Talking Simpsons - Behind The Laughter With Matt McMuscles
Added 2020-12-23 05:00:00 +0000 UTCWe reach the end of season 11 (and 2020), so we're joined by the returning Matt McMuscles -- check out his YouTube channel and his Patreon! This extended parody of a lost-to-time VH1 series worked great 20 years ago, and allow us to explain the many references lost to time. Listen along to find out if those roses are hiding ready-to-sting bees in this week's podcast!
Comments
I’m so glad you guys finally got to this episode, Behind the Laughter is still, in my mind, one of the best post-classic era episodes. Me and my family STILL quote it to this day. I actually DO remember the director for the first three Assassin’s Creed games, Patrice Desilets. He left the series after creative differences, and then Ubisoft itself which resulted in a few lawsuits. He’s now made his own indie games, a human evolution simulator called Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey. That gross Yoshi’s Island ad was such a blatant Mr Creosote ripoff I’m shocked they never got into legal trouble. That might sound weird, but Eric Idle did get annoyed at the third Shrek movie (which he was in as Merlin) for “stealing” the iconic coconut shell gag from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, though no actual legal action happened despite him threatening to do so. I’m a “zoomer”, so I never watched Behind the Music when it was current, but thanks to this episode and cultural osmosis from commentators and my parents I did understand the show’s infamously constant “rise, fall, rise again” narrative. Appropriately, the one episode of of the show I’ve seen in full was for “Weird Al” Yankovic, both the late-90s original and the updated 2012 version. Weird Al himself mentioned the show in his “Trapped in the Drive Thru” song, where the main character of the song might be watching a Lynrd Skynryd episode of Behind the Music, though even he’s not sure. Funny you should mention how the ending almost makes it seem like a series finale, I know some who see it as such, the end of the “classic” era so to speak. I also know at least one person on twitter who likes this episode’s universe where Springfield is real but The Simpsons is a show. At the very least, I think all us fans can take solace in Home Improvement getting so forgotten in more recent years. There’s a great AV Club article called “Why Has Time Foresaken Home Improvement?” about why the show doesn’t have a following like it once did, where less successful shows from that era like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air etc. hold more cultural weight today. The line “Penniless Peckinpah” stuck out to me amongst all the wild metaphors, it’s such a funny way to call someone an amateur filmmaker. Hell, here’s some more of those: “Destitute DePalma”, “Broke Bogdonavich”, and “Needy Nolan”. The weird thing about the Beatles parody is that it reveals the “mental ward” twist so quickly I never quite had the time to process what was going on as a kid. The “MC Hammer house” jokes made no sense to me as a kid until I knew what Hammer did. The bit about Bart being too tired to do a stunt so they changed the script almost feels like a nod to a famous bit of trivia about Raiders of the Lost Ark: Because Harrison Ford was sick on the day they were shooting an elaborate sword fight scene, they scrapped all that and just had Indy shoot the sword guy. I had that same “massive cast of characters” poster as a kid! It’s like a requirement for any simpson fan, and it was weird seeing it in the actual show. I’m surprised you guys didn’t mention the old “Casper is the ghost of Richie Rich” gag from Three Men and a Comic Book when Richie Rich showed up here. In this universe where Richie is just a real actor, I wonder how he would’ve taken that joke. The episode was ALSO where I first heard of Rent, though I wouldn’t know what it was for a long time after. To clarify the “fake colourized” footage for those who might not understand: That was a process done during the silent era, just about every film back then was tinted. It wasn’t until sound came along that tinting felt out of fashion, and engineers had to figure out new colour techniques that wouldn’t mess with the new soundtrack on the film itself.
Harry Thornton
2020-12-24 23:08:34 +0000 UTCWhen Henry said that at first the episode felt like it might be the series finale to him, it kind of struck a chord with me. This was the last episode I recall watching as appointment viewing. I watched this episode and then two days later left for basic training in the navy. I didn't watch the series on a regular basis after that, so I can definitely identify with the immediate thought of "oh shit, this is the last one isn't it, because in my little corner of the word it kind of was".
Daniel Rackley
2020-12-24 14:41:05 +0000 UTC
