Welcome to Everyone - Tree house of Horror
01:27:46
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Back by absolutely no demand it’s a Welcome To Everyone bonus episode for Halloween! In a world filled with divisions, it’s time to find common ground, and for a few generations, that’s quoting The Simpsons. The Not For Everyone Podcast’s Snobby Bobby and Crude Rude Dude team up with Welcome To Horror’s Chris, Lee and Adam to put together their ultimate list of The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror segments. You didn’t ask for it, and we delivered. A Halloween gift from the “Welcome To Everyone” team, we hope you enjoy.
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Adam whether or whatever, we're all more or less the same age.
Adam And I was telling my wife last time, I'm like, this like, this is our entire genera- multiple generations since of humor is this is foundational to all of it.
Chris Yeah.
Adam just everything from line delivery to referenciness. It's just like, it's all The Simpsons, you know.
Chris Yeah.
Adam That's I sent a thing to Bobby about this, there's a play where, it's set after like the apocalypse.
Adam And, the characters bond over recreating an episode of The Simpsons, because it's the only thing that that they could they all know.
Chris Yeah.
Adam Like all these disparate group of people, but the one thing they all can do is probably verbatim do a Simpsons episode.
Chris Nice.
Adam It's the great unifier.
Chris It is.
Adam Yeah.
Adam I mean, I would say it it bounds generational gaps too.
Adam Because my 10-year-old at this point in history, and I and I'm kind of ashamed and kind of proud to make this statement, probably seen more episodes of The Simpsons than me.
Chris
Adam On Disney Plus, and this dude will just watch it all.
Adam I mean, like, I'll go through to like season 26, and he's watched all of it.
Adam And I'm like, I'd never seen one episode.
Chris Yeah.
Adam But then I'll walk in when it's on and it's something I've never seen.
Adam And just being in the room for three minutes, I will start laughing because there's always something freaking funny on The Simpsons.
Chris Yeah.
Adam I still know what.
Chris Absolutely.
Adam It's still hilarious.
Adam Let's just do this. let's start with Lee. Like, have you been keeping up with The Simpsons this entire time it's been on?
Lee No, I, so I watched up to, probably about season 15 or so.
Lee And then I dropped out and I'd not seen anything since, and I still haven't, apart from I went and watched all of the Halloween ones and with the exception of that, yeah, I've seen very little of the the later ones really.
Chris I didn't even realise they were still making it, to be honest.
Chris I like, not, I didn't had no idea.
Adam Huge fan, didn't know it was still on.
Chris What like, I remember when it came out and yeah, like blown away by this cartoon that had, you know, all sorts of references in, brought its own references and just the characters were so unusual for cartoon at that age.
Chris When it came out, I I just yeah, I don't know, they captured something so special. but yeah, and then I don't know, one day I just completely forgot it existed and nobody ever mentioned it since.
Chris Until, really, until you brought it up. I was like, what, they're still doing it? And then they're like, hey, there's a mashup with Family Guy, and they're like, The Simpsons still on?
Adam Yeah.
Chris Yeah.
Adam I mean, they they push it pretty heavy in America still.
Adam And what what about you, UK Adam?
Adam It was a it was a weird one for me because it was the different it was the essential difference between whether your family had satellite TV or not.
Chris
Adam And we didn't, and I but I remembered, weirdly enough, I did remember the Tracey Ullman Show.
Adam Because we were fan we we were fans of her anyway over here, and then that show came on and The Simpsons was basically the slightly annoying bit in the middle where you're like sort of, well, this isn't anything to do with the rest of the show.
Chris Interesting.
Adam But then when it was and then, yeah, we didn't have satellite telly, so I didn't I didn't see it when it first sort of bloomed.
Adam And probably the first bits I saw were they then started showing it on BBC Two, and it was probably around the time they did the X-Files episode.
Adam Because I think at that point, the two things were at such a zenith.
Chris Yeah.
Adam Yeah, it would be daft not to show it to the world.
Adam And then they started releasing it on video and I was buying them all, so.
Adam But again, I just drifted out of the fact it was on. I think it was almost like there's so much of it now.
Chris Yeah.
Adam You know.
Adam Not, I mean, it's not like, it's not like the MCU or something like that. It's not like it, you know, they they deliberately make episodes about how you can watch The Simpsons at any point and not really know what's going on.
Chris Right.
Adam You know, there's the episode where we find out the truth about Principal Skinner, and then they just say, well, everyone's just gonna call you Principal Skinner and forget about the other bloke. And, yeah.
Adam What's the truth about Principal Skinner?
Adam He's a no good nick. He's Armond something or other. He's not even real. He's like an Arminian.
Chris Yeah, yeah.
Adam Right?
Adam He's like it's he met the real Skinner in Vietnam, and the real Skinner died in action, so he took his name.
Adam Yeah, and he just plays his mum, didn't even care.
Adam This sounds vaguely familiar.
Chris That's it.
Adam Steamed Hams.
Adam Okay, so let me ask you guys this, like, was there kind of, like, it sounds like it was exclusive to satellite, according to what you just said, Adam.
Adam But like, was there any kind of like, puritanical rejection of The Simpsons when it first appeared on the scene? Like, were people were parents and in school boards, you know, frightened and appalled by it?
Adam Not letting you say cowabunga or eat my shorts.
Chris I don't remember any teachers caring at all.
Adam I was going like, right when this started getting popular, I was going into like kindergarten, first grade, and we weren't, for a while there, we weren't allowed to wear shirts of The Simpsons to school.
Chris Really? Wow.
Adam Yeah, and now it just seems so benign and like, yeah.
Adam That that never happened over here.
