Speaker 1: So, God, did you know that Marg Simpson is dead? What?
Speaker 2: I hope we videoed that because I was pretty proud
Speaker 2: of that double day. But I'm legitimately surprised Marg Simpson
Speaker 2: is dead. Does that mean the sense isn't going to happen?
Speaker 1: Now? I know? Why would you kill off this main character?
Speaker 1: People are shocked. People can't believe. Why would you do this?
Speaker 2: Why would you often you know Bart and Lisa and May?
Speaker 2: Why would you make home are a widower? Oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is going to change the fabric of the show
Speaker 2: moving forward. Oh wait a minute, No, it's in the future.
Speaker 1: Yes, but don't worry.
Speaker 3: When you finally click on that clickbait title, you realize
Speaker 3: she died in a fast forward future.
Speaker 2: What's a feature flash forward?
Speaker 1: Last Ford episode? Be gause, you can call it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's not actually dead. She died in that those episodes.
Speaker 3: She no Cannon? What no episodes of Cannon in season
Speaker 3: thirty six?
Speaker 2: Anyway?
Speaker 1: Are they really? Yeah?
Speaker 2: They've established something that happens way, way, way in the future.
Speaker 2: I've had so many future episodes now they're all different.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. I'm pretty sure that Marge Simpson lived
Speaker 2: a long and happy life. Before she passed away and
Speaker 2: now she's having heaven making out with Ringo Star. I
Speaker 2: caught it spoilers.
Speaker 1: Sorry, it's actually a really lovely episode. I watched it.
Speaker 3: It's a Stranger Things is the episode, so it's the
Speaker 3: finale season things called it A Stranger Things, right.
Speaker 2: A Stranger Things, not as in A strange.
Speaker 3: A Stranger Yeah, where Button Lisa outgrow itchy and scratchy,
Speaker 3: and Marge borrows that she's losing her kids. They're growing
Speaker 3: up blah blah blah, and then it flashed forward to
Speaker 3: the future. Marge is no longer with us, and we
Speaker 3: see how the Simpsons family dynamic works without having the
Speaker 3: cornerstone there, March Simpson.
Speaker 2: Good story, that's a pretty good idea.
Speaker 3: And it's a good idea, yeah, except what happens a
Speaker 3: month later after it originally airs. One news website runs
Speaker 3: with it, saying let's get a clickbait title out of this,
Speaker 3: and then everyone goes lad Buble goes, well, they're gonna
Speaker 3: do it. I'm gonna do it. Nine of percent they're
Speaker 3: gonna do it. I'm gonna do it, And then you
Speaker 3: just see all these variations on trying to say they
Speaker 3: killed off a main character, but they're actually saying she's dead. No,
Speaker 3: it's it's just ridiculous, to the point where al Geene
Speaker 3: has had to come out on Twitter and say just
Speaker 3: say no, guys, she's not actually dead. But I brought
Speaker 3: this up to you off the air. I wonder how
Speaker 3: the Simpsons showrunners and writers feel knowing that realistically, in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, the only time you ever see the
Speaker 3: Simpsons covered in major news cycles now is if they
Speaker 3: can get a clickbait title out of it, or if
Speaker 3: they predict something from the future.
Speaker 2: I think I've talked about this fairly recently about how
Speaker 2: the traditional publicity cycle is pretty much put. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: still exists to some degree, but it has to be
Speaker 2: augmented in a whole lot of different ways. I mean,
Speaker 2: it used to be say, I'm Timothy Shalamaye. It's easy
Speaker 2: because you know we look so similar. Sorry, and I've
Speaker 2: got Dune three coming out, ok yeah. And it used
Speaker 2: to be the case is like, okay, well, I'll do
Speaker 2: a long form interview with Vanity Fair and I'll be
Speaker 2: on the cover of that. I'll do a day of
Speaker 2: press junkets with people from all around the world. I'll
Speaker 2: appear on the late night talk show and maybe one
Speaker 2: or two other things that. Now it's like, I gotta
Speaker 2: go do hot ones. Oh you've got to catch me
Speaker 2: ring sided the latest MMA fight. Yeah, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: that the canon is going to take out the Castle. Sorry,
Speaker 2: that's the nicknames of two MMA fighters who don't exist.
Speaker 3: Pierce Brosen and can't just go on a talk show
Speaker 3: and talk now he has to play Golden and I
Speaker 3: sixty four.
