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Talking Simpsons - New Kids On The Blecch With Brendan James (Patreon)

Published:
2021-09-15 04:00:00
Imported:
2026-06
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  • TalkingSimpsons_1214Patreon.mp3

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Content

This week we're joined for the first time by journalist/podcaster Brendan James, cohost of the brilliant Blowback series, a perfect fit for an episode about American propaganda! Bart and his pals become a boy band to meet N*SYNC, but all that is secondary to a plot that involves the shocking moment of a skyscraper in Manhattan exploding. All that and so much more, so listen to this podcast and YVAN EHT NIOJ!

Files

Comments

Matt Q

For my money the best Matrix joke to come out of this era is in Spaced. During a Season 2 episode the characters need to break into Darkstar Comics to retrieve a caricature of the CEO that Tim played by Simon Pegg left in his portfolio. Nick Frost's character has a fantasy gag where they walk into the lobby dressed in black leather clothes dual wielding MP5s. As he begins firing it then immediately cuts back to this military obsessed psycho with a vacant stare fantasizing about doing the lobby shoot out scene in real life. There's nothing funny about doing the full 360 spin or wire-fu. Not showing it is way funnier. https://youtu.be/rk2Vz6K3HMU?t=705

Blargh

Perfect timing for this episode to arrive with everything going on in Afghanistan’s and 911.

Frank Grimes

one of my faves from this season...and you're nearing my fave of the season, Trilogy of Error!

Paul

As an on Cinema-head, I gotta say how much it warms my heart every time I hear Henry refer to fans of something as "-heads". Also my favorite Justin Timberlake thing is the movie In Time with Amanda Seyfried.

Nicholas

Brendan James was a downer.

Jason Lew

I remember watching this episode when it first came out and originally in the Burns/Smithers rickshaw scene, Burns says to Smithers, after whipping him, "And you call yourself a Chinaman?" I believe this line got complaints and now the line was changed to what it is now. As an Asian American, it was pretty jarring to hear a racial slur on national TV. "Worst Episode Ever" earlier in this season had Lou making cracks about Asians and Wiggum telling him, "Why don't you lay off the Asians, Lou?" I have wondered if some of the Simpsons creators were trying to "get back" at the Asian American community because at the time, there was a lot of controversy with the Mr. Wong cartoon on icebox.com that some of the Simpsons creatives were a part of. I do feel proud of a small role I played - I was in college at the time and an assignment I was given for an Asian American Studies class I was taking was to write a report on Asian American representation in the media. I remember being pretty upset at Mr. Wong at the time and while scanning the website, I found that Rob LaZebnik was involved with icebox.com (and, as you know, he is a Simpsons writer). I emailed icebox and asked if I could talk to someone and Rob LaZebnik emailed me back with his phone number. I called him and asked him some uncomfortable Mr. Wong questions for my report. One of my more prouder moments and I wonder if he went into the Simpsons writer's room the next day, angry at the backlash (and maybe me) and wrote the "Chinaman" joke.

Joe Hodgson

I was just starting my senior year of high school when 9/11 happened and, man, those recruitment pitches quickly went into overdrive. They were at school, they were calling, and mailing from all of the branches of the military. The worst pitch though came from the Nation Guard recruiters who would literally tell kids "You only need to devote one weekend per month to this and you get free college," as the only downside was if America were invaded, which was bullshit. I met several people the next year in college who fell for that pitch and would soon find themselves deployed as the war with Iraq ramped up. I think Brendan's theory of aggro-rock emerging post 9/11 is a bit off. The angry rock was this weird phenomenon of the 90s where white, suburban, kids were suddenly angry about existence. Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, etc were all late 90s, pre 9/11, bands. Disturbed released their debut in early 2000 (I had the "pleasure" of seeing them as an opening act for Danzig, and if you know what Danzig sounds like, you can probably imagine how Disturbed's brand of rap-rock went over at that show) and Staind was around then as well, though I always thought of them as more mopey than angry. This episode is definitely a lazy attempt at mocking boy bands. I do associate it with being one of the last, big, Simpsons episodes I can recall from a promotional standpoint and my sister was very interested in watching it since she was into boy bands. The satire is weak, but the disdain the writers seemed to feel at doing such an episode is at least felt in viewing it so I don't think it contends for worst episode or anything, but definitely not one I return to purposely. And yes, everyone knows "Join the Navy" backwards doesn't sound the way it's presented here, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one who would mess around with voice recording software that came standard on most PCs of the era. I remember my friend discovering that "asshole" played backwards sounds remarkably like "ballsack." The more you know.

Lockerus

“Americans hate socialism but love a five-year plan” got me howling while I was listening to this on my walk. That was a great line.

Frank Grimes

Oracle games are the best zeldas on a portable. Just need some QoL improvements like more buttons! I hold out hope we'll get them remade since LA was remade

Bradford A Barker

"Subliminal, liminal, and superliminal" is an all-time great Simpsons joke.

