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Talking Simpsons - The Computer Wore Menace Shoes With Travis View (Patreon)

Published:
2021-04-21 04:00:02
Imported:
2026-06
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  • TalkingSimpsons_1206Patreon.mp3

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Content

This week's episode is all about online conspiracy theories, and our guest is an expert: Travis View of the investigative podcast QAnon Anonymous! As Homer becomes the unknown arbiter of online rumors, this episode is all about the dangers of bull plop on a then relatively young internet of 2000. Learn how much things have changed and what stayed the same, plus a ton of stuff about the cult classic The Prisoner! So don't be a caterpillar in our buttermilk, listen now!

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Comments

Harry Thornton

I remember as a kid, even not having seen The Prisoner (I still haven't seen it, actually) I still found it fun and entertaining. If anything, I think the fear that a kid "might not get" esoteric or obscure references is a little overblown sometimes. As long as it's not done so that you HAVE to see the source material to understand what's going on, I don't see an issue. While I enjoyed this episode as a kid, I had a BIG problem with the ending. I was SO disappointed by it not ending with the status quo fully resolved. I had a similar problem with the previous “Missionary Impossible” and "On The Road to D'ohwhere" a few seasons later, both of which also had similar "non-endings". It sticks out to me bc I still remember John K's claim that "kids don't care about continuity or characters seemingly dying and coming back next week" and I have to laugh, because I DID care.

Bennett Billard

"Shut up, that's why" always gets a hearty laugh from me.

Zach Adams

I am months behind on this show, but I'm going to have to skip ahead for one of the great weird eps AND Logan

SomeBloke

This episode actually kicked off my fandom for The Prisoner when one of the old Simpsons guidebooks revealed that basically all of the third act weirdness came from that show, which years later led me to track down a very good (and unfortunately frequently very out of print) DVD box set. The ending itself being so weird and disconnected might just be a reference unto itself, as the final episode of The Prisoner is also completely outrageous compared to the rest of the series and obscurantist by design (up to and including some subtle implications that a comma splice in that three minute opening may be one of the most important clues in the show). If the Internet had been around in the 1960s we would’ve seen an impressive shitshow.

Diamond Feit

I watched this with my daughter, who loves any and all cartoons, and her only takeaway from seeing this ending was “what the heck was that”

Evil Chanteuse's Dork Lair

Growing up I had an odd collection of Simpsons DVDs. I had seasons 1 - 5, and season 12. And as an eight year old, I watched seasons 1 and 12 over and over, but I must’ve watched season 12 more, because I have more positive memories of these episodes than the earlier ones. Menace Shoes was my absolute favourite Simpsons episode for the longest time, I’d watch it on repeat. The weird concept and prisoner parody really interested me. As a british teen into weird stuff I bumped heads with The Prisoner several times. But have never seen it, but I know a bit about it and I wanna that it was sold as (and by some fans is considered) a secret spin off from Danger Man. The lead character is very similar in both, and although they’re never directly connected, viewers at the time would’ve definitely been thinking that they were the same person. The DEVO song “Secret Agent Man” makes this connection in some of its lyrics.

ShyRanger

Wait, a show called Danger Man, and it's about a secret agent. Guess that's where Danger Mouse came from.

Paul

I think the ending of this episode means every episode afterwards features an impostor Simpsons family to make sure no one looks for them, while the real Simpsons family is still on the island, tee hee hee hee

Tyler M.

The talk of misleading URLs in the 90s reminded me of the #1 culprit when I was a kid which was WhiteHouse.com (which was a porn site). It became such a reoccurring issue I remember my school sending letters out to parents warning them about it. This was probably around the same time when my school sent out letters to parents warning about the new craze of "choad tapping."

Frank Grimes

Interesting take on Twitter and traveling. Many airlines offer on board wifi, so you really wouldn't be without it, if you can't help yourself. Conversely, you also could be like myself and many others and don't even care for or use social media, since ultimately it's the user's addiction and no one else's but their own.

Andrew Giachetti

We had plenty of porn sharing in the early computer lab days, but what we really had in spades were the early flash games. Everyone was trading new game sites and there was just no way to stop us. However, that led to the worse internet addiction of my childhood: RuneScape, which I found from the plug on miniclip.com. The sad part is is it’s a ruin MMO‘s for me because I’ve tried to get into wow and guild wars and didn’t enjoy it at all but I went back to old school RuneScape once they launched the mobile version and within 24 hours I was buying memberships with in game gold… I just have so much nostalgia for rune scape, and sea shanty 2 slaps.

Parker Thompson

I HATED the third act. It's all the worst Schwartwellder excess. Why write a joke when you can just gas homer again? Just sell out Marge and don't have a real ending who cares?

Joe Hodgson

It's kind of weird, but there might not be a better singular measure of how far technology has come than to look at how millennials consumed pornography through adolescence and into adulthood. We went from the frequently found stash of magazines in the woods and occasional VHS, to downloading a singular picture online or through email that would take forever, to galleries, and to eventually video. First in bite-sized, one minute at a time Real Player crap to peer-to-peer stuff and now it's all basically on-demand. I am so glad the modern stuff came when I was well into adulthood as I don't know how hormonal teenagers function with that stuff at their fingertips. Pornography and piracy really have played in a big role in the development of modern technology. This episode and the Iron Maiden song "The Prisoner" have been my only interactions with the actual show The Prisoner. I should probably fix that some day since it's so often referenced.

nina matsumoto

Bagels and donuts CAN have similar calorie counts, sure, but donuts are still way worse because of the massive amount of sugar in them. And we're talking similar if it's the plainest donut possible but let's face it, most people go for ones with even more sugar added on top. Bagels are also higher in fibre and protein which keeps you feeling full longer. There are definitely healthier options than bagels when it comes to breakfast, but if given the two options, I'd choose it over a donut any day of the week (especially if it's Montreal style!). Can't always just look at pure calorie numbers when making food decisions.