Speaker 2: There's all that. Yeah, they send me a link to
Speaker 2: a friend of the pod, Jimmy Fallons the other day
Speaker 2: where yeah, Pierce brosn is playing Golden.
Speaker 3: It's probably an old clip, I don't know, But what
Speaker 3: is this? And when it sounds like this is my
Speaker 3: favorite thing ever, I'm like, dude, you're fifty.
Speaker 1: You won't playing this game. You're a layer man, never
Speaker 1: played gold nineties life.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the whole publicity circuit has changed completely. And also, yeah, look,
Speaker 2: there are so many more outlets. Some of them rebul
Speaker 2: a lot of them just sort of startups, and everyone
Speaker 2: wants to get eyes on the thing to make a
Speaker 2: tiny little slice of an ever diminishing budgetary pie.
Speaker 3: But is any publicity good publicity? I think I think
Speaker 3: as a Simpsons writer now or show runner in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, shows me to go for thirty six years.
Speaker 3: You got to think, as long as people are talking
Speaker 3: about it, we're still going to be on the air.
Speaker 3: If no one care. You can't imagine they wrote this
Speaker 3: episode right, and their mentality is because it's not what
Speaker 3: they wrote this to be clickbait title. They didn't kill
Speaker 3: mar Joff in this episode, so people go, they're going
Speaker 3: to be so shocked.
Speaker 2: You're talking about the makes of the Simpsons. I wrote
Speaker 2: this as a publicity stunt or anything like that. It
Speaker 2: sounds based on what you're saying that it's actually a
Speaker 2: pretty sensitive exploration of what it's like when a when
Speaker 2: the mother's cornerstone, a member of the family is gone,
Speaker 2: and it's the family is never the same, right, and
Speaker 2: it's a hard the relationships they sort of they drift
Speaker 2: apart and whatnot. But it's it's a really great finale
Speaker 2: for season thirty six. The show itself is just really improved.
Speaker 2: It's getting so much better in recent years. But I
Speaker 2: feel like if you asked Matt Salmon or l Jean, Hey,
Speaker 2: what are your thoughts on the fact that these websites
Speaker 2: are now running with this or going with this, they're
Speaker 2: probably go well, I guess at least they're talking about
Speaker 2: I can only imagine it must annoy them.
Speaker 3: Slightly though that this ad a month ago and no
Speaker 3: one talked about the episode when it came out, and
Speaker 3: then because just one website ran with it and then
Speaker 3: everyone else ran with it, They're never gonna come out
Speaker 3: and do some bit of damage control damage.
Speaker 2: Right, absolutely, yeah. I mean the reason we're talking well,
Speaker 2: one of the reasons we're talking about.
Speaker 3: This, we got bombarded with all these emails and people saying,
Speaker 3: can you believe Marge's dead?
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do? Wach, She's not dead. Watched
Speaker 1: the episode? No, no one's watching the episode. They're reading
Speaker 1: the articles. Watch the episode. That's the thing that's the
Speaker 1: problem too. Matt, Salmon and Algie must be sitting there going, well,
Speaker 1: if you watch the episode, you know this isn't true.
Speaker 1: And it goes to show that so many people are
Speaker 1: reading these articles. But what percentage of these people reading
Speaker 1: the articles are actually watching The Simpsons? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's where the reality of their situation comes to light,
Speaker 1: where it goes ah, well, you know what people are
Speaker 1: believe in this and buying into it because they're not
Speaker 1: watching it if they. I saw the headline, I was like,
Speaker 1: I watch the episode, that's not what happens at all.
Speaker 1: Because so many people are buying it, it sort of puts
Speaker 1: into the light not as many people watching The Simpsons anymore.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, well we're living in recap culture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, everyone is so time poor there these days.
Speaker 2: It's like, unless it really is for you, appointment television
Speaker 2: or appointment viewing of any kinds, like we've all done
Speaker 2: into Homer where he says, yeah, give me the gist.
Speaker 3: And season thirty six, As I said, the episode is
Speaker 3: a Stranger Things. It's the finale of season thirty six,
Speaker 3: the eighteenth episode. I think any eighteen episodes this season
Speaker 3: due to the strike, well worth watching, really good story.
Speaker 1: Maybe sad.
