Talking Simpsons - Grift of the Magi With Luke Savage
Added 2020-08-12 04:00:01 +0000 UTCIt's time for the final Xmas of the '90s, so we welcome back Luke Savage, writer for Jacobin and the cohost of the podcast Michael And Us! The school is closed thanks to Bart's broken butt, and that somehow leads to a parody of Furby almost destroying the holidays! Listen along for some of the show's weirdest celebrity appearances and one of its darkest jokes ever!
Comments
Wow, I had totally remembered this episode being way more of a Christmas episode than it is in reality. A lot of people online have dismissed this as a very poor follow-up to Roasting on an Open Fire and Marge Be Not Proud, but I always thought it was much better than people gave it credit for. Upon this revisit, I think the truth falls in the middle - it's certainly not a bad episode, and has some great jokes, but as you guys discussed, the narrative is all over the place and it feels like it could have developed some of its ideas more.
Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag
2020-08-18 03:02:21 +0000 UTCI am a Christmas special junkie, so I've seen "Grift of the Magi" many, many, times. I appreciate that it actively tries to subvert the Christmas special tropes many sitcoms indulge in. The mere fact that it glosses over Moe's It's a Wonderful Life experience and Burns' Scrooge-turn is excellent. So many television shows revert to that trope. We're not supposed to want to see how those scenarios played out with Moe and Burns because we know those stories by heart. This might be the show's funniest Christmas episode, though it's not my favorite. It's only competition for most absurd is probably "Kill Gil," but that episode is awful and I'm thankful you won't be covering it for a long time. And as an aside, this heat wave in the north east part of the country has me pining for winter and knowing this episode was on the horizon motivated me to buy a talking Santa Homer off of ebay. It's a wonderful, novelty, Christmas greeter that no Simpson fan should be without around the holidays. It's also provided a bonus function as it's currently in my wife and I's bedroom and I have been randomly turning it on from time to time so my wife activates the motion detector on it. It's amusing to me, though I'm probably risking my wife destroying it at this point.
Joe Hodgson
2020-08-14 17:24:56 +0000 UTCIn another case of a Simpsons episode influencing my life, I shall tell you an amusing anecdote. Back in my senior year of high school, I was part of the student council, and took part in the marketing for that year’s homecoming. My sign said, “If you’re not at homecoming, you’re nothing!”, taking from the Funzo commercial. The best part is that they put it up in the hallways, given they didn’t know the context or that it was quietly insulting. Also with regards to the Pokémon talk, I was 10 about to turn 11 when it first came to America, so I was the perfect age to be a fan of Blue when it was a birthday surprise gift. It was the EGM issue next year with Pokémon on the cover and the scoop on Pokémon Gold and Silver that solidified me as a Pokémaniac for life. Even as other kids my age fell out of it in the next year, I never let up my fandom.
Alex Irish
2020-08-14 11:40:43 +0000 UTCThis is legit one of my favorite episodes. It's just so bizarre and such a great indictment of our capitalist hellscape. I remember my other Simpsons-obsessed pal in high school and I quoted it a whole lot.
Kevin Bunch
2020-08-14 01:07:03 +0000 UTCHenry, that part where Homer is driving on the sideway and you said you just realized it's Frink, I noticed that even the subtitles on Disney+ missed that.
littleterr0r
2020-08-14 00:09:25 +0000 UTCOn the topic of selling stuff to raise money for something at school, when I was in Grade 8 we sold bean soup to help pay for our trup to Quebec City. It was a very poor decision and we should have just sold chocolate bars like everybody else. I mean I guess the school was trying to promote something more healthy but people don't want to buy soup from somebody going door to door, Chocolate works well because it's something people buy on impulse, soup not so much.,
Bryan Hutchings
2020-08-13 22:24:01 +0000 UTCSo in 1998, my girlfriend at the time and I were both 18 and way too old to be into Furby, but curious enough to each get one. I think the fact that they were only $35 really helped. I even bought two and kept one on the top shelf of my closet hoping to cash in on it's collectability in the future. It was fine, and more of something that sat on a shelf (or in a closet) rather than actively used. If I remember we each got one because they had the ability to talk to each other in "Furbish", a common language only Furbies share.
littleterr0r
2020-08-13 21:21:03 +0000 UTCEnjoyed the show guys but you skipped over one of my favourite "zero is a percent" style jokes: "Thanks to you, Funzo is the first doll designed by children, for children, with all the profits going to children." "Really? "Yeah, well, we're all *somebody's* children." Stay safe and keep up the awesome work. ^_^
To Boldy Joe... Moore
2020-08-13 15:10:33 +0000 UTCI got to the part where you mention working in retail during the holidays. If I am still working at the place I work at, I will circle back in December/January to let you know how that goes during a pandemic.
Angel
2020-08-13 10:50:05 +0000 UTCYou briefly touched on Tamagotchi's and I wanted to let you all know as of this post, I saw them in the store I work at. Since I was only doing reshop (returning items to the shelf) I didn't get a chance to see if it was the same as it was 20 years ago. They are back for a new generation and as a millennial, I feel old now. I did have a furby as my grandmother worked in retail in 1998 and was able to get it when they hit the shelves. It was the hot toy of the year it came out. It's a lot like at the store I work at now when the disinfectant wipes come in. I heard that people would get the furby to curse or mimic what they were saying. I never got to train it to do the crazy things people say happened because I got easily bored of it. This is just like when I easily got bored of my Echo Dot and only use it to listen to podcasts while showering since it has really good sound. I could allow the machine to take over my life but usually bordom sets in.
Angel
2020-08-13 10:46:31 +0000 UTCSTEM is definitely the hot buzz acronym in education. Main reason technocrats push it is because there is such a mismatch between skills that college grads have versus what employers want. It’s true firms like Microsoft want governments to subsidize education for their future drones but these jobs do tend to be well paid with benefits so I think it’s a bit harsh to be so critical towards such policies. The worst thing is to have severe student loan debt with a degree that gets you a job that pays no better than a Starbucks barista.
Mikey Cox
2020-08-13 08:34:13 +0000 UTCBeing a bit younger, I do remember wanting a Furby and asking for one for Christmas around 2001 or 2002. Not sure why I didn’t get it, but instead ended up getting something called a Yano which I guess my parents thought was similar enough. Instead of being a fluffy bird creature like a Furby, it was a horrifying pug goblin that played cassette tapes in a similar fashion to Teddy Ruxpin and flashed strobe effects from a light on his chest every time you made a “wish” with him, which I guess was his gimmick. Even though in hindsight it probably should’ve scared me, I loved Yano dearly until the plastic started peeling off of its face after only having owned it a year, revealing the awful mechanical face underneath
AllTheTrophies
2020-08-12 22:37:21 +0000 UTCThis episode holds a very special place in my heart as a few years later I was playing college quiz bowl and went to a tournament with my school where I had picked the names for our two teams, calling them "Galaxy of Prawns" and "Let Me Talk to Mr. Kwan." A girl from one of the other schools was a big Simpsons fan and told me how much she liked our team names... and a little over two years later we started dating, and just celebrated nine years of marriage! The Simpsons bring people together, that's just a fact.
Robert Flaxman
2020-08-12 22:35:29 +0000 UTC
