never be that kid on the playground. Like, look at this fucking asshole.
He knows nothing about culture. And that's why I'm sitting here today.

Speaker 1 It's funny to situate it amongst King of the Hill and South Park because Simpsons

Speaker 1 feels like earlier. Much earlier.
You know, like really, like those shows would not exist without The Simpsons. What about for you, Mina? Like, when did you discover the show?

Speaker 4 Very opposite experience from you guys in that my whole family watched it together.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 My parents loved it.

Speaker 4 And it was appointment viewing in our household. And this was a time when you were just a twinkle in your mother's eye that, you know, you didn't have options, right? On television.

Speaker 4 There wasn't streaming and all that. And I don't even know if DVR was invented at the time.
So we just watched what my parents wanted to watch. And my parents wanted to watch The Simpsons.

Speaker 4 And then the thing I distinctly remember is there were Seinfeld families and Simpsons families where I grew up. And we were just a Simpsons fan.
We actually didn't watch.

Speaker 4 I have a wild confession, which is

Speaker 4 the only episode of Seinfeld I've ever seen seen is the final episode. Oh my God.
What? But I've seen almost every episode of The Simpsons.

Speaker 1 That's the least useful episode to watch. I just do it to get a feel.
It's like a clip show.

Speaker 4 My parents were like, well, I guess we got to figure out what this is all about. But we watched The Simpsons every week.
Half the audience is like so bad right now.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we watched it as a family. And it also kind of paralleled my own family.
My brother, not to jump ahead, but our structure of our family, the archetypes very closely mirrored.

Speaker 1 I know a single person in my life that has more Lisa energy than you do. So this will be an interesting draft.

Speaker 5 So that's an interesting thing that I wanted to touch on, which is we like, we're mostly from the generation where parents were sort of skeptical about it.

Speaker 5 But I feel like if you go maybe to Charles' age,

Speaker 5 like for us, for a while, it was the one show that we were not allowed to watch. But I think for a lot of kids, it became the only show that parents were happy to watch.

Speaker 1 Black church was not fucking with The Simpsons.

Speaker 1 There was a list because I was already, I could tell, like I was getting in when the seasons were starting to get bad, but it was still very much like Harry Potter, Simpsons, South Park.

Speaker 1 It was a bunch of, I had to watch The Simpsons at my grandparents' house while my parents were away. And they was like, you don't give a fuck what you're watching.
So it was still very much like a

Speaker 1 I'm watching something that, and then soon I think my parents were like, oh, there's way too much going on in the world. The Simpsons is fine.

Speaker 1 I grew up in a circumstance where if I had a babysitter, they would let me watch whatever I wanted. And that was when I was allowed to watch Roseanne.
That was another example of a show.

Speaker 1 my parents were like, no Roseanne. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which is odd to look back on and think about the things that were ultimately, I think, these pretty sophisticated sociological portraits of American life, obviously full of jokes and references and insight.

Speaker 1 And they were entertainment. But those are two really interesting examples of basically like middle-class life in America, really, really smart people behind the scenes writing those shows.

Speaker 1 And they were like, there was panic around them, you know?

Speaker 1 And I don't know if that was like a conservative panic or what, but it just, I relate to what you're saying, which is that we were told like not yet until five years went by.

Speaker 1 And it was like, this is clearly the best show on television. And then it had one Emmys and everybody had agreed that it was okay to watch it.

Speaker 5 The one that my parents never relented on was Married with Children.

Speaker 1 Same.

Speaker 5 And if you watch that now,

Speaker 5 there are some things in there that you're like, oh my God, how did this ever? get on the air.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it still feels transgressive in a way that The Simpsons doesn't.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I was going to say, like, obviously you revisited this and you get into this topic in the book.

Speaker 4 Looking back, do you feel like how subversive subversive The Simpsons was is heavily overstated in retrospect?

Speaker 5 It was very subversive for the time. Like, again, the United States president was shouting it out in a very negative way.
Right.

Speaker 1 More like the Waltons.

Speaker 5 Yeah, right. More like the Waltons and less like The Simpsons, despite the fact that the Waltons were like New Deal Democrats.
But we won't get into that.

Speaker 5 But again, like a kid saying hell and damn to his parents, like that really was different. Like Alex P.
Keaton on Family Ties was not doing that. Right, right.

Speaker 1 I think Bart was really the originating angst for parents, that the idea that this rebellious kid who people would model their behavior after was like seemed dangerous.

Speaker 1 And, you know, like we look back on the show now and it's like, this is actually not a Bart show to me as I look at it.

Speaker 1 I'm like, it's Homer first and then it's Lisa and then it's Bart in terms of the hierarchy of like the characters that are meaningful.

Speaker 1 But Bart was the pop cultural sensation aspect, the one that like led a lot of kids to the show.

Speaker 1 The best episodes, I was just like, oh, the best emotional episodes that I remember are Like, I didn't realize that.

Speaker 1 I didn't even remember. I was like, this is a Lisa show.
Like, I was like, what? Every single episode, I was like, oh, I love Lisa.

Speaker 4 I'm so nervous about the draft and my very unfair rank where you have me plotted and every third over and over.

Speaker 1 No, no,

Speaker 1 we'll do a fresh draft order. Okay.
I'm going to ask Justin Sales off camera to give us a fresh draft order. That was just for document purposes.

Speaker 4 So best episode, I gave myself like, you know, seven or eight to think through. But yeah, it's sold Lisa heavy.

Speaker 4 And you kind of feel like when you go back and you read some of the lines and some of these best episodes that the Lisa was the avatar for all of the writers.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 4 And there's a reason why.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it started as Bart just because he was such an easy character to write for. And then they kind of ran out of ideas.
And

Speaker 5 then it was, it was like a combo of Lisa and Homer because like Lisa, they were, they were all nerds. So that's what they started with.
And then as they got older, it became Homer, obviously.

Speaker 1 Okay, so Charles, we know Mina is Lisa. If you're a Simpsons character, which character are you?

Speaker 1 Honestly, this might trip up someone I want to pick, but like I realized as a kid, I was like, I'm never going to be like Mo.

Speaker 1 I was re-watching it. I'm like, I'm exactly like Mo.
Oh, he's my hero. A grouchy small business owner? Yes.

Speaker 1 Constantly getting made fun of by children. Alan, what about you? Who do you identify with and you see yourself as? Well,

Speaker 5 just to give you some context, the cake toppers at my wedding were Lisa and Mill House. Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 you are very Mill House, Cody.

Speaker 5 So, okay, so this is an admission. I know.

Speaker 5 So I'd say like from my teen years to, I don't know, my mid-20s, probably Mill House. But I definitely leaned into Lisa as I got older.
And I would like to say that that's who I

Speaker 5 identify with now. That's nice.

Speaker 1 I think, unfortunately, in this phase of my life, I've got a really strong Troy McClure thing going on where I'm just extremely presentational and and full of shit, and maybe not doing my best work.

Speaker 1 But I'm powering through. Um, we are going to draft today.

Speaker 1 So, Alan devised this.

Speaker 1 These are the categories that we're going to draft from: best episode, deep cut episode, which is amorphous and can be defined however you choose, but real ones will know if you're going deep cut or not.

Speaker 1 I will say, if anybody picks anything from the first eight seasons, Mike, you cheat. I agree with that, though.
I'm not putting it in ink. Uh, non-Simpsons Simpsons family character.

Speaker 1 Best joke, best cameo, and best parody. Can you win this draft? Is it possible to win it?

Speaker 5 I think that the options you have are so good that you, it's like you can't lose, but you also can't win because how do you decide?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree. You feel like you're coming in cutthroat.
You're ready to blow people out of the water. I'm going to fucking lose.
It's like, I'm just, I'm just here for fun.

Speaker 1 I'm just hanging with my buds. This also, this collection is very Springfield-esque.
You know, this right here. This energy? No, just us.

Speaker 1 You know, just like four, just random people, assemblage of people coming together in a small town. I'm talking about you not as Springfield, but you're Shelbyville and I'm Springfield.

Speaker 1 Shelbyville, how dare you? Yeah, or Cypress Creek. What's the name of

Speaker 1 Scorpio's town?

Speaker 5 Yeah, the Pacific Northwest town.

Speaker 1 Mina, you're famously very competitive.

Speaker 1 Whoa, whoa, famously, huh?

Speaker 4 Much like Lisa, I am a little competitive. The dog comes out sometimes.

Speaker 4 Those are some of my favorite Lisa moments when she kind of breaks character a little bit in ways or her love of like itchy and scratchy things that would seem to be out of out of character.

Speaker 4 But no, no,

Speaker 4 I'm not going to be weird. Okay.
Part because I am just meeting two of three of you for the first time. Sean and I actually read Data last night.
He was like, how do you know Alan?

Speaker 1 I was like, I've actually never met Alan.

Speaker 1 I blurred his book.

Speaker 4 I don't even remember how that came about. I have such a terrible memory.
So we just met.

Speaker 1 So you're going to be on your best behavior. behavior.
Yeah, that's yes.

Speaker 1 I won't be because I don't know how to do that.

Speaker 1 We're doing in snake fashion. So we'll be bending back and forth.
You're at the turn. How do you feel about the turn? Hey, that's where I live.
That's where I thrive.

Speaker 4 Best episode is a good category to the last because it's deep. I feel like when we get to like best parody, it's going to be more competitive.

Speaker 1 I completely agree. There's one parody to ruin to rule them all.
Now, let me ask you a point of order question about parody.

Speaker 1 Is it important that the entire episode be the the parody or that there be a micro parody inside of an episode that we're locating?

Speaker 5 So I think there's a difference between parody and reference.

Speaker 5 And a reference would be like pretty short, maybe one shot,

Speaker 1 but a

Speaker 5 or rather a reference, yeah. And then a parody would be just more extended.
I don't know if it's if it, I think it has to be like maybe 30 seconds or more.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree with you. In your book, you talk about how like Mad Magazine is so influential on the show.
And

Speaker 1 I don't think I ever made that connection, even though it's so obvious.

Speaker 1 But when you watch the show so frequently, the idea of like putting ideas in front of you that you didn't know you were going to learn about in the future.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to use that to set up my first pick, which is in parody, which is also probably a contender for one of the best episodes, which is Cape Fear.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Famous sideshow Bob episode in which Bart and the Simpsons are threatened by

Speaker 1 Bob, and they're using the Robert Mitchum film and the also recently recreated

Speaker 1 Robert De Niro Martin Scorsese movie to set up Bob as this terrorizing ex-con who comes back to haunt the family. And it's like one of the more sustained parodies that the show has ever done.

Speaker 1 Definitely one of the best episodes. Bob, a personal favorite of mine.

Speaker 1 for reasons that are probably a little bit upsetting if you want to analyze them.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I think that like, this is a great example of the show putting something in front of me me and me having no, like, I had not seen Cape Fear. I had not seen the original Cape Fear.

