Talking Simpsons - I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot
Added 2025-02-12 05:00:05 +0000 UTCGet ready for some robot fighting mixed in with some upsetting pet death in this week's exploration of season 15. Homer and Bart take up the bulk of the plot with a timely parody of Battlebots/Robot Wars (and don't worry, we explain the US/UK differences). At the same time, the show kills off Snowball II in such an offhand way that it's still annoying 20 years later. Will you be as upset as Armin Tamzarian? Listen now and find out!
Comments
As an Eagles fan, when Henry said the 4th and 26 game, I immediately remembered where I was and what I was doing watching it (working my shitty job at a hotel) on that Sunday night. There aren’t many games that are that exciting, but after seeing this episode, I can’t be upset at the episode getting pushed because of the game.
Chris B
2025-02-27 17:26:44 +0000 UTCAs a child that was (and still is) obsessed with robots, this episode was a treat for me. I had caught Battle Bots fever and one of my treasured memories is my father and I watching this on premier. The joke about The Principal and The Pauper went over my head as I hadn't seen that episode and also I was 10 years old and didn't pay that much attention to the idea of continuity.
Lobster
2025-02-21 03:15:29 +0000 UTCHomer becomes Tetsuo: the Iron Man by the end of this episode
Matt LS
2025-02-19 15:06:02 +0000 UTCI have 2 cats, both named for Simpsons characters- Maggie and Nelson. The Simpsons are eternal so you’ll never guess when the cats are gonna kick the bucket Bob!
Anna Mansager
2025-02-17 13:49:50 +0000 UTCI used to make pizzas for Round Table, which I always considered slightly a cut above fast food pizza. I think the difference comes down to how the dough is treated. I’d say if it’s vaguely made like actual pizza, it’s probably okay, but if it’s completely pre-made before it arrives at the restaurant it’s probably trash. Strangely we’re in Greece now eating a local chain pizza here, PizzaFan while listening. As is typical over here, even the budget food is fantastic, and of course has a way of filling in local produce. I don’t know how the US raced to the bottom on something as simple and profitable as Pizza but it’s always depressing to me. This isn’t important but in case anyone needs to hear this, both Sbarro and Domino’s in Iceland FUCK. That’s all
Cody C.
2025-02-15 15:24:00 +0000 UTCRobot Wars was hosted by Craig Charles, so if anything, this is more proof that we need Talking Red Dwarf.
Tyler M.
2025-02-15 01:01:36 +0000 UTCActually that culturally insensitive name for Bart’s robot is a reference to a culturally insensitive former mascot. Chief Noc-A-Homa was the Atlanta Braves mascot from the year they arrived in the city (1966) until the mid-80’s. As a lifelong Braves fan I had to learn about him from older relatives, because they didn’t really have a mascot when I was growing up in the noughties. I don’t know if either of the writers are Sportsmen and it certainly could just be a play on Homers name, but it feels too specific not to be a reference.
Tyler Rampley
2025-02-14 19:54:38 +0000 UTCIs it weird that I'm looking forward to hearing them cover Co-Dependants Day in a few months? Easily the most monstrous thing Homer has ever done.
Dayken
2025-02-14 10:36:40 +0000 UTCI think even with the ending of Principal and the Pauper being dicey; it's still a really funny episode with tons of memorable quotes and moments. The same is true for the Panda Love episode. But this episode or the Maude Dies episode have like, an intense lack of jokes or conviction for what are supposed to be notable changes for the paradigm.
SilkiePJ
2025-02-14 09:51:59 +0000 UTCPersonally The Principal and The Pauper isn't my least favorite episode but I still think it's a bad idea that had potential. Co-Dependants Day is my least favorite episode
Giovanni
2025-02-14 01:54:26 +0000 UTCIf it weren't for the commentary, I would've read the Armin Tamzarian joke as the show lightly poking fun at itself. Lisa once said Smithers shooting Mr Burns "would've made a lot more sense" and I've never heard anyone complain about that joke. And in Groening's defense he was assured "it'd be fine" and to this day it's one of the most controversial episodes of the show's entire run especially among seasons 1-9.