Alex Irish

Little clarification on the song that N’sync dance walks to. It’s actually a sample of “No Strings Attached”, not “Space Cowboy”. Both are from the titular No Strings Attached album however, and as boy band albums go, it’s a fine one. It’s a poor reflection on me that most of the songs from the boy and girl band era I know of are the ones that topped the charts and had massive air play, so obvious tunes like I Want It That Way, I Want You Back, and Oops I Did It Again. My musical osmosis growing up was through my sister, and she listened a lot to Spice Girls before moving on to other acts like Weezer and Glen Stefani. I was a kid who got his musical taste through movie and show soundtracks like Space Jam and, yes, the various Simpsons albums. It took until my lifetime love affair with Jpop and Kpop to even find and identify music I know and like, and in the 90s, it was harder for me to know what all the latest hit tunes were that were also socially acceptable to like on.

Tyler M.

Brendan’s soundtrack to Blowback season 2 is one of the best albums I’ve heard all year. Seriously.

Chris Dobson

Blowback season 2 is great, and Brendan is a treasure. This episode is... real-real bad, and is following a wave of really bad episodes. Glad to have someone come in cold and just recognize that the show has gotten extremely bad in the past few seasons. At the time, I definitely felt like I had completely outgrown the show by this point, as this season was the last I watched on Sundays, and episodes like this were a part of it. I know Bob and Henry like Scully personally, but he did a very poor job steering the show, and was clearly both chasing Family Guy and South Park's crassness while at the same time making the show more for children than it'd ever been in the past.

Blargh

You need to bring in Bret from revolutionary left radio for a Simpsons episode when discussing politics from a further left viewpoint. He’s excellent!

Manic Rainbow

I have to admit I’m always feel weird hearing older generation millennials talk about how the Simpsons died after season 8. This was one of my favorite episodes, and being born in 95 this was the era I started with. With the amount of gold after the “golden age”, I wish more people would change the narrative.

Justin Gendron

Even though it comes out years later I think American Dad does a better job with the idea of a boy band parody, it’s especially noticeable in the songs (Girl you need a shot vs Drop Da Bomb)

Camille Walters

That Rob Van Dam story is great, I love how much it got blown out of proportion. The guy just wanted to not work at Christmas 😂

Jared Hemming

Why bring someone on the show who hates the non-“golden era” this much? Kinda a bummer to listen to someone complain about how bad the show is for 90 min

Dan K.

It would be nice to have a veteran’s take on a military themed episode on the podcast

Guybrush

I'll mildly defend the songs. They are a bit light on the parady but they still weave an interesting thread of being boy-band themed propaganda. A bit dated, but they capture the 98-00 era fairly well. And they've proven to be pretty effective earworms for me this week.

Sabrina

This episode makes me think of the one random fact I know about JC Chasez: he was raised Mennonite. I read that in an interview years ago, he mentioned that he personally wouldn’t join the military because he’s Mennonite and they are pacifists. It always stuck with me because of the ending of this episode where he’s dragged away screaming after being enlisted. It seems odd to me that they would have him be the one put in the military.

Mimi Kenny

I suppose it’s pointless to nitpick an episode as brazenly pointless as this one, but it bothers me that the group’s songs having subliminal messages is dropped in so randomly. Like, first they’re singing about falling in love with no ulterior motive. And then, they’re making full-on propaganda. My “charitable” interpretation is that the initial songs were made to lull the audience (on the show) into a false sense of familiarity and then drop in the subliminal aspect. But I think it would be a lot better if they just introduced it much earlier. I like how it resolves (or doesn’t), though

glowstickjuice

I understand why you guys think the songs suck, but if you were 10 years old at the time and really into boy bands, they were legitimately catchy. I had cds with nothing but whatever Simpsons mp3 files I could find and the songs in this episode were on one of them. I still knew all the lyrics to this day and had to restrain myself from singing along and upsetting my uber driver.

Mike Mariano

I had no idea that Libby Watson was Brendan's guide into becoming a Simpsons obsessive. She's an expert and you should definitely have her on the show!

Mikey Cox

Great podcast of a terrible episode, thought I would share some marathon insight from a non-gifted runner who has run a marathon. In all honesty, they aren’t hard IF you prepare for them properly, which most people don’t do. The main issue is before most people run a marathon, they run a half-marathon which really doesn’t require much training, like a month or so, to not kill you. So after completing a half marathon, people think a full marathon will be a cinch, only to find that it destroys them 3/4 of the way through. If you train properly, extending your runs over a five-six month period with your last training run being about 20 miles before reducing the distance over the final three-four weeks, you should be able to finish without pooping yourself. The best thing about long distance running is they’re great opportunities for podcast listening. I’ve listened to a lot of Retronauts and TS this way.

Lobster Industrial Complex

This episode might have beena bit of a mess but the Superliminal joke makes up for every bad bit in the episode

Cossover

My 20th birthday

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

Brendan was a GREAT guest and, as someone particularly interested in how awful the whole End of History period was, this podcast episode was an incredibly fun listen and much better than the mostly mediocre Simpsons episode it was about. -- Also, fuck Justin Timberlake. I believe him and Jessica Biel are anti-vaxxers, and he took absolutely 0% responsibility for the Janet Jackson thing (even making fun of it) while she was crucified), and in general has just been kind of a back-handed douche to anyone he doesn't get along with at one point or another.

Matt Fish

If you thought the Iraq WWE show was bad you gotta look up the Smackdown that came from 9/13 the "first" public gathering after 9/11. The whole show was very rah-rah America especially look up the JBL Promo where he talks about turning a country into a parking lot.

James Eldred

I'm late to the game but a quick thing on BTS and sales, but BTS aren't really that popular, their fans are just more hardcore.