Speaker 1 I didn't have any idea of like the Max Cady character. Bob at that point had already been in many episodes of the show, sometimes in small ways, sometimes the focus of the episode.

Speaker 1 I think this is like maybe the second or third episode where he's the focus.

Speaker 5 I think it's maybe the third.

Speaker 1 The third.

Speaker 1 And obviously Kelsey Grammer's performance is insanely good. It's so funny.
And his willingness to be as deranged as he is is a hallmark. And

Speaker 1 I also really like the complete ignorance that Homer demonstrates through like every Bob episode.

Speaker 1 Like, he never has any idea what is really going on with Bob, which I just think is like a great little character trait. So, that's my first pick in parody.

Speaker 1 I only listed four contenders for parody, even though there's a lot of good references. I don't know if there's as many that like extend.

Speaker 1 All right. This also has one of the greatest jokes ever, but that was going to be my next question.

Speaker 1 When, so, Kate Fear is in parody, so that's off the board. You can't take a

Speaker 1 parody. Why are we doing this?

Speaker 4 So, clarify, sorry.

Speaker 1 So it's in parody, which means that you cannot choose it as your episode. You cannot choose a joke from that episode.
So half of my favorite jokes came through.

Speaker 1 First of all, the Brownie Chainsaw joke is a top five Simpsons joke. I watch it and laugh for five minutes to it.

Speaker 5 I like when Homer's passed out and Lisa's like, Dad's been drugged. And I'm just like, no, he hasn't.

Speaker 4 The number of times my brother and I would say bake him away toys to each other.

Speaker 1 Bake him away toys was my number one

Speaker 1 joke. So funny.
It is the best.

Speaker 4 The entire entire parole meeting, everything that happens in that meeting is so funny. Die Bart, Die.
No, it's German for Die Barthi.

Speaker 4 No man who speaks German can people.

Speaker 1 I don't know what it is about that episode. I don't know who wrote.

Speaker 1 You can probably tell me who wrote that episode, but I don't know what it is, but that feels like the apotheosis of the show in some ways. Like it is like joke a minute.

Speaker 1 but also high reference point and also like narratively interesting and engaging and fun.

Speaker 5 So that was John V D, and that was the last episode where the original crew of writers was together.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 That makes a lot of sense. And it was interesting because, and this is where I'm lording over everybody with my anecdotes, but

Speaker 5 it was weird for the show and for TV because it was a parody of a single thing for an entire episode. So if people haven't seen that movie, like

Speaker 1 they're kind of lost. But it didn't matter.
Yeah. As a kid, it didn't matter.
But as a kid, I also was like, oh, it's teaching me something that's above me.

Speaker 1 And that was like what made it cool to watch. Cause I'm like, oh, there's like stuff I don't even understand.
Yeah, that's true over and over again in the show. Okay, that was my first pick.

Speaker 1 Mina, you're up.

Speaker 4 I'm also going to pick in best parody because this is a short list for me and I feel like they're going to get used up pretty quickly.

Speaker 4 And I'm going to go March versus the Monorail, which is probably on people's, I guess, best episode. I'm guessing.

Speaker 1 My number one list. He's going in parody and not in best episode is.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 So I'm forcing you to dig in.

Speaker 4 It's a parody. This is an episode long, similar to Kate Fear of the Music Man, which is similar to Kate Fear, a thing I've never seen.

Speaker 4 I had never seen when I watched this episode, but obviously,

Speaker 4 I learned about it through the episode, actually.

Speaker 4 It's kind of similar, I feel like, to Cape Fear. It's jam-packed with jokes.
It's jam-packed, it has incredible cameo that might get taken in our cameo. I feel like someone takes it.

Speaker 1 It can't get taken now because it's off the board. That's the thing.

Speaker 4 Wait, you can't take a cameo.

Speaker 1 No. All right, guys, guys.
Your rules are insane. We're drafting.
The episode is going to come up with a rules. Who has ever been part of a draft like this? Well, you need to create.

Speaker 1 There's 900 episodes of The Simpsons. We need to create some

Speaker 1 urgency here.

Speaker 4 I might break it for the rules at some point.

Speaker 1 This was not communicated to Mina or I. Y'all only just watched Marge vs.
the Monterello. Prepare for this? Come on.
This is the Simpsons draft.

Speaker 1 All right. Well.
You know, he's ready. You've seen every fucking episode of Ivan's.
I'm fucking. I'm ready.
Let's go. Okay.

Speaker 4 When you said, I don't want to lord my anecdotes over you, that sounded like a comic book that I showed.

Speaker 5 Oh, it was designed to be like that.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 4 I think it's a great picture. The cameo would be Leonard Nimoy, who has some of the funniest lines of any celebrity ever.
That's not his only Simpsons cameo, right? It's not.

Speaker 1 Don't spoil it. I think he's on the cameo board.

Speaker 1 Like, I didn't even know who Leonard Nimoy was when I watched this episode. And then you, like, I watched Star Trek and you get in.

Speaker 1 I'm like, that was the Simpsons for me, where it was like, I was like, oh, this is real.

Speaker 1 Because I was so young watching it. I was like in elementary school.
I was like, who are these people?

Speaker 1 I know, but we didn't know that we were being inspired to discover what the answer to these questions were. You know, like, I wasn't like, I need to go Google who Leonard Nimoy is.

Speaker 1 You couldn't Google it. You could ask your parents, but I wasn't supposed to be watching the show, so I couldn't ask them.

Speaker 1 So it was like, how do I figure out who Spock is and why he's even on this episode?

Speaker 5 You just like, it has to come to you over time.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there's probably a generation of kids who only know him through the gif of him saying the cosmic ballet goes on. Have no idea who he is, no context for it at all.

Speaker 5 The like high-minded way to look at it is it got us curious about other things, other smarter things, which is really rare for sure.

Speaker 4 Has also been one of my favorite jokes of all because we can't talk about anything else in the episode in other categories. I call the little one bitey when Homer's talking about, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, Alan, you're up.

Speaker 5 Okay, so I'm going to stick with parody.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 5 I'm sticking with this because, well, you'll see, it'll be evident in a minute, but I'm going to go with Duffless, which is the episode where Homer gives up alcohol.

Speaker 4 That's a good one.

Speaker 5 And there's a song he sings. And I had no idea of this.

Speaker 5 And it's based on a song called It Was a Very Good Year by Frank Sinatra, which, if you've seen the Sopranos, is in the opening montage of season two.

Speaker 5 It's the only moment I think we see Polly Walnuts having sex in the entire series on a pool table.

Speaker 1 Thank you for locating that. Yes.

Speaker 5 So, okay, I need to warm up my voice. I'm going to sing.

Speaker 1 Okay. Oh, wow.

Speaker 5 Okay, this is the song.

Speaker 5 Well, beer. Oh, it's Homer, by the way.
Well, Wellbeer, we've had some great times.

Speaker 5 When I was 17.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 5 I drank some very good beer.

Speaker 5 I drank some very good beer.

Speaker 1 I purchased with a fake ID.

Speaker 5 My name was Brian McGee. I stayed up listening to Queen when I was 17.

Speaker 1 Did you guys own and listen to the various albums of Simpsons music? Go Simpsonic with The Simpsons, Songs in the Key of Springfield, The Simpsons Sing the Blues. There were others.

Speaker 1 I did, I did not, but I did literally before I got here watch the fucking

Speaker 1 rap. And I was like, this is fucking hits.
Oh, Bartman. This hits still today.

Speaker 1 Great. Michael Jackson on the backing vocals? Fucking amazing.

Speaker 4 Where the CD, because I think my brother might have owned it. It was all songs from The Simpsons.

Speaker 1 I think Simpsons Sing the Blues was original.

Speaker 5 Simpsons Sings the Blues was like a produced by a real rock producer like John Boylan, who like worked, helped form the Eagles. And he was working on that album.

Speaker 5 And like, he said his daughter was so proud of him. And I was like, was that weird for you? And he said, well, she doesn't know who the Little River band is.
So,

Speaker 5 you know, they're going to be, she's going to be excited about that.

Speaker 4 Is that your favorite song from The Simpsons that you just graced us?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 5 I say it to myself all the time. And my wife kind of like tilts her head after the 50th time of the week.

Speaker 4 Do you have a favorite song? Sorry, I'm not.

Speaker 1 I do, but I don't want to spoil it. Oh,

Speaker 1 I might want to draft it. I have one too.

Speaker 4 But I don't think I'm going to draft it. But if I say it, do I take it from?

Speaker 1 You know what's a tricky thing, too? Is obviously there's been like this incredible

Speaker 1 analysis by folks outside the show and inside the show about Apu over the years and like the role that Apu has played in culture.

Speaker 1 And Hankazari has been very open about kind of like reckoning with what he said. But there were like Apu had some incredible musical moments on the show.
They were so funny and so engaging.

Speaker 1 So it's like, as I even like think about my list, I'm I'm like, can you have like an a poo moment? Maybe we should have a homo.

Speaker 1 I'm gonna pick some shit that I'm just like culturally probably not the greatest pick, but also that's what I loved going back and watching where I was like, this joke is still funny.

Speaker 1 I know it's offensive, but it's also kind of like a snapshot of the jokes that me and my friends were saying at that time. And I'm like, that's okay.
Like, it's just like, we grow. I get that.

Speaker 1 I get that. Okay.
Well, now's your chance to offend our sensibilities. What are you going to put?

Speaker 1 Before I offend the sensibilities, I'm not, I guess I'm not picking the episode, but I'm picking the moment because i still think this is one of the funniest parodies ever i am picking the planet of the apes musical oh yeah dr zayns dr zanes this was my favorite song

Speaker 1 sorry

Speaker 1 from chimpanzee

Speaker 1 when he does when he does the breakdancing move it's like chef's kiss i think

Speaker 1 the best simpsons moments to me it's not just the joke but it's like there's a non-sequitur and then you have the animation like there's always levels, and it's like re-watching this.

Speaker 1 I'm like, oh, as a kid, I got like one level of this. And as an adult, I get like three.
And as an old man, maybe I'll get to like five. And Dr.

Speaker 1 Zayus is one of those moments now where I'm like, I understand more of it. And still, like, doing research on that episode, I'm like, fuck, I missed like half the fucking.

Speaker 5 I think it's one of the first shows that really rewards re-watching over and over and over. Like, you can watch episodes and pick up on stuff 30 years later that you didn't the first time.

Speaker 1 Um, so that episode is called A Fish Called Selma. Yes.
It's from season seven. Where she marries McClure? Troy McClure.
Yeah. And is it the first total Troy McClure episode?

Speaker 5 Yes. I think so.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Troy McClure, obviously Phil Hartman, huge part of the success of this show. I suspect he'll come up again as we keep talking.
Really good pick. I listened to that song a lot.

Speaker 1 I think that was on Ghost Simpsonic with the Simpsons. I believe so.
There were like 48 tracks on that CD, and that was like number 36. Okay, you're at the turn.
So you got another pick.

