Talking Simpsons - Homer vs Dignity With Nick Wiger

financial panther Bob Mackie!

My junior high school had a combination gymnasium/auditorium that was labelled as the "gymnatorium," though nobody called it that. I remember finding it strange because the other schools I had gone to at the time had had a similar gymnasium/auditorium setup but in those schools it the room was simply labelled "gym."

We had something similar to the cafetorium (cafeteria/auditorium mix) but it was always just called the cafeteria, but officially it was the MPR (multipurpose room)

Kris

I dont like the line, but I am a sucker for the animal reaction shot

Micah

sorry but the “chew through my ball sack” line rules ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

nic

Cleveland resident chiming in: the comment section of our newspaper's Facebook page is always packed with assholes posting Chief Wahoo gifs and whining about how banning fans from entering the stadium wearing "warpaint" and headdresses is actually racist against Native Americans. 🤦🏾‍♀️

Erin Hardy

@Kat I had tickets for SpongeBob (the tour version) for March 14th, 2020 - I think you can guess it was cancelled a few days before lol! I listened to the cast recording leading up to it and it's definitely fun! One I really love is the Jagged Little Pill musical. They wove Alanis' music wonderfully through really powerful scenes. If I made a top 20 of my favorite musicals it would include "original" ones, things based off movies/book, comedy, drama, etc. I think there's a place for all of them! :)

Other than the Panda assault scene, I really dislike how this episode uses the trend of Lisa/Marge make Homer guilty for taking money. It starts as one of the few Scully episodes that brings back The Simpsons financial insecurity but removes that so it can have a very slapdash moral about dignity in an episode that already got so dark, trying to make it sentimental doesn't work. Considering Homer already works for Burns, him taking the money in this way is not that awful. It's a big reason I really dislike the endings of "The Old Man and the Lisa" and " Half-Decent Proposal" for aiming at a preacy high-ground. Atleast this episode gives me the great "There's Funky Winkerbean!" phrase that's always been one of my favorite Marge jokes. Nick Wiger was great to join in on the joke doctoring!

SilkiePJ

Agreed. I haven't seen it myself, but I've heard that the Spongebob Musical is very good. I'd also give a franchise-based musical a shot any day before I'd go see Phantom for the 903rd time.

Kat Heagberg

Regarding the Malibu Stacy musical, I always feel like musicals based on franchises get a bad rap. Some movies turned musical find a different voice and aren't just cheap tourist cash grabs. I'm thinking of some like Matilda, Waitress, or Kinky Boots. And a lot of times these are short running anyway compared to the ridiculously long running obligatory ones (Wicked, Phantom of the Opera, Chicago) or the ones that theater goers love (Come From Away, Dear Evan Hansen, Hadestown). “Another Movie Turned Musical” is just an easy headline and punching bag. All of that being said – I love camp and absolutely would go to a Malibu Stacy Musical just like I'm still waiting for The Hulk Musical from Rick & Morty.

When I was young I never contextualized the Panda scene as him actually assaulting Homer in that way. IDK why but I sort of just assumed the Panda was mauling him and the joke was the audience were horribly misinterpreting what was going on. I choose to believe that's the truth of the scene but yea probably not...

Devin Hoffarth

I had no idea until now how many of my regular, everyday sayings come from this episode, and it definitely makes me hate it less. Somehow "avoid the Noid; he ruins pizzas" has become "avoid the Noid; he murders pizzas," which my husband and I say whenever we have a bad pizza, which is often, since we live in Los Angeles. I also remember as a kid feeling REALLY SEEN by Marge's Funky Winkerbean comment. My local newspaper did not publish Funky Winkerbean or Crankshaft, but one of my earliest memories involves coming across a Funky Winkerbean bookmark at Walden Books and being fascinated by the character. Walden Books didn't change their merchandise very often, and eventually I learned to read and learned that the name of the character on the bookmark was Funky Winkerbean. My 5/6 year old brain registered this a "very cool teenager with very cool name" (disclaimer, I still don't know who or what Funky Winkerbean actually is). But, whenever I brought up Funky Winkerbean to anyone, they were just like "what the hell are you talking about?" So I stopped. Then years later, when I heard Marge's unabashed "Over here, Funky!" I was so happy, like "YES! SOMEONE ELSE KNOWS WHO THIS IS." Anyway, now I'm off to Google Funky Winkerbean. And thanks for another entertaining episode!

Kat Heagberg

The weirdest thing about the ending to me is: Homer refused to throw the first guts on people, but just handed over his suit and control of the float without incident? YOU COULD HAVE STOPPED IT HOMER, THAT MAN IS 105 YEARS OLD

Paul

As a graduate of more than one online Funky Winkerbean disparaging groups, I need to point out a little more about the Crankshaft connection, because it's bonkers (and not the What a Cartoon kind). Crankshaft spun-off from Funky Winkerbean after the latter's first time skip, as an attempt to preserve some more humorous elements as the main strip pivoted towards soap opera dramatics... but much later Funky Winkerbean had a *second* time skip, which Crankshaft didn't follow. So now there are two concurrently running Funky Winkerbean timelines, each taking place in the present, but also somehow over ten years apart in a way that would make superhero comics blush. And then to make things worse, Funky Winkerbean is arguably an artifact title, because while Funky and his extended family *are* characters, the main emphasis is arguably on Les Moore, who is clearly some kind of self-insert character who profited off the story of his wife going through cancer in much the same way Funky Winkerbean's only real burst of mainstream attention came from that cancer storyline. The depths of self-absorbed hack writing are unfathomable. This is all to say one of the recurring jokes in one of said FW groups was precisely the "OVER HERE, FUNKY!" line from this episode, to the extent that I completely forgot it was from this episode. Ah, memories.

SomeBloke

Growing up my elementary school had a cafetorium that also acted as our gym. There was a stage with bleacher seats that also had basketball rims that folded up and rollaway tables. I referred to it as a gymatoria but it never stuck. I didn’t see these separated under middle school

Boyd Adkins IV