Speaker 3: I think being a parent also hits her because it's like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, my kids are growing up. They don't
Speaker 3: like this show they liked and the Little Kids and more,
Speaker 3: they're two grown up for it now. And it's like
Speaker 3: the concern that March has in the episode, it's necessarily
Speaker 3: that they're growing up. It's that they're growing apart because
Speaker 3: that was the show that they would watch together, and
Speaker 3: because they don't like it anymore, they get different interests.
Speaker 3: And that's where she goes, Oh, my family's drifting.
Speaker 2: Get a bit fregnant.
Speaker 1: And then we've go to the future.
Speaker 3: We find it that March has passed away, and we
Speaker 3: said that their relationship still hasn't recovered. They've drifted apart.
Speaker 3: They don't dislike each other, they've just drifted apart. And
Speaker 3: it's a beautiful story.
Speaker 2: Well, and it also sounds kind of smart in a
Speaker 2: lot of way. I mean, hopefully it's not. Oh isn't
Speaker 2: it terrible when you know, paths diverged like that. That's
Speaker 2: kind of a natural. I imagine that you and your sister,
Speaker 2: you've got, you know, you love each other, but you've
Speaker 2: got a lot of stuff as like, oh, she's off
Speaker 2: doing that shit. Yeah yeah, and she's probably Brendan's doing
Speaker 2: his thing. Yeah yeah. It doesn't mean you don't love
Speaker 2: each other or care about or even have an interest
Speaker 2: or respect for what each other is doing. It's like,
Speaker 2: it's just not my thing, so you're not in each
Speaker 2: other's pockets all the time. I Holy yeah, Look, I
Speaker 2: say all this having not watch the episode. I'm going
Speaker 2: to go home and watch it now. Yeah, after we
Speaker 2: record our episodes of what we're about.
Speaker 1: To talk about.
Speaker 2: But Mark Simpson not dead, March Simpson not dead. And
Speaker 2: by the way, yeah, I'm going to read a little
Speaker 2: bit from entertainment trade paper Variety, Matt selm was interviewed
Speaker 2: the official word from Simpsons executive producer Matt Selman, friend
Speaker 2: of the pod, actual friend of Dando, who confirms it
Speaker 2: what happened in the recent season finale of the series
Speaker 2: is not canon. That's because after seven hundred and ninety episodes, Wow,
Speaker 2: there is no canon, he told Variety.
Speaker 3: He's convinced me. See that's now my mentality. I literally
Speaker 3: said that at the start of this, when we're doing this,
Speaker 3: it's Cannon doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Simpsons doesn't even have canon.
Speaker 3: No, how can I have canon off for thirty six seasons,
Speaker 3: you'll be familiar, But.
Speaker 1: Canon's just gone.
Speaker 3: Canon was the first nine or ten seasons and then
Speaker 3: it evolved and Canad just isn't the thing anyway. You
Speaker 3: can't rely on cannon.
Speaker 2: You would drive yourself and saying, I think when you're
Speaker 2: coming up on eight hundred episodes. Yeah, you're gonna have
Speaker 2: off ramps and tangents and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: I think it's got its foundation of like this, this
Speaker 2: is about a family in a town and their community.
Speaker 2: But beyond that's like, no, let's go into the future.
Speaker 2: Let's go into the past, let's go into alternate dimensions.
Speaker 2: Let's you know, let's multiverse this, bitch.
Speaker 3: I think if you rely on canon, you are limiting
Speaker 3: your creative possibilities. I think if every show lives in
Speaker 3: its own vacuum, still maintain the substance of the show.
Speaker 2: You've got to have internal logic.
Speaker 3: Yes, but if every show lives in its own bubble,
Speaker 3: then you can just be fun and be creative with
Speaker 3: I've always enjoyed the episodes where they go what we
Speaker 3: format bending episodes. We used to refer to them as
Speaker 3: like Trilogy of Error and twenty two short films about Springfield,
Speaker 3: those kind of things. They're really really entertaining. They do
Speaker 3: a lot more of them in recent seasons. Season thirty six,
Speaker 3: A Stranger Things, check it out, March is not dead,
Speaker 3: Marge very much still a line.
Speaker 1: Now let's go and.
Speaker 3: Record our reviews of Bob's pods and town's future on
Speaker 3: for our Patreon.
Speaker 1: Shall we? Let's do that, Let's do it.