Speaker 1 So I think I'm going to go cameo. Okay.
And I'm not going to pick this person because there's someone else who I think does a better job. But I have to say.

Speaker 1 Michael Jackson fucking killed it. Michael Jackson killed it.
Another example of like the, the, the complications 35 years later. But Lisa, it's your birthday.
Lisa is your birthday.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's on Disney Plus because I was trying to re-watch.

Speaker 1 They took it off. Yeah.
And I was just like, what? So I literally had to go to YouTube and like watch janky ones, but I can't. I'm not going to pick Michael Jackson.

Speaker 1 It's interesting that they took it all. Yeah, they really did.

Speaker 5 My best friend's son read my book, and

Speaker 5 my friend said, Yeah, he really learned a lot about Michael Jackson in the book, but what happened? I mean, Charles, explain the premise, though. Like, who does Michael Jackson?

Speaker 1 Michael Jackson is

Speaker 1 Leon Kampowski. And basically, it's the send-up of whatchamacallit.
I'm blanking on the name, the fucking Chuck Nicholson film. One flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Speaker 1 One flew over to the cuckoo's nest, and Homer goes

Speaker 1 to this mental institution where he meets Leon, who thinks he's Michael Jackson. And first of all, it's so funny that like

Speaker 1 Michael Jackson didn't have his name in it because so many of the jokes and references are basically like Bart, like, no one's going to believe that I'm talking to Michael Jackson.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I haven't gotten a chance to read your book, but I just didn't realize how much Michael Jackson wanted to be involved, not just in that episode.

Speaker 1 He's like, oh, right, you guys are number one hit song. I'm like, what the fuck?

Speaker 5 Like his, again, the sort of Peter Pan qualities of him that, you know, becomes a little more sinister as the years go on. Like it sort of made sense that he was a huge Simpsons fan.

Speaker 1 It did.

Speaker 1 It's interesting that he couldn't, didn't put his name in just because of the publishing, you know, the idea that like the record labels and the way that his, I mean, the power of a Michael Jackson penned song was so profound that he needed to, they needed to write an episode around him being not Michael Jackson.

Speaker 5 Right. And, and he basically didn't sing the song in the episode.

Speaker 5 It was like his vocal impersonator because, again, of like contractual issues that they were afraid like that sony wouldn't or would sue the sue the shit out of him for it michael jackson would be my heart pick but i can't pick him so i'm gonna go meryl streep is jessica lovejoy she's great great pick he's like

Speaker 1 watching the episode like i know it's meryl streep but i'm like you are such a good actress that like no you're justica lovejoy like it was like there was this moment where it was like my mind i'm like as a kid watching the episode i i don't care who fucking meryl streep was i didn't give a shit and then re-watching this episode, I'm like, oh, you are one of our fucking actors because it's just so just engrossing.

Speaker 1 And she does such an amazing job.

Speaker 5 It was, oh, I just like when she's like, Bart,

Speaker 1 Bart. Am I misremembering?

Speaker 4 Did Winona Ryder play another Bart Love interest?

Speaker 4 Am I misremembering that?

Speaker 5 I think she played Lisa's rival.

Speaker 4 Oh, Lisa's rival, I think.

Speaker 1 Never mind.

Speaker 4 Yeah, because there have been some interesting actresses, older, actually playing

Speaker 4 the kids over the years. And you do, you totally forget.

Speaker 1 Forget worse. But also, I

Speaker 1 going back and just like seeing stills i'm like there are so many episodes of the kids just getting like different love interests like millhouse gets a love interest lisa gets a love interest there's multiple episodes where i'm like am i misremembering who bart dated and i'm like he's dated a lot of guys a lot of girls channels okay mina you're up okay i'm deciding between two

Speaker 4 two groups of people. I'm doing cameo as well because I feel like cameo is a

Speaker 4 top heavy category.

Speaker 1 Don't Don't take what I want. There's one that I really don't.

Speaker 4 I was going to wipe out an episode and a bunch of jokes.

Speaker 1 No, you're going to kill me here.

Speaker 4 I'm taking all of the baseball players and homer at the back.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah.

Speaker 4 I know you thought I was taking another group of people.

Speaker 1 Don't spoil. No, no, no.
Just one person. Just one person.

Speaker 1 But I'll tell you why I think it was. You reckon that's.

Speaker 4 I just wanted to make sure I got them all. Wade Boggs, Jose Canseco, Roger Clements, Ken Griffey Jr., whose head gets, of course, gigantic size.

Speaker 1 Don Mattingly, Steve sacks uh mike uh ozzie smith daryl and daryl strawberry who's really the highlight the star truly the star very very important to young me seeing daryl strawberry in in in the show i mean it's wild thinking about having nine baseball players as guest stars on a national tv show now like

Speaker 4 how did they get them all together was that the second was that the second season that was the third season third season yeah well that's the other thing that like blew my mind this was 1992 they got ken gruffy jr in 1992 to do a cameo on the simpsons well conversely are there nine famous enough baseball players

Speaker 1 to sustain that? Like Mookie Bets, Mookie Bets, Mookie Bets,

Speaker 1 Paul Skeens, baby. Yeah.
It's a lot of baseball talks.

Speaker 1 I feel like that episode would have been leader in the clubhouse for first pick overall. So you gotta, you gotta, I think you gotta steal there.

Speaker 4 And it, yeah, I feel like

Speaker 4 a lot of great sports episodes, but Homer at the bat has to be one of.

Speaker 1 If you had to choose one player, you're going Griffey, Seattle Origins and whatnot.

Speaker 4 I mean, Daryl Strawberry, the scene where the tear rolls down his cheek, my brother and I

Speaker 1 water off a duck's back. Very powerful.

Speaker 1 Very powerful.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Another good pick, but that wasn't the one I was aiming for. And I hope you don't fuck me right now.
Okay. Alan, what are you taking?

Speaker 5 So I'm going to do a deep cut episode. Okay.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 if I say the name of it, I'm wondering if anybody has heard of it. It's called Separate Vocations.
Does that sound familiar? So that's a season three episode.

Speaker 1 Season three. Yes.

Speaker 5 It's where Lisa and Bart Bart like change roles. So they take like a personality test.

Speaker 5 And I would say, like, this is an episode that shows like the show sort of making fun of adults for projecting things onto their kids.

Speaker 5 And so Bart basically becomes a cop and he becomes a hall monitor. And it's very kind of scary.
Some of the things like he goes on a ride along with the cops who are obviously totally incompetent.

Speaker 5 And Bart basically likes that they have qualified immunity. And Lisa, Lisa just becomes like her personality test says she's going to be a homemaker.
And she's really sad about that.

Speaker 5 And she just becomes a delinquent. And,

Speaker 5 you know, she starts going to the bathroom and her friends like offer her a cigarette.

Speaker 1 And she's like, I'll smoke it in class.

Speaker 5 And so basically Bart and Lisa at the end reverse roles again. And it's very sweet.
But, you know, it's, it's pretty.

Speaker 5 Pretty sad, actually, at parts of it, and which is like something the show really did well in the early years.

Speaker 1 I will say season three episode is fucking cheating, it's fucking cheating. You don't think that's a deep cut, and yet you didn't know the title, separate vocations.

Speaker 1 All right, here's the thing: do any of us know the titles of the act? Because I was going through, I was like, I don't know any of them. These are the most famous ones.

Speaker 5 It's kind of unfair for me.

Speaker 1 I like Cape Fear, Marjorie and Le Monereo, like those are the ones I know.

Speaker 1 But when I was like trying to do research, I'm like, if I watch this episode and then I watch five minutes, I'm like, We're about to get into, I don't know, the name of this episode territory.

Speaker 4 Although, for me, everything after I started high school is a deep cut.

Speaker 1 Cause you know, same. I'm aiming more for episodes in the 20s seasons.
20s scenes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. To me, those are deep.
Mine were like, once you get to like 12, 13, I was like, these are still good seasons. But I was like, ooh, some of these are.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 5 All right. I've got two picks here.

Speaker 4 For Deep Cut.

Speaker 1 I'm not going Deep Cut yet.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go with Cameo, which takes, I think, one of the great episodes off the board. I'm going with Dustin Hoffman as Mr.
Bergstrom and Lisa's Substitute. Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 Lisa Substitute, a a top three episode.

Speaker 1 I think it's like one of the greatest episodes of television of all time. Yes.
It's like a beautiful piece of writing. Beautiful.

Speaker 1 That is, you know, if you were, if you were a little Lisa-ish, and I was a little Lisa-ish, you know, it was very emotionally impactful when you make a connection with somebody in school and you feel like somebody sees you, which is what happens to Lisa in this episode where

Speaker 1 her teacher, is it Mrs. Hoover, becomes, she thinks she has, is it Lyme's disease? Lime disease, Lime's disease.
Lyme's disease, yeah.

Speaker 1 And so she's out for a few days and Mr. Bergstrom comes in, voiced by Dustin Hoffman, and he sees her.
He understands her and she understands him. And they make a connection.

Speaker 1 And they're like, their farewell, the final moments of that episode are so touching and so cool. And he gives her the note.

Speaker 1 And this is also, this episode is like an homage to the graduate in some ways. So it could have probably gone in parody as well.
But just a beautiful episode, a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1 And very interesting that like so early in the run of this show.

Speaker 1 Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman was like, absolutely, I'll do an episode.

Speaker 1 Like, and he's so good. He's so good.
So, oh, go ahead.

Speaker 4 Oh, no, I was gonna say that episode also has one of the all-time B plots, which is Bart running for president.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah, sex, now that I've got your attention, vote Bart, which is a joke I make constantly that people don't get, and they just think I'm being weird.

Speaker 4 I'll be like, Sex, now that I've got your attention, let's start the Zoom meeting.

Speaker 1 And people are looking like, What?

Speaker 4 Like, no, it's a Simpsons, you know. But, anyways, and then, of course, nobody remembers to show up to vote, and

Speaker 1 Martin gets elected. What's the joke? There, there's one really, really good joke where she's like, he comes in in like a cowboy costume and she has to like guess everything that's like non-cowboy.

Speaker 1 And she's just like, and you're Jewish. And he goes, Italian? He's like, no, Jewish.

Speaker 5 Do you know what he's credited? Dustin Hoffman is credited as in that episode.

Speaker 5 Different name, right? Yeah, back then.

Speaker 5 It was. kind of frowned upon for actual actors to do animation.
Like it was considered like a backwater. So he was credited as Samedic.

Speaker 5 So was, that was a nice little reference right there.

Speaker 5 Sametic? Sam Edic. Like Sametic.
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's really funny. I didn't know that.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I have another pick.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go with non-Simpsons family character. I'm going to pick my favorite character on the show, and that character is Lionel Hutz.

Speaker 1 I thought about doing best joke. But you can't do this joke anymore.
You can't do any Lionel Hutz jokes because I just took him off the board. But Mr.

