Talking Simpsons - The Old Man and the "C" Student With Pop Arena

Just really want to thank you guys for introducing me to Poparena a while back. Definitely my now favorite YouTube channel. (And another great Talking Simpsons episode as well!)

Kat Heagberg

There is another really dark joke in the string of jokes about the Whatsit and the Montreal Vampire that goes a bit unnoticed and that neither of you bring up - but Kent Brockman also says that Springfield “can hope for the same post-Olympics boom that Sarajevo did after their 84 Olympics” and I think the joke there is that under 10 years after the Sarajevo Olympics the former Yugoslavia (the host country of the 84 olympics) began to break up. Sarajevo (the capital of Bosnia, one of the breakaway constituents of Yugoslavia) was subject to an intense siege marked by shelling of the city from its surrounding hills - including targeted shelling of civilian markets (the implied boom in the Simpsons joke - and also the impetus for NATO intervention in the conflict). As a history nerd I felt like I had to point out a really dark joke that may have gone unnoticed by the audience of the time and may have become even more archaic to current audiences. Anyhow, love you guys.

Xaq Crabwise

Lapland is somewhere between Chin-a and Thigh-land

Blandon

Looking forward to Baby Bonkers.

I can’t recall if it was noted in the credits, but it shouldn’t be shocking that either NRBQ or its members at the time, wrote and performed the theme to The Pitts. Which I definitely hated as a teenager who was very active online, but a few years later I revisited it to discover it wasn’t so bad, but it could have been worse. It’s been fun to realize just how much of that hatred was rooted in group think from the forums I was a part of! The Springy mascot subplot and its fallout easily made this episode for me, it’s disjointed but still memorable for Homer’s attempt at getting rid of the springs. “Children Are the Future” gets some points from this cynic as well. Listening to this podcast reminded me of how I was just the right age to be all-in for Izzy during the ‘96 games. I had an Izzy shirt, an Izzy ornament, that awful platformer for the Genesis - and at one time, I recorded the Film Roman special when it aired on TNT. Unfortunately, I don’t think that tape survived a basement flood as I’ve been unable to locate it after a few moves. So where there’s my story, surely someone else has it on tape somewhere, or the last known copy is on a moldy VHS tape in a rural Michigan landfill. If there’s any other olympic mascot(s) I remember, it’s the animals that loved Mitt Romney from the Salt Lake City Olympics. Seriously, there were images and pins made of the mascots declaring their love for Romney, alongside a caricature of his face, as if he were part of this mascot squad. It’s a gift truly for the moderate darling in your life.

Andrew Grieve

Not being familiar with the Beatles movie, I've always found the sequence with the old people playing charming.

PurpleComet

This episode definitely is all over the place but I can't help but still really enjoy it. I hope at least *that much* holds true until the end of the Scully era...

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

They're both on Disney+. They can potentially cross over.

Bennett Billard

My alternate name for that credits album cover is "A Hard D'ohs Night." Yes, that would be written as "A Hard [Annoyed Grunt]'s Night."

Bennett Billard

I personally thought that Children are our Future and the way Skinner said it was a misdirection that they were going to sing "Greatest love of all" by Whitney Houston, and that was the joke.

Dvdmike

Great that you brought up the 1996 Atlanta Olympics because I actually attended those Olympics. The 1996 Olympics was the first real huge news that six-year old me became aware of because it was happening in my home state of Georgia. And I thought it was coolest thing ever because, at the time, I had a huge obsession with geography and learning about other countries, and the idea that people from all over the world coming to Atlanta to compete in games had to be the biggest event in history! My dad accepted an invite from some of his old yuppie college friends to see the Athletics competition on the day before the Closing Ceremonies and he took me to see it with them. I remember being very excited seeing Olympics in person and also not wanting the United States to win gold because I thought that would be “boring.” I also remember impressing my dad’s friends by being a weird six-year who knew what the flag of Burundi looked like as well as tasting root beer for the first time. It was only a few years later when I realized that I had experienced a once-in-a-lifetime event. Didn’t ask for any Izzy merch thought. I just wanted pins of other countries flags. Again, weird six-year old.

KaiserBeamz

I have a deep love of the London 2012 mascots who are awful little eye creatures inexplicably named Wenlock and Mandeville

crystalhearts

Of all the episodes of what people would call the good to okay seasons, the end of this episode is one of my least favorite. It's just way to goofy for me, and even as a teen I remember thinking it was pretty lame.

DrKarate

Baby Yoda is Bob's new Bonkers.

Adam Voyde