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