Speaker 1 Simpson, I was just going through your garbage and I couldn't help it over here. You needed a babysitter, which is one of the most perfect, like knocking on The Simpsons door.

Speaker 1 Lionel Hutz, no, money down.

Speaker 1 Phil Hartman is like essential to the show.

Speaker 1 The fact that this was happening alongside his fame on Saturday Night Live and this kind of like brilliant creation of the blowhard, gas bag, self-knowing guy, and then using that to do multiple characters across the history of the show is essential.

Speaker 1 Lionel Hutz just always makes me laugh, makes me happy.

Speaker 1 I can't remember which episode it is where he is selling real estate with Marge, but when they like go through the flipbook of how to describe each property, and

Speaker 1 I was like, I can't even remember the jokes. I won't even try to recreate them.

Speaker 1 But every single adjective that he uses to upgrade where Marge thinks a house should be described is like unbelievably funny. So

Speaker 1 he is my favorite non-Simpsons family character.

Speaker 5 Marge sold the murder house. That's all I remember from that episode.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Mina, you're up.

Speaker 4 I will do best episode. I think this is, I'm the first person to do best episode.

Speaker 1 Get in there, yeah.

Speaker 4 Okay. So I have two favorite episodes, and Lisa Substitute is one of them.
It's kind of a 1A, 1B. Could go either way.

Speaker 4 My other favorite episode of all time is Lisa on Ice.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 that's a good one. Great episode.

Speaker 4 Did anyone else have that on a great episode?

Speaker 1 No, but talk about it.

Speaker 4 I feel like I took a lot of jokes. There's so many funny jokes in this episode that i wrote them down to make sure i had the words right but first of all i think it i have found maybe because

Speaker 4 uh i am a softy that most of my favorite simpsons episodes have

Speaker 4 the core of the episode is the tenderness between two of the family members lisa and bart or lisa and homer like lisa substue is a great example of that um the stark raving matter the one with michael jackson is a great example lisa with her friends when she goes on vacation lisa with her friends Try to be cool.

Speaker 4 But this is, it really, I felt like it would remember when I was a kid watching it captured kind of how I felt about my brother, which is he was unbelievably annoying.

Speaker 4 He used to literally trap me in my room and make me smell his farts.

Speaker 4 But at the end of the day, we loved each other. And that's.
kind of what the story of Lisa on Ice is about.

Speaker 4 It's, of course, for those who have forgotten, Apu realizes that Lisa has unbelievable sticks or just reflexes, I guess, and makes her the goalie of his hockey team, her her embart on rival hockey teams.

Speaker 4 Homer has some of the funniest lines of his entire Simpsons tenure in this episode as he gets invested.

Speaker 4 Mo has a great, great moment where he tries to get Marge to give him inside information on the injuries because he's getting on them. Um, I'm just gonna read some of the jokes.

Speaker 4 I mean, this has some of the iconic Simpsons lines, Me Feel English, That's Impossible, is in this episode. Um, also, one of my favorite Simpsons Mill House lines of all time.

Speaker 4 I don't know if you remember this one. Sorry, Bart, I went to hang out with Lisa for protection and to be seen.

Speaker 1 I just love that so much.

Speaker 4 Homer, your child versus mine. The winner will be showered with praise.
The loser will be taunted and booed until my throat is sore.

Speaker 4 Lisa as the cutthroat goalie saying, Ralph Lorgham lost a shin guard. Hack the bone, hack the bone.
Homer saying, I have a tiger, mouth of a teamster. There's just so much

Speaker 4 when Bart rips off the head of his own cherished toy, childhood toy, honey, Mr. Honey Bunny.
But anyways, it's just top to bottom.

Speaker 4 I feel like all of the core family members have incredible moments in this this episode, and it's incredibly funny.

Speaker 1 I didn't revisit that one for this, but now I feel like I need to watch it again. I literally wanted to put it in deep cut, but I'm like, they're going to fucking kill me.
This isn't a deep cut.

Speaker 1 He's on ice. Oh, it's a great episode.

Speaker 4 That's a core episode for me.

Speaker 1 Okay, Charles. All right.
So I got two picks. Let's see.
You know what? I'm just going to.

Speaker 1 All right. For best joke, this is coming from Homer the heretic.

Speaker 1 And it is when

Speaker 1 the house is on fire and Ned is trying to save Homer. And he says, Dear Lord, may your loving hand guide Homer to the mattress square and true.

Speaker 1 And he pushes him out of the mattress and Homer bounces back into the house. And then Ned has to do a bat.
I think he jumps out and does a backflip into the house again.

Speaker 1 Like I said, every single Simpson, like the Simpsons jokes I love the most is not just like what they're saying, but what the animation is like is communicating.

Speaker 1 And it's like you can freeze any frame of that moment. And they're just all like Homer just like being just fainted and it's just it's great.
I love it.

Speaker 5 Like the animators on that show are so brilliant and they kind of get lost because the writers are so you know venerated by people like me, but the animators are what really made it like so great.

Speaker 5 That's a great example.

Speaker 1 And it's like I am part of the tumbler generation where it's like so much of like in college, even if I wasn't watching the Simpsons, so many of the gifts, so many of the moments and the memes were just like so focused on like the animation and how cool it looked.

Speaker 1 So that is like my favorite joke of all time.

Speaker 1 And this, this best episode, I'll go next is

Speaker 1 probably ground zero for why I'm like such an asshole, just in terms of just like when I watch TV or movies, I'm going to go the itchy and scratchy and poochie show.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 it's this joke has been like burned into the ground. It's cliche, but what whenever Poochie's not on screen, all the characters should be asking, where's Poochie?

Speaker 1 It's just like in my mind, I still think like when I'm watching, sorry, James Gunn, when I'm watching like a James Gunn movie and I see like a cute character or I see like this baby Yoda motherfucker, I'm like, oh, Poochie.

Speaker 1 And it's like something where when I was a kid,

Speaker 1 it was like teaching me the intricacies of just like network TV and like focus groups.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think you captured something that like the Simpsons did that was not subversive, but revolutionary, which was it was more meta than anything on television. Poochie is a great example of that.

Speaker 4 Like that was the first time I think any TV show or entertainment product had articulated the idea of a Poochie character or that kind of interference that you're talking about.

Speaker 5 It kind of became like jumping, like the jumping the shark episode. Like one of the writers told me like, Poochie is a great example of when that happens, you should stop your show.

Speaker 5 And again, and The Simpsons 2, unlike a lot of shows, is really up like a history of TV. Yeah.
And I think that that is kind of underrated about it.

Speaker 1 I do think that you said it was ground zero for you being an asshole, but I think it's kind of patient zero for

Speaker 1 irony poisoning. You know, the idea that like we all know how things really work.
Yeah. And we are like being cynical enough to see through the machinations of.

Speaker 1 corporate power or, you know, the network system or whatever, however you choose to define it is very instructive, but also there is a downside. There is.

Speaker 1 It's hard to enjoy things when you have writers and producers on the show who are so willing to lift the curtain and not just like lift it, but then also like lift up their dress.

Speaker 1 You know, like they, they were like so willing to just show you how everything operates.

Speaker 5 There's like a natural cynicism about the show that really like seeped into my brain.

Speaker 5 I mean, the writers will say that their worldview was like, you know, basically that life is absurd, it's punishing, but it's worth living.

Speaker 5 And I do think that that's a message at the end, but I tend to think we kind of go in the former category a little bit too much from the show.

Speaker 5 Like there is just a natural cynicism that it's very clear.

Speaker 1 Simpsons was the first TV show as a kid that I remember being like, oh, TV shows can be bad. Like they can get worse as they go along.

Speaker 1 When I was a kid, it was just like TV was just something that you watch. And it's like some episodes I would laugh at, some episodes, like whatever, but it was just on.

Speaker 1 And then as I kept watching the later seasons of The Simpsons and reading about the lore and the original writers, it was this eye-opening moment where I'm like, no, like a TV show is an actual thing.

Speaker 1 They're actual writers. And at some point, if a TV show is long enough, it's going to get bad or it's going to get lesser.

Speaker 1 Well, I wanted to ask Alan about that because I feel like you have paid closer attention to the last 15, 20, even 20 seasons of the show than we probably have, than most people have, honestly, even though the show is, you know, on forever and feels like it is just an institution of American life.

Speaker 1 Like, is, has the show gotten better or worse?

Speaker 1 Or is it some of it just the product of coming to something at an early age, the same way whatever you heard on the radio when you were 12 imprints on you?

Speaker 5 I think the show was a victim of its own success. I think that right now it's pretty good.

Speaker 5 It's maybe one of the best animated shows, but it was so damn good for the first seven to 10 years that it's impossible to keep that up.

Speaker 5 Like sitcoms don't stay funny with 22 episodes a season like The Simpsons.

Speaker 4 Do you think it's also possible that some of the things we're talking about that made it subversive, and it wasn't just subversive, it was like cussing and a kid saying, damn, but also the meta thing, the, the, the, what you're talking about, sort of opening the kimono and all of that is just too common now.

Speaker 4 It's like no longer a groundbreaking concept.

Speaker 5 Right. It's sort of the edges get sanded off.
Like, I remember I interviewed someone and they said that their kid watched South Park first.

Speaker 5 And when you go from South Park to The Simpsons, it just seems tame. Yes, it seems tame.
And when you're a kid, like you're going to gravitate towards Cartman, being an asshole for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 But even like the itchy and scratchy show, when I was re-watching, I was just like, oh, this must have been so cool to watch when it was first happening because you're like, okay, this is a TV show inside a TV show inside a TV show.

Speaker 1 And it's like, now that adventure time, everything, like from South Park to Family Guy, it's right like Rick and Morty. All of it is a reference inside of a reference inside of a reference.

Speaker 1 But when I was a kid, I was just like, oh, that's Tom and Jerry. But I'm watching the Simpsons version of Tom and Jerry that's on the Krusty, the clown show.

Speaker 1 And it's like, now that's just like, oh, that's everything. That's the spider-verse.
That's everything we watch. I think there's a difference that is interesting.

Speaker 1 I think about this all the time with new movies because most contemporary movies, especially like a lot of the movies that you guys talk about, Midnight Boys, like a lot of Marvel stuff, is very fourth wall breaking, is very self-referential, is very much informed by this energy that we're talking about.

Speaker 1 But it feels like those things are being written to gratify the audience, as opposed to this feeling when you're watching The Simpsons of those guys gratifying each other, like in the room, yeah, and then finding a way to communicate their taste and the things that meant something to them them to us as opposed to like you're watching free guy and all of a sudden he's holding captain america shield and everybody is like i know what that is which is a different that's the simpsons was never about

Speaker 1 exactly exactly and it's sort of the difference between the simpsons and family guy like family guy will have these cutaways to pop culture references but they just don't feel organic compared to the simpsons at least so many things now it really is references like the references in the system simpsons do feel earned in a way that like very few shows cartoon or live have that sort of i was googling like stuff that I would like didn't get still.