PurpleComet
2025-02-13 23:59:36 +0000 UTCMy knowledge of the Roberta Flack Killing Me Softly is that it was the #1 song the day I was born according to a Facebook prompt/post I made back in the day. Btw, my new kitten is a Tuxedo cat who I named Jaspurr Tuxly. I hope his name doesn’t become dated.
Jeff Allred
2025-02-13 22:41:37 +0000 UTCYes, streaming is a big feature of competitions such as NHRL , so it's pretty easy to find those fights on Youtube or Twitch. Sometimes small tournaments may even be hosted near you - I went to one once at a community college and it was pretty fun to see kids duking it out, but also surprisingly violent with how powerful the small scale machines have become.
F Shackleford
2025-02-13 17:38:15 +0000 UTCThis episode may have the strangest invocation of 9/11 yet
SilkiePJ
2025-02-13 16:24:10 +0000 UTCSurprised by how much the Snowball II plot bothered you guys. Personally, I was as nerdy a diehard as they come when this aired, and it didn’t bother me at all because I don’t care about Snowball II, and clearly the show never has either. She’s basically a prop. If they killed off SLH, that would’ve been a different story. So, I took the whole plot pretty lightly, including the conclusion. I love Bill and Josh, but the fact is that the Tamzarian episode was tremendously unpopular and I’m not surprised people on the show in 2004 didn’t like it either (or want to wash their hands of it). Also, don’t forget they made fun of it in “Behind the Laughter” too. Overall, I felt like this plot had a good pulse on both A) how most people feel about Snowball II (they don’t care) and B) how most people felt about Principal and the Pauper (they hate it). So they just had some fun playing up both. But to each everyone’s own. This doesn’t even rank on a list of top 50 offenses the show has done. Fit Tony was a variation of this later, which bugged me more, since I care about that character far more than any Snowball. But stuff like Homer being a despicable monster in Kidney Trouble, and cartoonishly insane episodes like Simpson Safari and Saddlesore Galactica bothered me way more and felt like bigger betrayals to the show’s heart and tone.
Jonah Flynn
2025-02-13 15:30:32 +0000 UTCThe rule for pet names (that I made up) is people first name and a silly pun last name. So Jodie Pawster and Julianne Meowre (and the late great Anthony Purrkins). I hope I'm not doxing my cats, but if you have a veterinarian who gets the joke, you have a good vet!
Davidandwaffles
2025-02-13 07:42:00 +0000 UTCThis is an episode where I'm happy it arrived post golden age and after I was out of the house because I would have hated to watch it with my mother. She had a traumatic experience as a kid similar to Lisa here where her little, black, kitten got out of the house when she opened the front door and it darted right under her neighbor's truck as he was backing out of the driveway. Even when I was a kid years later, I was home sick while my dad was away and our cat just up and died. She wasn't at all old, but obviously something was wrong with her. My mom took me to the local shelter to pick out a new cat and I settled on a little, black, kitten. She was so apprehensive about getting another black cat because this new one looked just like the one she had as a kid. The story has a relatively happy ending though because we did indeed bring that kitten home. I named her Sara, and she lived to the ripe old age of 21 and passed away in her cat bed beside a warm fire. That's about the best you can hope for as a pet owner. Other than that, I share Bob's sentiments towards Battle Bots or whatever it was called. It seemed like an interesting concept when it came along, but the actual show was painfully boring and I hated that it was on all of the time. I am predisposed to not like this episode as a result, but it's okay. I didn't hate it. The B plot with Lisa and her cats doesn't really phase me even as a cat person. It's not really funny, but it's also not moving in any way, it just sort of "is." I don't hate the punchline with Skinner, it at least got a "heh" out of me, but for an episode where the makeup of the Simpson family technically gets altered it winds up being very forgettable.
Joe Hodgson
2025-02-12 22:36:32 +0000 UTCI wonder if the line, where Bart says he sometimes goes entire Summers without seeing Homer, is a joke about there not being new episodes during the Summer?
