Talking Simpsons - Homer The Heretic With Tim Kalpakis
Added 2023-08-09 04:00:04 +0000 UTCFor one of the best-written and animated eps of the series, we welcome back comedy performer/writer/musician/podcaster Tim Kalpakis from the band/podcast The Sloppy Boys (check out their new album)! Production season 4 begins with two new animation studios, as Homer loses his faith when he sees how awesome wasting time is. But will his pride destroy him in this perfect George Meyer script ruminating on the nature of faith? All that plus some of the best jokes ever in this week's heavenly podcast!
Comments
Might be a little late with this comment, but Homer's pirate mug is a joke from at least the Table Draft of this script, where a woman dressed as a sexy pirate is handing out free samples of hot buttered rum door-to-door. Because he's at church, she ends up giving Homer the sample meant for Flanders, and Homer insists his other neighbor isn't home, so he walks away with three mugs of rum.
Vance Jericho
2023-09-23 20:49:27 +0000 UTCI was ALSO wondering why Ned was at home to save Homer (beyond it being a plot necessity) upon this rewatch. I would assume the simple answer is he went to an earlier (possibly even Saturday night) mass, or if you want to get bigger with it, some act of god forced him to stay home (I'm thinking some kind of sump pump scenario where he's dealing with water in the basement) to ensure that Homer wouldn't die on that day. It doesn't REALLY matter, but it's a little odd that by all accounts they didn't seem to think of explaining this in an otherwise really packed and sound episode. -- Incidentally, Homer with the cigar in his comfy outfit saying "everyone is stupid except me" is a great screencap and I think about it a lot
Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag
2023-08-16 00:17:41 +0000 UTCThere's some epic comedy in this one, being from a most unreligious background my child-logic was on the same page with homer every time he pointed out a logistical flaw in the worship of modern organised religions (TESTIFY!) and the fact that all those visits to church managed to teach him that the Messiah was this guy one time, who drove that blue car.
Rob MacBride
2023-08-14 23:26:54 +0000 UTCAs a young, stupid child I saw the commercials for episode and thought Homer’s robe and slipper combination was some sort of Master Splinter cosplay. At the time my mother had enacted a household Simpsons ban after she was horrified at the levels of violence in “Itchy and Scratchy and Marge” (irony!) but after much begging and whining from me needing to see why Homer was dressed like the Ninja Turtle’s mentor she allowed us to watch this one episode. The episode aired and I have my “when are they going to get to the fireworks factory!” Moment waiting for Homer’s “costume” to be explained. Just sitting there wondering to myself why Homer is sleeping through a house fire dressed like a talking karate rat. It’s never explained, of course it’s never explained, and my mother immediately reinstates the ban. The ban would be lifted a season or two later when my younger brother who my mother actually likes (kidding!) starts talking about how the kids at school are always going on about this Bart fellow might we watch his show as well? And it wouldn’t be until years later with the season 4 DVD’s I would finally realize “OH! Homer’s just wearing those novelty ‘bear feet’ slippers!” but it’ll always be a Master Splinter costume to me, hey, maybe it was a *bad* thing Reagan let cartoons market toys directly to child?! My mother has a similar ban on “Ren and Stimpy” that lasted the entire run of the series, but after learning what John K was up to… she was right to do so.
Doc Baghead
2023-08-13 02:42:21 +0000 UTCi grew up in the same area and remember this! did not expect to run into another FHS grad in the Talking Simpsons comments lol :)
Caleb Wilson
2023-08-12 20:09:39 +0000 UTCWhat Tim said about what Fox is looking for (characters you’re comfortable hanging out with) makes me even more annoyed at HouseBroken’s cancellation. It’s pretty much the only show of the new Fox crop that I really liked, and they just kept building more of those series running jokes and side characters that make for a perfect Sunday night fox show/Hulu watch. They need to give shows more of a chance lol
Bryce Hope
2023-08-11 11:14:12 +0000 UTCWhen I look at Homer's coffee mug when he's on the couch (and it's too blurry for anything definitive) it looks to me like a pirate (with a green bird on his left shoulder) holding up a bottle of rum (?). He has an eye patch, and a "C" on his hat like Captain Crunch, but the "C" is backwards. Maybe something like the classic Old St Croix Rum ad from the 1940s. It seem like maybe someone had a mug like this and they added it to the show.
Bryan Field
2023-08-10 21:30:41 +0000 UTCFunny, I rewatched 'Every NFL Score Ever' after work today because this episode got me thinking.
Blue Chameleon
2023-08-10 20:20:48 +0000 UTCAs a lapsed Catholic, see you in hell.
littleterr0r
2023-08-10 19:19:39 +0000 UTCYes, one of the oft-overlooked gems of the series, for both the writing and animation. Rough Draft really did devolve into a squarer style as the industry standard slackened again (the new Futurama looks fine), but its Ren & Stimpy origins and having to compete with the likes of Carbunkle and Disney Australia did give them an energetic edge in the early ‘90s, and these season four classics are the proof. (The likes of Lionel Hutz’s staggered freakout and Homer’s heart attack would never be seen again.)