Speaker 1 Like, I'd just be like, What was this joke? And it was so funny. Like, it was on a Reddit.
They're just like, No, that joke doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 That's just like one of the writers, just like, it's a non-sequitur. You're not supposed to understand it.
And I was like, oh, fuck. Yes.

Speaker 1 Like, I was like hyped because I was just like, oh, there's a little bit of love in it versus like sometimes a family guys just, it feels like, oh, you guys kind of took the easy way out with this rhyme.

Speaker 5 Man, there's one I want to mention, but I'm going to wait.

Speaker 5 I'm so excited.

Speaker 1 We got some picks to go.

Speaker 5 So I'm going to do best joke, and it's going to be from Itchy and Scratchyland.

Speaker 5 And it's going to be Bort license plates.

Speaker 5 So that is when over Mina's shoulder right now.

Speaker 5 So, yeah. So

Speaker 5 if anybody hasn't seen it, Bart is in the gift shop of Itchy and Scratchyland. He's looking for a personalized plate, can't find one.
They have Barclay, other names, and Bort, but no Bart.

Speaker 5 And so the thing about that joke is to me, it's like the ultimate secret handshake joke.

Speaker 5 And so because I'm who I am, I about 10 years ago, I interviewed a bunch of people who had real Bart license plates as their vanity plate.

Speaker 1 Incredible.

Speaker 4 God, I would lose it if I saw someone.

Speaker 5 I talked to a guy who got off from speeding tickets. He didn't have to pay that, you know, that the cop let him go.

Speaker 5 I talked to one guy who's like, yeah, I had to take it off because I thought it was going to get stolen. And like, it is the ultimate bonding thing.

Speaker 5 It's like this dumb, tossed off joke that like kind of runs through a couple of times, you know, in the episode. Like they say they need more port license plates in the gift shop.

Speaker 1 But like

Speaker 5 there's nothing like The Simpsons in that way. Like I think, you know, we have water cooler shows and we have secret handshake shows.
And that's what The Simpsons is.

Speaker 1 I love that description. That's a great joke.

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Speaker 1 Okay, Mina.

Speaker 4 Okay, I'm going to do best joke two. You kind of got my

Speaker 4 so many in mine were for cafe here.

Speaker 4 It's fine. It's fine.

Speaker 4 Sideshow Bob has no decency. Call me Chief Pigham.
Okay.

Speaker 4 Mine is not from an episode that any of us talked about, so it's fair game. I'm just going to deliver it exactly how it's delivered

Speaker 4 by Krusty the Clown.

Speaker 4 Let's just say it moved me. To a bigger house.
Oops, I said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet.

Speaker 4 That is from A Burns from All Seasons, which is the episode where they have the film festival. Krusty was bribed to pick Mr.
Burns film.

Speaker 4 I just think about that joke and how it was written, how it was delivered all the time.

Speaker 1 Eerily accurate portrayal of film festival culture to this day, I can confirm.

Speaker 1 That's a great one. I'm trying to think if I should do a joke or best episode because I feel like if, what if, because my joke might be in my episode, but I want to talk about this episode.

Speaker 1 So I'm just going to do episode and I'm going to do you only move twice. Oh, man.
This is the Hank Scorpio episode. Sorry, Alan.
I had to take it from Alan.

Speaker 1 I thought you would have taken it just there.

Speaker 1 Alan, how many years ago wrote a feature story about Hank and the creation of Hank? And that's the first time.

Speaker 5 That was my first ringer story.

Speaker 5 So it's very special to me. And we'll let Sean go on.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, speaking of like a parody of corporate culture,

Speaker 1 I had forgotten that the cold open of this episode is Smithers walking down the street and being accosted by a woman in a limousine asking him if he wants to take a job with Global Chemex. Globex.

Speaker 1 Globex, thank you.

Speaker 1 Which is a nuclear power company that is secretly a

Speaker 1 terrorist organization run by multi-millionaire Hank Scorpio, as voiced by Albert Brooks.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 Hank Scorpio is just a hilarious portrait of like, I think basically all CEOs, even though he's also meant to be seen as like a bond villain. And he's incredibly funny.

Speaker 1 And the joke I would have picked is, I didn't even give you my coat, which is when he is describing how things work in Cypress Creek, the town where he moves Homer and the Simpson family to a brand new home, which has this extraordinary self-cleaning kitchen and house that obviates Marja's entire life and drives her to drink.

Speaker 1 That also leads to Bart realizing that he is not learning at the level that would be appropriate for his age. And so he's sent to the remedial room.

Speaker 1 And all the characters find themselves kind of like at wit's end, like unable to adapt to this lifestyle, except for Homer, who we know is not a very good employee at the power plant in Springfield.

Speaker 1 But in this world, because his employees are such attentive and motivated people, that he is a great manager and a great leader.

Speaker 1 And he is very happy in his work, not realizing Hank Scorpio is on the verge of attempting to take over the world.

Speaker 1 Incredibly funny episode. Scorpio is like an ingenious construction.

Speaker 1 You can almost feel the like we had a meeting with Barry Diller or with Michael Eisner energy in this episode, where they're like the general suspicion of the person who's who's like pulling the lever at your company seems very genial but is quite sinister underneath and thinks he's very funny yes yes and he's not always the like most charismatic guy in the room in his mind um my question for alan though because we were talking about homer when do you because like homer was interesting because i was popping around in seasons where i was just like there's a point where like homer becomes like so heartwarming and his relationship with like lisa especially is like just so fundamental to the show and as i kept watching later and laser, later seasons, I was just like, it felt like they kind of got rid of that a little bit, where he's like, Homer almost becomes like a, like,

Speaker 1 I don't want to say like dumber, but like a little more heartless.

Speaker 1 And I was just like, where was like the dad who like, even when he was like being an asshole, still, I was just like, oh, fuck, I wish he was my dad.

Speaker 5 It kind of felt like they dropped him a couple of IQ points like every week.

Speaker 5 Like, like, there's, there's an episode with a joke where I think it's like, there's a rendering plant and like the gag basically is that it's Homer that reeks and not the rendering plant.

Speaker 5 And like one of the writers came in when they were writing it or doing it, like doing the storyboards and he's like, ah, guess Homer smells now.

Speaker 5 And it's like, they just like, they kind of, they had such fun with him because they could put him in any situation. They just were like, we're going to make him dumber and dumber and dumber.

Speaker 1 I'm this. Nice Homer.
Yeah. I mean, it's funny that he became like the lodestar for anything that they wanted to do.

Speaker 1 He could be much more flexible, which you would not have expected when you originally saw the show um okay i've got another pick i think i'm gonna do best joke

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 i'll set it up by saying it's from the canine mutiny which is uh a rough parody of lassie in which oh yeah santa's little helper is gone and bart adopts a new dog and

Speaker 1 mill house is admiring is it laddie laddie is the name of the dog And

Speaker 1 Millhouse is reflecting on Santa's little helper and says, remember the time he ate my goldfish and you lied to me and said I never had any goldfish? Then why did I have the bowl, Bart?

Speaker 1 Why did I have the bowl?

Speaker 1 Why did I have the ball?

Speaker 4 It might be Millhouse's best lies.

Speaker 1 Mill House has some bangers. It's incredible.
It's obviously become a meme. This like this sense of being gaslit is perfectly communicated through that joke.

Speaker 1 And Millhouse, a very unsung hero of this show.

Speaker 1 I was just thinking about actually, and you only move twice when Bart goes into the new class.

Speaker 1 And immediately a young boy comes over who looks just like Millhouse and is like, Hey, do you need a best friend who you can be little and be bigger than? Um,

Speaker 1 just an amazing who voices Mill House, Pamela Hayden. Okay, yeah, just like one of the greatest.

Speaker 1 Also, the genius of the show is like consistently getting women to voice young boys and the way that that,

Speaker 1 how what that does to your brain and your expect your understanding of immature little boys is very wise, I think, in the show.

Speaker 1 Um, anyway, it's just like a laugh out loud funny joke that also has layers to it and has been reprocessed 35 straight years. Mill House is responsible for the greatest rock band of all time.

Speaker 1 Follow, boy.

Speaker 1 I re-watched that episode just for that. That's a good point.
Don't spoil any of your upcoming picks here. Meaning, you have a pick now.

Speaker 4 Okay. We're nearing the end.
I think I only have like a couple categories left, if I'm right.

Speaker 1 Let me see.

Speaker 4 So I still have best deep cut and I think best non-family character are the two remaining ones for me.

Speaker 4 I will go non-family character. I think only Lionel Hutz has been taken.

Speaker 1 Is that right? That's right.

Speaker 4 I am going

Speaker 4 to go with Mr. Burns.

Speaker 4 Revisiting some of the lines. It's some of the best writing.

Speaker 4 Homer at the bat before he gets the

Speaker 4 All-Stars when he says he wants Honus Wagner, maybe someone from the New York. Like all the old timing.

Speaker 5 Mordecai three-finger brown.

Speaker 4 So many of the lines, like the, you could tell the writers had so much fun making him old-timey and evil. And he's obviously like the perfect super villain in a number of ways.

Speaker 4 He's at the core of many, I think, of the best episodes.

Speaker 4 I think this leaves Rosebud on the board, but you know, there's like, there's still,

Speaker 4 God, we didn't even, the song.

Speaker 4 It was Dr. Zayas, of course, which is probably the best Simpson song.
But my second favorite song is See My Vest, to the point where I'll be in a dressing room and will say to myself, See my sweater.

Speaker 4 It's authentic Irish setter. And someone will look at me like, This is an Abercrombie and Fitch.
Also, you're in your 30s. What are you doing here?

Speaker 4 That's an incredible song. I think I still remember all the words.
I wrote down my

Speaker 4 favorite quote. It's actually like, I don't even remember.
I know he was giving a pep talk to his football team. Men, there's a little crippled boy sitting in hospital who wants you to win this game.

Speaker 4 I know because I crippled him myself to inspire you. I get that all the time.

Speaker 4 Yeah, no, he's just so funny. Like, I think he is one of the funniest characters in the entire series.

Speaker 5 I think it's just like the pure evilness of him is.

Speaker 4 There's no nuance.

Speaker 1 But there is like a vulnerability. Like, you took a star as burns, right?

Speaker 4 The joke from that is my favorite with Krusty.

Speaker 1 The other joke that I love in that episode is... I was saying Boo Eurns, you know, the idea.
Are they saying Boo? Iconic. But, you know, right.
That's like such a great moment.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the Smithers Burns dynamic. Had there ever, ever been anything like that on television, right?

Speaker 5 Like, just the ultimate toady.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the man

Speaker 4 so obviously in love with.

Speaker 1 Driving around for a week, I literally just will like start laughing when I've go, it was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

Speaker 1 I was like, it's so fucking dumb.