Alex Forsyth

I'm the same age as Bob and Henry and my grade school had one Apple computer of some kind in each classroom and each kid got to play it for an hour once a year. My Jr high had a computer lab but for some reason my classes never got to use it. We got exactly two weeks of keyboarding classes in grade 7 and that was it for the full 2 years. One week of which was with a piece of paper with keys on it. Then we got a week with these tiny keyboards that had a small dot matrix screen that could fit two or three lines of text. I remember they were made by Atari and looked similar to what John Connor used to steal from ATM's. Once I got to high school in 96, there were proper computer courses and there were several labs with 486's that were slowly being replaced with Pentium 90's and Pentium II 133's as the 486's stopped working.

Dan Z

So on the Prisoner why not simply kill him?

spiffking

More fun things about Druge, he works with different mainstream outlets to throw traffic their way in exchange for a few bucks here and there. And it definitely makes a big difference. I'm not sure how much of it is bot influenced, but sites can see their traffic increase by a few thousand active users simply by having one of their stories linked to his page. The CBS owned and operated local stations (branded CBS Local) have been doing this for years to boost their numbers. Kind of funny how his story starts with CBS and continues with CBS to this day.

Kevin Bunch

This episode is still one of my absolute favorites. Like the internet stuff is fantastic, but the part of me that adores bizarre non-sequiturs finds the Prisoner parody stuff in the last act just absolutely perfect. Definitely an episode that got a lot of quote-time among my friends in high school.

Rob Zero

To piggyback on the conservative talking point that Drudge has become a *tool* of the left: when Biden was announced the winner of the election on November 7, his front page announced it, in his typical lo fi style, by plastering an unflattering photo of Trump with the words "You're Fired!" written across. Even though my dad, a staunch conservative and Trump supporter, used to listen to Drudge's radio show before he broke the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, I hadn't thought about this person til last November in twenty years, and I reveled a little more seeing this (former?) conservative darling shit on Trump.

Mike Champagne

When bob mentioned steakandcheese.com I got whiplash to being a child and being witnessed to the many horrors that site had

Angel Young

This is the only episode of The Simpsons my best friend watched as she has 0 interest in this show. We watched it after watching all of the original The Prisoner (not to be confused with the Australian prison soap opera Prisoner Cell Block H) so it definitely hits so much better when you watch the show. I reccomend watching Prisoner then rewatching this episode.

The Home Video Update

Weirdly, for what I think is not a great episode I quote this episode more than most. "I'm a new tie wearing" and "Yes tis" it's not a successful episode, but some of the writing has stuck with me. I have, being British been to the place they filmed the Prisoner "Portmeirion" an Italian village built in Wales.

Galen Ryder

I wonder if this is a Canada thing since we got more content from Europe but I remember recognizing the 3rd act as a big Prisoner parody before I had actually rented that show from my local library. So just through osmosis growing up in a small Canadian town I knew what they were referencing.

katie lamont

Thanks for explaining this episode. I remember being very confused when this episode originally aired. Now that I understand the references, I can enjoy it.

Stephen C. Nedell

I was a fan of The Prisoner--Number 6 is one of the only characters I've cosplayed-- so when this episode first aired I let out a Webbygale style squeal of delight. I believe at one point Patrick McGoohan was being considered as a James Bond but he turned it down because he was a devout Catholic. That's one reason John Drake or Number 6 was rarely if ever seen physically involved with a woman or using deadly force. There is debate whether or not Drake from Dangerman is really Number 6. The producers intentionally kept it vague though one reason as I understand it they didn't actually have the rights to the Drake character. There is a two person Prisoner tribute band called Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling and they did an amazing shot for shot remake of the intro for their song Arrival, using Boston instead of London. https://youtu.be/GbUhmwSObto I won a bitchin Ibanes electric guitar at one of their concerts.

Mark Lee Marcheschi

I remeber years later learning the episode was a Prisoner reference because of Chris Jericho's band Fozzy's cover of the Iron Maiden song. But my brother and I always loved this episode. We always were fans of the fakeout endings and it's never been a thing that bothers me continuity wise.

Erin Hardy

My first exposure to Lyndon LaRouche came when... Billy Corgan promoted him on the official Smashing Pumpkins message board. At the time, I didn't realize that was a red flag.

Micah

Just in reference to using wikipedia in classes since something Bob said triggered some memories : In some of college courses (c. ~2008) professors still had to say don't ONLY use wikipedia over and over again. One class where this was said, particularly stands out (a PSYCH 400 level course to fulfill gen-ed requirements I took) because the assignments all literally spelled out sources you were supposed to use to build your arguments (various studies on the topics, I guess the graders were lazy and wanted to simplify things). Students still apparently used wikipedia instead. So even then laziness and "Mr. X"s trumped even the smallest amount of work. Though I can't help but think wikipedia was actually harder to use to build evidence for the topics than the studies.