Thad Komorowski
2023-08-10 13:29:20 +0000 UTCWhile the 73 to 0 score Bob cited is the highest an NFL football game's ever gotten, college football games in the pre-WWII days went way beyond that in the hundreds, sometimes even over 200. The most infamous example is the 222 to 0 score from 1916, with Georgia Tech thoroughly beating Cumberland. Like most American Football stories, I learned about it through an excellent Jon Bois video he made for its 100th anniversary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doZzrsDJo-4
Harry Thornton
2023-08-10 04:23:37 +0000 UTCLoved this episode, especially on one of my all time favorite Simpsons stories. Regarding the Johnny Calhoun joke, it made me wonder if it was a reference to Seals & Croft's 1974 "Unborn Child." While the proto-yacht rockers were riding high with their hit songs "Summer Breeze" and "Diamond Girl", they decided to release a concept album centered around the perspective of an aborted fetus and how the mother should have chosen life. This is, of course, around the time of Roe v. Wade and the height of the feminist movement gaining mainstream penetration so to say they were misreading the moment is an understatement. Warner Bros begged them to not release this album, but neither Seals nor Crofts cared about the money and stated they were making the record to save lives. The record tanked obviously and it was a delicious target among feminist groups that year alongside Paul Anka's classic "(You're) Having My Baby". And while Seals and Croft did have some minor hits afterwards, they never got the same attention as their work before 1974. Just something I bring up as career killer albums are a topic of fascination of mine. It's why I like Todd in the Shadows' Trainwreckords as I can learn all about stuff like Ringo Starr's disco album.
KaiserBeamz
2023-08-09 22:32:21 +0000 UTCThe corrected moon waffles were probably from the Binging With Babish YouTube channel. He makes the Homer-authentic one, too, to predictably disastrous results. I made Babish's recipe for the Southwestern Ingredients Isotope Dogs for friends and (mostly) myself, and they were a hit! The mango salsa was difficult but worth the effort.
Bradford A Barker
2023-08-09 22:23:11 +0000 UTCNed freaking out about not being able to leave church feels like something he wouldn't do in a year or so from this episode. Being trapped in church with Lovejoy is probably his idea of heaven on Earth. I love this episode. I think it might be my favorite out of all of them. Everything is just on point. I too grew up in a household of lapsed religious parents. They're Catholic, and while I did have to do communion, I probably went to church on a Sunday less than five times in my life. And once church education (CCD) moved to Sunday nights and would interfere with my Simpsons viewing I put my foot down and told my parents I wanted nothing to do with it and that was that. And now I'm an agnostic, at most, and my parents probably look back at that decision as a failure, but I'm happy about it! And now my kids are old enough to start asking about such things and my son's best friend is apparently from a very religious family and already asks "Why don't you go to church like me?" I'm hopeful we don't have any issues with sleepovers down the road because if someone takes my kid to church without telling me I will not be cool about it. Also, I've seen this episode more times than I can count, and yet when the DVDs came out and I got this one I thought I was going mad when the song the Flanders sing didn't contain the line about "elephants and kanga-roozies-roozies!" Of course, that's from a much later episode ("I am Furious Yellow" if I'm not mistaken), but I just find it so surprising that line somehow got lodged in my brain when I had probably seen that other episode once, twice at most, where as I've seen this one dozens of times. I thought I was going crazy until I figured out that Flanders reprises the song 10 years later in a different episode. I still expect him to sing it though every time I watch this one. It's broken my brain.
Joe Hodgson
2023-08-09 21:02:00 +0000 UTCMy interpretation of "love springs internal" was that with an IUD, you can cum inside - to spring meaning to erupt suddenly. What a multi-layered and filthy joke.
burro
2023-08-09 20:07:58 +0000 UTCu guys put me on to so many old cartoons its sick. dr katz, home movies
Jacob Henry
2023-08-09 16:24:52 +0000 UTCI love Willy snarling "miracles are your department, Reverend" at Lovejoy.
Neil Harris
2023-08-09 15:35:33 +0000 UTCI always forget to comment it on episodes where syndication is heavily discussed, but I grew up in a suburb of Cincinnati that was far enough North that I got Dayton channels. Not only was their hour of syndication an hour later than Cincy's Fox channel, it was on a different schedule!!! So every day after school I had 2 full hours of different episodes. This is just proof that Ohio isn't all bad lol
Travis Houston
2023-08-09 15:17:57 +0000 UTCWow that ad you played them last two shows are forgotten
Cossover
2023-08-09 11:04:23 +0000 UTCcan't wait to listen with some patented space-age out-of-this-world moon waffles
Frank Grimes
2023-08-09 06:50:17 +0000 UTCI used to go to church in Colorado Springs. If it snowed too much like the beginning of this episode, church was cancelled. I'm pretty sure God isn't going to send you to Hell because you're not going to risk your life for a weekly service...probably.
Rhomega
2023-08-09 04:06:46 +0000 UTC