Speaker 4 He has some of the dumbest designs too, but they're just, this is funny.

Speaker 1 Who's his voice actor? Because like, probably one of the best who have Harry Shearer.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, he,

Speaker 5 it's like his voice is like an instrument.

Speaker 1 It's crazy.

Speaker 5 He, the way he plays with it.

Speaker 4 Market research shows people see you as something of an ogre. I ought to club them and eat their bones.

Speaker 1 I know that all the time.

Speaker 1 There's so many like

Speaker 1 so funny. You got two, your final two picks here, Charles.
You know what? Am I allowed in best non-Simpsons family character to pick sideshow Bob, or does Cape Fear take him off the board?

Speaker 4 No, it's an episode. You can't take him off the board.

Speaker 1 Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sean,

Speaker 1 half of the show is about to be a little bit more.

Speaker 1 taking off the board. He's the focus of the episode, though.
Wow. This is.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no. It's fine.
Fuck it. No, you know what? I don't want to have anybody say that I'm cheating on this.
So

Speaker 1 this character has not gotten a lot of love, but I was surprised how much

Speaker 1 they are integral to the show. And it would be Ned Flanders.
Because like some of them. We haven't talked about him in a lot.
Like Ned is part of some of just like his wife dying,

Speaker 1 like just the religion aspect of the show.

Speaker 1 I, I also watching that, I was like, is Breaking Bad just Ned Flanders? Like, I was just literally like, this is just the Ned Flanders show. Like, I love the character.
I love him and Homer together.

Speaker 1 It was, that's a character I probably underrated before this draft. And going back to each episode, I'm like, fuck, I forgot how many good lives we have.

Speaker 5 The thing about Flanders that is sort of as a symbol of the show is like, he's a true Christian in the best way. Like, he,

Speaker 5 homer just bullies him and it's miserable for him but flanders like doesn't waver at all and when he does it's very when he breaks like as i watch what's the episode where he has to like check like he checks himself in and you realize like he has like an anger problem he has to spend too much time with homer yeah homer's trying to be his best i can remember what it's uh i think it's like hurricane netty it's like where we find out his parents were beatniks yeah and they take him to a therapist and his his parents are like we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas

Speaker 4 all out of ideas.

Speaker 4 I would argue that actually Flanders was the most, not to use this word again, subversive part of The Simpsons because, you know, like, oh, Bart scamp who's kind of rude to his parents.

Speaker 4 And yeah, they cuss, or they don't actually cuss, but they say some crazy stuff. But having like a guy who was, his Christianity is what makes him annoying.

Speaker 4 I actually feel like that wasn't ever a thing on mainstream TV. But he's not a bad guy at all.
He's to your, like you said, really authentic.

Speaker 4 I remember being like, whoa, this is going to be making fun of Christianity. Wow.

Speaker 1 Being like in a very Christian household,

Speaker 1 Ned Flanders was the character that kind of first, like he was echoing things that I was thinking about how annoying Christians were and how annoying church was.

Speaker 1 And it was the first moment I was a kid, I was just like, oh, like institutions are bullshit. Like I can actually not agree with this.

Speaker 1 And that's probably why my parents were like, well, it's not really that show.

Speaker 5 It's not really making fun of Christianity. It's making fun of piousness.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 5 And that is a distinction I think that is important.

Speaker 1 I do think that they would extend that out sometimes, though. Like I just revisited Treehouse of Horror 5 last night, which is the one that features the shinning.

Speaker 1 And the second segment in that episode is the butterfly effect one, where Homer gets his hand caught in the toaster and he keeps like jumping to alternate histories.

Speaker 1 And there is an alternate history where the sort of like

Speaker 1 floor like rises up and becomes a screen. And we learn that Ned Flanders is sort of like the supreme leader of society and that everyone must dress like Ned and everyone must act like Ned.

Speaker 1 And there is a little bit of like, organized religion can sometimes do this to you in that subtle parody. So, I think that they are able to kind of get away with everything.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like sometimes it's attitude, sometimes it's point of view, sometimes it's way of life.

Speaker 1 They're never like picking on people, yeah, but they show that every person is flawed, which is one of the ingenious aspects of the show, except for Mr. Burns, he's really evil.

Speaker 4 But yeah, like Lisa, we talked about how she's the avatar for the writers, they're making fun of her.

Speaker 4 The in like her, she is like what like is a parody of people of california like like the way she you know that was also something overly sensitive she's she was woke before what she was exactly like some of her lines and you go back the extreme liberalism they were poking fun at her most i mean when when marge becomes a police officer there's a little scene where lisa's like now you're gonna keep everything constitutional like like that was in 1994.

Speaker 1 yeah there's a there's a joke in i think it might have been their first future episode where it's like, I almost had a heart attack because they always make the Simpsons like, oh, The Simpsons was predicting the future.

Speaker 1 But she throws when Lisa grows up to be president, she throws in a line about like Trump ruining the economy. I was like, all right, fuck.
I was just like, I can't do this right now.

Speaker 1 But there were so many times during my watch where I was just like, oh, when you're a long-running show like this, you're just going to get shit off.

Speaker 1 Where I was like, fuck, we're really in the Simpsons hellhole right now. Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's kind of like the text of it is so rich that you can pull almost anything out of it. Like, and I think the Trump joke is like, they nailed it, but overall, I think you can.

Speaker 1 It was a moment I was like, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I have deep cut. This is my last one.
This is going to be just a deep cut where I remembered this

Speaker 1 from my childhood. It's a later season.
And this season is funny because they have two we're changing Marge's body episodes.

Speaker 1 And I'm going with the strong, the strong arms of the maw, where Marge Marge gets addicted to steroids, where like I remember watching as a kid and like the,

Speaker 1 the plot is she goes to the quickie mart. She gets mugged.
So she becomes agoraphobic and can't leave the house. So she just starts like working out.

Speaker 1 And the reason I loved revisiting this episode, we talked about how once South Park comes along and once Family Guy comes along, I start, you start feeling like the Simpsons is almost having like this crisis, this internal crisis where they're trying to keep up with the comedy.

Speaker 1 And that, that episode was one where I was just like, oh, this is a different show now. You guys are trying to push it.
You are, you're saying jokes.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I don't like, this seems almost too mean for a Simpsons. And that was The Simpsons that I was growing up with in real time, where I would see the.
the very sweet Lisa episodes.

Speaker 1 I'm like, oh, this is really, really great. And then on Sunday, when I would just like watch like, this is a new Simpsons episode, I was like, this seems different.

Speaker 1 This seems like pulled from another world. And like, those were the episodes when I went back.

Speaker 1 I was just like, these aren't as great as the older episodes, but there's something from like my childhood where I was like, fuck yeah.

Speaker 1 Alan, did we, did we skip you last time around? Do you still have two picks to me?

Speaker 4 I think I might have two or three left, but Stream Mill House Energy.

Speaker 1 Damn, Alan, raise your hand, raise your hand if you fuck that up.

Speaker 1 I believe you have best.

Speaker 1 How do you have three left?

Speaker 5 I have best parody.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I have best non-Simpsons and I have best episode.

Speaker 4 Knock Knock them out. Let's go.

Speaker 1 Wait, what is your cameo?

Speaker 1 Wait.

Speaker 5 I'm sorry. I did.
You have best cameo is what I didn't do.

Speaker 1 How did we miss two rounds for you, Alan? Jesus Christ, man. This is your ballout, boy.
What's going on? What the hell happened? You just let Charles just trample all over your picks?

Speaker 1 All right, I'm going to write the ship.

Speaker 5 I'm going to write the ship. Okay.

Speaker 1 Three straight picks now. All right.

Speaker 5 Best cameo. I'm going to go with

Speaker 5 Peter Frampton from Filmer Palooza because

Speaker 5 he was a like washed up rock star. Apparently, they wanted Bob Dylan.

Speaker 5 And so they asked Peter Frampton, they're like, Yeah, we want you to come on and be on this episode with the Smashing Pumpkins and Cypress Hill. And he's like, Wait a sec.

Speaker 5 He's like, I don't really belong in that. And then Peter Frampton kind of figured it out.
And he was like, wait, so am I going to be the washed up guy? And is that what you want me for?

Speaker 5 And she was like, the casting director was like, yeah. She's like, okay.
So he did it. And he was the funniest part of an episode that was hysterical.
So, oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 There are so many musical cameos over the years. Like that because

Speaker 4 I don't know. I was just thinking through like artists who I've been on, and it was over a dozen.

Speaker 4 I could just off the top of my dome think of, I actually thought with, for by the way, for this cameo, you ended up going with Dustin Hoffman.

Speaker 4 Mine would, the thought, well, the one I thought you were doing, because I thought you were going to do a group, was the Ramones. Oh, yeah.
When Mr. Burns says, kill the Rolling Stones.

Speaker 1 Grab the Rolling Stones killed. I have the Rolling Stones killed.

Speaker 4 Yeah. That's a great one.
But like, I mean, how many bands and artists?

Speaker 5 A ton. I mean, the funniest one that never made the show was Lyle Lovett wanted to do it.
Just like a very dated reference. And they presented a part for him.
And he's like, no, thanks.

Speaker 5 So there are some people that just like didn't quite get the show, but, and like, they wanted Pearl Jam really badly for the Homer Palooza episode and they didn't do it.

Speaker 5 So, and the other one that I love is Jake Hogan, this writer. They wanted Bruce Springsteen like you wouldn't believe.

Speaker 5 So Jake Hogan, this writer, sees Springsteen on the street, runs up to him and he's like, I work for The Simpsons. You want to be on The Simpsons?

Speaker 5 And Springsteen looked at him and then Kogan had this like idea, like, oh, fuck, this guy probably has stalkers. Like, it's so Springsteen never did The Simpsons.

Speaker 1 Springsteen still has never done The Simpsons. I don't think so.
It's so funny because so early in the show, like Krusty Gets Canceled is one of my favorite episodes.

Speaker 1 And there's like so many famous people in that episode. Like Bette Midler is recreating her send-off to Johnny Carson, Verhoebatt Chili Peppers are in that episode.
Like that's early on too.

Speaker 1 You know, that's like fairly early early in the show's run. So, they just like commanded people so quickly.
Chris, as ludicrous.

Speaker 1 Okay, you've got

Speaker 1 two more.

Speaker 5 So, I'm going to do Best Non-Simpsons character, and I'm going to do Kent Brockman. This is the second Jewish famous person on the show with a different name.

Speaker 5 So, his name, it's like, this is one of my favorite jokes. They reveal his name is Kenny Brocklstein, I think is his original name.
And just the like pompousness of him is so good.

Speaker 5 I mean, the, the famous joke is when Homer's in space and there's a video shot of like an ant farm breaking and Kent Brockman just goes, you know, I, for one, welcome our insect overlords. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And it's just something I say to myself all the time. Like the show does such a good job with these archetypes like pompous news anchor that,

Speaker 5 you know, it sort of seared into my brain like more than the actual like screw Walter Cronkite. Like Kenny,

Speaker 5 you know, Kent Brockman is what I remember. Like that's my news anchor.