Seth
2025-02-12 18:36:51 +0000 UTCI can fully empathize with Bob's bird violence stance listening to these clips as a cat owner. I don't think i've seen this ep in some 10+ years but as someone who has fully become a cat dad, it would probably break my heart just a little to see so many cartoon cats killed off in rapid succession.
Blake R.
2025-02-12 18:26:39 +0000 UTCDo they record these fights anywhere? I miss the old days of the father/son duos backyard building a robot out of scrap and actually making it through the first battle
Cavdog26
2025-02-12 17:10:26 +0000 UTCInterestingly the Discovery era contestants themselves often talk about how their participation still wouldn't be possible without subsidization from the Battlebots production company and corporate sponsorships, often from the companies they themselves work at. That is definitely a trend of the new era, the increasing cost of machines and cost of repairs due to more damage being inflicted means that the old era of kooky garage builders is largely replaced by young engineers with jobs at fabrication or hardware companies. The improvements in battery and motor technology and the availability of the advanced materials you mentioned are primarily the main drivers of the cost increase in the modern era. However, one place where the old spirit of robot fighting lives on is in the small weight class tournaments like NHRL. These have a much lower barrier to entry so you still get to see people who did it mostly themselves, and some fun oddball designs.
F Shackleford
2025-02-12 15:42:52 +0000 UTCNot just Carmen Electra, but they also somehow got Bill Nye, the Sklar brothers, another Baywatch actor in Donna D'Errico (who the Battlebots contestants anecdotally seemed to appreciate for taking the gig seriously), and Bill Dwyer. I wonder hiring all these people was possible because Comedy Central may have just been turning up at tournaments already organized by the Battlebots production company and filming it rather than paying for the tournament themselves. The modern Discovery reboot has actually been off the air for a few years now so it seems like they too are suffering the effects of the Zaslav regime. Nowadays, Battlebots has started doing a nightly live show in Vegas featuring stunt versions of the Discovery era robots, and even got Bill Dwyer back to MC it as a fun nod to their past
F Shackleford
2025-02-12 15:33:17 +0000 UTCWeirdly enough, this was actually the first episode of The Simpsons I ever watched. When I was maybe 9 or 10 I had a friend who kept telling me how funny the show was so I recorded the next episode to air in syndication to check it out, which ended up being this episode. Honestly, it didn’t really give me a great idea of the tone of the show, even for this period, coming off a lot more irreverent and shock-based like Family Guy. When I told my parents I’d started watching The Simpsons they were a little iffy on if I should be allowed to (I’d been banned from watching Adult Swim after my Mom saw me watching Aqua Teen at age 6), so they decided to check out an episode themselves to see how appropriate it was. The episode they ended up watching was “Margical History Tour”. Now, I don’t know if you guys have recorded that one yet, but it’s a definite outlier in terms of sex and violence for the show, and they told me I couldn’t watch the show anymore (as an aside, I still hold a grudge against that episode to this day because of that). Eventually my friend lent me his season 2 dvds and I showed them Bart Gets an F, and they started buying me the box sets of the older seasons, so it all worked out in the end.
Lucas Dooley
2025-02-12 12:30:25 +0000 UTCOn the topic of bikes i did some research and a basic bike from our version of Walmart is $150 aud. And a top of the range mountain bike from a bike shop will set you back $3k to $5k aud. and a top of the range road bike will set you back more than 9k.
Aleen Tins
2025-02-12 12:12:32 +0000 UTCBattlebots on Comedy Central was like ECW on Sci-Fi. It was two great flavors of television ruining each other. When it came back in 2015 the wedge flipper meta quickly gave way to the new meta of building some sort of absurdly powerful spinner that doesn't allow anything near it without sending shrapnel flying so fast it pierces the Lexan walls. The problem however is that unlike in this 2004 episode a working class family can't really enter these competitions. Long gone are the days when some proles would basically make a remote control lawn mower with a larger blade and have a puncher's chance at victory. They're now dominated by teams who have tens of thousands of dollars to spare on custom machined parts that are made from the same materials NASA uses to build rockets.
Matt Quintanilla
2025-02-12 11:00:50 +0000 UTC