Adam We had it with South Park. There was a big controversy with South Park.
Adam Which again is the opposite way around where it's like, if you watch South Park now, fuck me, the stuff they get away with. It's even worse now in a good way.
Adam But but no one's no one's watching from the moral majority to complain about it.
Chris Right.
Adam But yeah, The Simpsons never really, we never got that over here. We got, do the Bartman.
Adam The big the big argument was, I just remember the big argument being like, well, Bart Simpson disrespects his father. I'm like, but his father's a fucking idiot and it's kind of the entire point of the show.
Adam Like, even in like first grade I'd be like, yeah, but like we all know like hopefully my father's not as dumb, like, you know, it's just like you can still discern like the moral imperative of The Simpsons at a young age.
Chris And I think Bart does respect his mum enough.
Adam Right.
Chris You know, it's Yeah.
Adam You know, no one just no one respects her mum.
Adam I remember seeing a thing with Matt Groening where he says, they, they're the only family on TV that go to church.
Chris Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Adam Every week, they zip it.
Adam They they are essentially a perfect family.
Adam And in the just the idea of Springfield is just so any town USA, you know, intentionally.
Adam Like I've always thought if I had all the time in the world, I could watch every episode of The Simpsons and try to figure out where Springfield most likely would be. Like, what state it would be in, but I've not had the time.
Adam But that said, I would say this is my second fandom as a child.
Adam Like my first was Pee-wee Herman. Like I was obsessed with Pee-wee Herman. Like that's my first cognisant recollection of being a fan of something.
Adam And then The Simpsons quickly overshadowed that right as it was coming out.
Adam And I was like, it doesn't, like my parents didn't care, but even if they did, like there's no way you would keep me from that.
Adam My dad used to put it on all the time.
Adam Yeah, yeah, eventually they came around to it anyway.
Adam but it would come on every day after school, two episodes, it would be what, Adam? Home Improvement, The Simpsons, Home Improvement. And The Simpsons, you're like, fuck, I gotta wait through another goddamn episode of Home Improvement to watch another episode of The Simpsons.
Adam And then there would be another one on at like 10:00 at night.
Adam Yeah, so what Adam was saying earlier is you needed to have the satellite TV to have it.
Adam It went the entire opposite here in the States.
Adam First, when I was little, 'cause this shit came out when I was like 10 years old, so I was like the prime age. And it was once a week, you had to wait for once a week.
Adam And then it got to the point where we'd come on at 6:00 at night too, every night, once it got to like season three or four and they had enough.
Adam And then it was Simpsons, Home Improvement, Simpsons, Home Improvement.
Adam And then at 10:00, it would come on.
Chris Married with Children sometimes too.
Adam Right. So by the time, like, mid-2000, the year 2000, I mean, The Simpsons was on like at least two hours a day in America.
Adam And when I was a kid in like junior high and high school, I had the buddy that would record every episode on The Simpsons.
Adam You have another buddy that did that too.
Adam And like.
Chris Yeah.
Adam The the the commercials. So I had the one friend that had all The Simpsons on VHS, you know.
Adam And he'd like, he was the the nerd that would go through and label them out, they're like, oh, you know, we want to watch Itchy and Scratchy Land.
Adam Like, he knows we could we don't have to wait until it just randomly comes on.
Adam You know.
Chris Yeah.
Adam I remember having the thought back in those days of like, they should just make an entire fucking channel that just plays The Simpsons.
Adam Like when I was like nine, I'm like, that's all I have TV for. That's all I want to watch.
Adam It's already on three hours a day. Just make a whole channel where you just play them on repeat.
Chris Now we have Disney Plus, which is what we need.
Adam It's streaming.
Adam But also, if you have regular cable in America, The Simpsons is still on at least two hours a day. There's some channel playing The Simpsons at least two hours a day. No doubt about it.
Adam It's it's weird, it's kind of got like that over here.
Chris Yeah.
Adam In the, I think, BBC Two, Channel 4, Sky, Disney Plus, like, everyone just shows, so you can like, it's a Sunday morning, oh, Simpsons will probably be on.
Adam It's the longest running fucking television show that's not like news or some shit.
Adam It's it's probably, you know, as much as we talk about, you know, it kind of fell off in this season and we don't really watch it anymore, then Adam saying his kid watches other.
Adam If they they probably run the numbers and said like, it's we're better off playing The Simpsons. I mean, it's a guaranteed paycheque for the networks if you just play a lot of Simpsons, like someone's gonna watch it. Like that that, you know, it fills that quota in one way or another.
Adam So,
Adam anything else before we jump into the the lists here?
Lee I just wanted to say very quickly something that Adam said about earlier about, you know, like he loves it and his kid loves it and it sort of spans the generations.
Lee I remember when it first came on on a Sunday, like there was always a battle in our house for who was gonna get to the TV first, 'cause like if my parents came in, that was it. It didn't matter what you were watching, what you were doing, they were like, well, I don't want to see that, so it's going off.
Lee and The Simpsons was the one thing for half an hour every Sunday night, we all would be there 20 minutes early, like waiting for it to start, so we could all sit and watch it together and then we'd all just go our separate ways for the rest of the week, television wise, so.
Adam The great unifier.
Chris Yeah.
Lee Absolutely.
Adam I mean, it's I get jokes now from the old seasons that I didn't get when I was a kid.
Adam We replaced church and Sunday supper with The Simpsons in the 90s, basically.
Adam Yeah, they went to church so that we didn't have to.
Adam They went to church so that we didn't have to.
Adam Yeah.
Chris Does The Simpsons explain the downfall of society then?
Adam Thrill me.
Adam Music.