Speaker 4 Dr. Nick Rivera is the person I always think about when I think about, like, whenever I see like a Twitter doctor being like, wow, like that NFL player tore their ACL, immediately my brain.

Speaker 1 Hi, everybody.

Speaker 4 They're all Dr.

Speaker 1 Nick to me.

Speaker 1 Okay. You have one more pick.

Speaker 1 So, how did we skip you twice? What happened? How many picks does everyone?

Speaker 4 I have one more.

Speaker 1 I have one more as well. You're done.
I'm done. Yeah.
Well, I think we know how.

Speaker 5 So is it? So have we decided, is it cheating to pick a best episode in the first eight seasons? What do you think?

Speaker 1 The best episode or

Speaker 1 the best episode.

Speaker 5 Okay. So I'm going to do Mr.
Plow.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Can't believe it's still on the board.

Speaker 5 And this is why, because it is everything the show wanted to be that

Speaker 5 couldn't have been if it was a live-action show. So you have Homer and Barney as rival plow drivers, which is insane.
You have like random cameos. You have Adam West from Batman.

Speaker 5 They loved the writer's.

Speaker 5 They loved the original Batman. Linda Ronstadt is in it.
She sings a jingle for Barney. And it's like, I believe the line is,

Speaker 5 Mr. Plow is a loser and I heard he was a boozer is the song.
And then you have these like random cultural references that nobody knew about. Like, you know, I mentioned Cronkite.

Speaker 5 Like, they do a Kemp Brockman thing where it's like basically parodying Cronkite's like report from when JFK.

Speaker 5 got shot. It's like these really minute things that people don't remember.

Speaker 5 But the one I love is there's a short reference to the movie Sorcerer, which is a William Friedkin movie from 1977, that at the time was almost like out of print.

Speaker 5 Like, I don't, I don't know if you could get that on VHS at all. And it's like Homer on the bridge, and his truck is kind of going back and forth, and you hear like a tangerine dream-like score.

Speaker 5 And the thing is, I didn't get that reference, I didn't get that reference until I was 39 years old, which is just like proof of like what you learn from watching that show.

Speaker 1 Great pick.

Speaker 1 Okay, Mina, you have deep cut?

Speaker 4 Yes, that is my final one. You will judge me for this because mine is from the first 10 seasons.
I'm not going to pick something that I didn't, it said favorite deep cut.

Speaker 4 So I can't pick something and pretend to like it. And that's just when I watch The Simpsons.

Speaker 4 But this is an episode featuring a character that we have not talked about at all. And that's Marge Simpson.
Not talked once about Marge Simpson.

Speaker 1 Misogyny Ringer by Manny Ringer. Classic, classic podcast.

Speaker 5 Classic early days of The Simpsons when they didn't make any friends for poor Marge at the time.

Speaker 4 Marge is such an underrated character. And this episode, I think, illustrates why.
It's scenes from the class struggle in Springfield.

Speaker 4 Yeah, everyone. See, it is a deep cut.

Speaker 1 Look at you. The burrowed brows.
Tell us.

Speaker 4 The erasure.

Speaker 4 So this is the one where Marge runs into her high school classmate, Evelyn Peters, who invites her to the country club.

Speaker 4 Evelyn Peters, who says, you've come a long way from the girl in high school, I don't remember.

Speaker 4 And Marge is wearing a Chanel suit that she got at like a thrift store for $90 that she continues to repurpose in outlandish ways to find things to wear as she tries to fit in.

Speaker 4 There's a scene too where Homer's in the car. He's like, your mom's busy fitting in.
And they have to wait for her.

Speaker 4 It's a great Marge, it has some really funny lines,

Speaker 4 one of which I wrote down. I think it's Evelyn who says, I love your outfit.
The vest says we're having lunch, but the collots say you're paying, which I always think about when I see those.

Speaker 4 I don't don't know if I said that word right.

Speaker 4 Oh, and also has one of my favorite Homer lines. Maybe for once someone call me sir without adding you're making a scene.

Speaker 4 But it's a great Marge episode because you see that like Marge is this housewife and she's not given a lot to do, but she has this like, you know, rich interior internal life.

Speaker 4 She has dreams of her own. She wants better things for herself, but ultimately.
Her love for her family is the most important thing to her.

Speaker 4 I'm going to actually, I didn't write it down. I'm going to mess this up.
There's a part where she says, Homer, I love your humanity. Lisa, I love your intelligence.
Bart, I love you, Bart.

Speaker 4 I'm mingling that. But anyways, it's a great Marge episode and has a lot of funny lines.

Speaker 1 When did Marge become a sex symbol, Alan?

Speaker 1 Because it didn't start like that. That did happen.

Speaker 5 I think that that was later when they were running out of ideas and they sort of made her like she gets breast implants in an episode.

Speaker 1 No, but like in the larger like consciousness, where I'm just like, by the time I get there, it's just like, you see like sexy like Marge shit.

Speaker 1 And I was just like, similarly, you saw Hood Bart like fucking shirts. And I'm just like, when did that become a thing? Because, like, watching the early system, I'm like, she's about a sex symbol.

Speaker 4 I think every female cartoon character becomes a sex symbol at some point.

Speaker 5 She's not like Jessica Rabbit or something.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 If Chris Ryan were here, I would ask him to his face, have you ever cranked it to Marge Simpson? But he's not here. So I'm not going to ask that question.

Speaker 4 I write one of my favorite Millhouse lines. I'm going to, I wish I wrote this down, where he says something about like, you don't want to walk in on your parents having sex, especially by themselves.

Speaker 4 I can't remember what that's from, but I always think about that when I think about Mill House.

Speaker 5 Millhouse is romantic, like,

Speaker 5 you know, so

Speaker 5 like there's one where it's his inner thoughts, and he's like, if I do everything, if I do everything she says, she has to respect me.

Speaker 1 Okay, I've got to do a deep cut episode. I don't know if anybody other than Alan has ever seen this episode.
It's from 2014. It's season 25.
Not I.

Speaker 1 I was put onto this episode when it came out because it is about movies in the movie industry.

Speaker 1 So it's called Steal This Episode, which is a riff on the Abby Hoffman book, Steal This Book. And it's about illegal piracy in movies and how movie theaters are no fun to go inside of anymore.

Speaker 1 And so Homer decides to start illegally downloading movies and then projecting them in the backyard with Bart Simpson. The FBI becomes aware of their scam.

Speaker 1 Will Arnett plays the head of the FBI task force who comes in to bust them.

Speaker 1 It's also a classic Simpsons episode where it's got like mini-movie parodies inside of it that are part of the movies that they're watching.

Speaker 1 And like there's a very famous one that is written and performed by Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, and it is a Judd Abatow movie.

Speaker 1 And it's like very, this is 40.

Speaker 1 And then Seth Rogan's also in the episode. Channy Tatum's in this episode.

Speaker 1 Rob Halford from Judas Priest is in this episode. It's really, really funny and really, really sharp.
And it is in that like third generation of the show. And it's like a good reminder that like

Speaker 1 they still got it. Yeah, they really still had it at this time.
I'm just not as, I don't have a Sunday appointment with the show anymore.

Speaker 1 Um, but I could fire up and I will occasionally fire up like season 32 and see what they're up to.

Speaker 1 And just last night, my wife, Eileen, and I were talking about the show, and she is as big as Simpson. She's a bigger Simpsons fan than I am.

Speaker 1 And we started started talking about like, will our children like this and get this? And like, will this endure? And I know you've been talking about that a lot on like promoting the book.

Speaker 1 Like, what do you think the like shelf life is for all of this stuff that we are being nostalgic about right now?

Speaker 5 I think kids are into it now because it's on Disney Plus. So they have every episode at the push of a button.
And again, I talk about my friend and his 11-year-old. And

Speaker 5 what he had, like, he has appreciation for season 25 episodes and season three episodes. And that drives my friend friend crazy because he's like, no, it was better back then.

Speaker 5 But kids don't really have that sense of like the demarcation between the eras, you know?

Speaker 1 So I mean, it's also wild to me that like I watched The Simpsons out of order.

Speaker 1 So I was like catching up in syndication and knowing that like kids are probably like, all right, we're going to start with like season one. And you can do that.

Speaker 1 So much of my TV history is like, I didn't watch Seinfeld chronologically. I didn't watch Friends chronologically.
It was just like I was catching up.

Speaker 1 So, but also like for kids, I'm just like, fucking vintage Simpsons merch is still so much money.

Speaker 1 You see kids where I'm like, I don't know if you've ever saw like any Simpsons episode, but they're like, they're still wearing the shit. It's still selling.
I'm like.

Speaker 4 So I, first of all, as a cast member, subscribe to Disney Plus. Check out The Simpsons.
I actually had the experience of calling a Monday night football game in Simpsons land,

Speaker 4 sort of cross-promoting, well, sort of, definitely cross-promoting the Disney Plus thing.

Speaker 4 But through that experience, a lot of, so it was just an excuse for me to make like 20,000 Simpsons jokes in the span of two and a half hours, frankly.

Speaker 4 And I'm sure half the people who are watching were like, this is insane. What are you saying?

Speaker 4 But a lot of people who watched it were parents and their kids, this was their first exposure to The Simpsons.

Speaker 4 And I heard from a lot of parents that after watching the game, the kids were like, this is really funny. And I was like, well, did they like the jokes?

Speaker 4 They're like, no, they didn't understand any of your jokes, but they loved the characters. And then we watched a few episodes.

Speaker 4 All of my kids, like for ages eight, nine, 10, whatever, when I first fell in love with the show, just really liked Bart Simpson and Lisa Simpson and Homer Simpson.

Speaker 4 So I think the characters really are timeless, especially in terms of appealing to kids.

Speaker 5 I remember one of the writers told me that basically like when Bart

Speaker 5 was the hit of the show, it sort of was like, he compared it to like when Tina Faye was Sarah Palin.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 5 everything about her look, the voice, like everything she was doing, like there just was something there that like, even if Bart is no longer like the centerpiece of the show, like he's what launched it.

Speaker 5 And I think people maybe forget that.

Speaker 1 If you can black it out and you can know, like, you can instantly silhouette. That's what you draw from memory.

Speaker 1 And I think Bart was that first character where it's like, it takes time for Homer and time for Marge to like form into their characters, but it's like, Bart, if you just see the spiky spikes,

Speaker 1 okay, I know, even as a kid, you know, it's like Charlie Brown. Yeah, but like the simplicity of even drawing Homer is something that like kids would just doodle in their notebooks all

Speaker 1 the time. Kids are also drawing the worst renditions of the Simpson.
I'm sure I know. LeBron James has

Speaker 1 quite literally the greatest. LeBron babies.

Speaker 1 Thank you so much for bringing this up. You know about this.

Speaker 4 This is an iconic athlete art moment.

Speaker 1 Every single time I see it, I laugh like it's the first time.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 4 I'm so glad you brought that up.

Speaker 1 It is really hilarious. Let's recap our picks and then maybe do some honorable mentions of stuff that we missed before we wrap up.
So since I had the first pick, I'll go first.

Speaker 1 In best episode, I chose You Only Move Twice, which is the Hank Scorpio episode. In Deep Cut, I chose Steel this episode.
In Non-Simpsons Family Character, I took Lionel Hutz.

Speaker 1 In Best Joke, I chose, but why did I have the bowl, Bart? In Best Cameo, I chose Dustin Hoffman from Lisa's Substitute. And for Best Parody, I chose Cape Fear.
Okay, Mina, what'd you get?

Speaker 4 Best episode, I did Lisa on Ice. Favorite Deep Cut episode, I did Sings from the Class Struggle in Springfield.
Best Down Family Character, I chose Mr. Burns.

Speaker 4 Best Joke, I did, Let's Just Say It Moved Me to a Bigger House. Best Cameo, I did all of the baseball players in Homer at the Bat with Daryl Strawberry as the standout.

Speaker 4 And then Best Parody, Marge versus the Monorail.

Speaker 1 Wow, I totally won the draft. Okay,

Speaker 1 we're treating them all in order like that. That's so rude.
Damn. Really rude, Mina.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's not about winning, and it's not about losing. It's just a podcast.

Speaker 5 Come on, you guys skip me. Okay, for best episode, I had Mr.
Plow.

Speaker 5 For Deep Cut Episode, I had separate vocations.

Speaker 5 For Best Non-Simpsons character, I had Kent Brockman.

Speaker 5 For Best Joke, I had Bort License Plates.

Speaker 5 For Best Parody, which I sang very poorly, I had It Was a Very Good Beer

Speaker 5 by Homer Simpson. And for Best Cameo, I had Peter Frampton from Homer Palooza.

Speaker 1 And last but certainly least, Best Episode, The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show, Deep Cut, Strong Arms of the Maw, Non-Simpsons character, Ned Flanders, Best Joke, Ned Mattress Backflip, Best Cameo, Meryl Streep in Bart's Girlfriend, and Best Parody, Dr.

Speaker 1 Zayas. Dr.
Zayas.

Speaker 1 Okay, what was on your draft board that didn't get taken here?

Speaker 4 Best episode, I really love Camp Krusty. That's a personal fave.
And then actually, can't believe this.

Speaker 4 Did Last I Sit to Springfield not come up once in this? No, last on my list. Oh, sorry.
Sorry.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was on my list.
I didn't say that.

Speaker 4 That I actually had in multiple Best Joke, Lisa Needs Braces, Daniel Plan.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I love Lisa.
Wasn't picked. Danny's.
Flaming Moe's. I love Flaming Moe's.
Flaming Moves. Mose is really good.
22 short films about Springfield. A Mill House Divided is a really good one.

Speaker 1 You mentioned Rosebud briefly when talking about Mr. Burns.
I feel like Bart sells his soul is a little underrated.

Speaker 5 I had that on my deep cut.

Speaker 1 I feel like that's right on the line of deep cuts.

Speaker 1 What are there? Any other episodes that jump out? Homie the Clown, Fear of Flying.

Speaker 5 Colonel Homer, where Homer's the manager, country manager, like, you know, like Elvis' manager, which has one of my favorite jokes of all time, which is these two rednecks are going at it at a bar and one you know they're like face to face and one just goes hey you let's fight and the other one goes them's fighting words

Speaker 5 simpsons george meyer who's like this legendary writer would come up with these jokes that are like

Speaker 5 Basically, you're like, how did that not exist already? Just these really simple, clean, like not dirty at all and hysterical.

Speaker 4 Is may God have mercy on us all?

Speaker 1 Is that all?

Speaker 4 May God have mercy on us all. Is that, was that, was there, was that pre-Simpsons at all? There's so many lines like that where I'm like, oh, did they, did they feel something?

Speaker 1 Did they invent this or is it a turn of phrase? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Won't somebody think of the children? That's got to be Simpsons first.

Speaker 5 For sure. That, that's one.
And like the, the, the quiet part loud is another one that is from the Simpsons.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think, and like,

Speaker 5 just, yeah, like just calling something meh, like mediocre. Like the Simpsons didn't invent it, but they pushed it into the consciousness.

Speaker 5 Like, I didn't know the word like Schaudenfreude until Lisa said it to Homer when Homer was happy happy that Flanders store was failing, which is insane.

Speaker 1 A couple more episodes. Bart of Darkness, which is like the rear window one when Bart breaks his leg is a pretty famous one.

Speaker 1 All these episodes are all seasons three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. That is like the true golden era.
Almost everything that we've picked comes from that time.

Speaker 1 Simpsons Califragilistic Expaladocious. The Sherry Bobbins episode is pretty iconic.
We didn't shout that out.

Speaker 4 I like Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington.
I was thinking about that as a deep cut.

Speaker 1 That's a good one. I have three kids and no money.
Why can't I have no kids and three money? It's one of my favorite Homer lines of all time.

Speaker 5 So the shameless promotion that I'm going to mention is, you know, the title of my book, Stupid TV, Be More Funny. It's Homer slapping the TV because he doesn't like what he's watching.

Speaker 5 But the funniest part of that is he's watching Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion, which, again, I didn't know what the hell that was when I was 12.

Speaker 5 like the audience, you know, Keillor's doing his act and the audience is dying laughing.

Speaker 1 and that's the funniest part it's like the writers were like why is this funny yeah why do people like this i forget who mo's talking to but i'm pulling your favorite song out of the jukebox and then someone goes it's raining men not no more it isn't

Speaker 1 uh any other things you wanted to shout out deep cuts jokes cameos parodies that we didn't make mention of i wouldn't it's impossible to be complete

Speaker 4 i was gonna mention john lovitz's cameos i like every single one of them they're all hilarious arty ziff jay sherman and the movie festival have probably come to mind.

Speaker 5 We talked about parodies. I mean, there's a very detailed Citizen Kane parody in the, in season five, and that's Rosebud.
And like,

Speaker 5 you know, Burns just talking about his teddy bear, Bobo, like that, like, is hilarious. And again, kids hadn't seen Citizen Kane.

Speaker 5 And like, I don't know that a lot of people, I mean, it's an absolute classic, one of the greatest movies of all time, but in 1993, like, I don't know. Was it still in the consciousness?

Speaker 5 I don't, I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 It's also just so audacious that they were like, we're doing a Mr. Burns episode.
You know, like, that's another thing that most, no sitcoms really could do that.

Speaker 1 The only thing I can think of that's comfortable is like lost, obviously, would be like, we're doing an entire episode about this person. Who shot Mr.
Burns?

Speaker 4 which is also sort of a parody.

Speaker 1 Cultural event.

Speaker 4 Was a event in my house. We were like, okay, next week we're going to find out who shot Mr.
Burns. Who do you think it is? Like we talked about it at school.

Speaker 1 But that in and of itself was a parody of like episodes of Dallas and, you know, 80s shows that were on at the time, but we didn't know that.

Speaker 1 You know, we were just like, is The Simpsons the first show to ever do a multi-part who killed episode? But also an animated show?

Speaker 1 Like, can you imagine anything like animated on TV having that impact in 2025? Like, it's like, it's like insane.

Speaker 5 There was a special, like a live-action special before the second part of Who Shot Mr. Burns with like John Walsh from America's Most Wanted.

Speaker 5 Like, they had like a casino board with all the odds that was fake, but like people really thought, like, oh, you can bet on this.

Speaker 5 Now you probably could. But

Speaker 1 any other tertiary characters that we haven't given love to? Like, I just, we haven't said Groundskeeper Willie yet today on the show, you know? Willie.

Speaker 5 So you mentioned briefly Troy McClure. Like, and you know, you had Lionel Hutz.
Like, truthfully, Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure are the same character.

Speaker 5 Like, Phil Hartman, I feel like, deserves so much credit because there were times when, like, a good example of this is they really wanted Tom Cruise for an episode to play, like, Bart's Big Brother, like the Big Brother Association or Big Brother Organization.

Speaker 5 And Tom Cruise turned them down. And so one of the writers was like, let's call Phil.
Just call Phil Hartman. He can do anything.
And like, just

Speaker 5 Swiss Army knife of the show.

Speaker 4 I feel like Principal Skinner

Speaker 4 has such small parts in so many episodes that are so funny and so consistent. Even at least a substitute, when Mr.

Speaker 4 Bergstrom comes in pretending to be a cowboy, because he's a Vietnam War veteran, dives, if I remember correctly.

Speaker 4 Him and his crab.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he is extremely funny.

Speaker 1 He's one of the more memed characters on The Simpsons, which is insane. I'm just like, wow, how did you become so?

Speaker 4 The disgust looks, the reaction memes.

Speaker 1 No, the children must be wrong.

Speaker 1 The line, yeah. That's also, I tried to avoid all the memes because I'm just like, how are Simpsons memes still just like around and people use them?

Speaker 4 A poo jumping in front of

Speaker 1 the cookie mart. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I can't get Lionel Hutt saying, I move for a bad court thingy out of my head, too. And that's why you're the judge and I'm the law talking guy.

Speaker 5 You know, like, there's just so many things that are just like stuck to your brain brain that i repeat where he's like we've drawn judge schneider like is that bad he's like well i accidentally ran over his dog but replace accidentally with repeatedly and dog with son i think homer says something to equivalent i think it's how he's like sweet pity where would my love life be without it

Speaker 1 i was like moon

Speaker 1 okay

Speaker 1 do we feel like we like totally wrung this internet is gonna yell at us they're gonna be like you how could you not have done that one of those little graphics so that, because that's what I make.

Speaker 1 I handcraft those all myself. Yeah.

Speaker 1 As soon as we're done, I'm going to start firing up Photoshop to build one.

Speaker 1 Throw in a little poll.

Speaker 5 Basically, it was my lunch table from, you know, 1992 to 1997. So it's good memories.

Speaker 1 Charles, thank you. Mina, thank you.

Speaker 1 Alan,

Speaker 1 good job. Go out and buy Stupid TV, Be More Funny at your local booksellers.
And where do they tell you to pitch it? Is it Amazon? Is it

Speaker 1 the website of the publisher?

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's Hachette. They have links to any bookseller you want, any major bookseller.
Bookshop.org is another good one that will hook you up with a local bookstore.

Speaker 4 So do that one if you don't want to get yelled at on Blue Sky.

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 That's just my experience. It's not called Blue Ski.
Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Speaker 4 As the Lisa's incident of the podcast, I posted his on Blue Sky.

Speaker 1 Thanks, Bard, Lisa, Homer. I've been Marge.
Thanks to Nick. Thanks to Justin for their work on this episode.
We'll see you next time on the Prestige TV podcast.

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