Jokes that took you a long time to understand

[Financial Panther]

I always thought Frank Ormand was saying about pretzels, "Not only is it not bad, it's not bread." I learned on Reddit that he was actually saying "knot bread," which makes so much more sense.

Also, there were those typical "adult" jokes like "higher, dad, higher!" in Brother From the Same Planet that I didn't understand for a long time. What flew over your head?

[Steamed Hams]

Hmmm, I'll have to think on this one. One that does come to mind for me that I know a few people didn't get but you know the episode with the Smashing Pumpkins? And one of the guys says 'Billy Corgan Smashing Pumpkins' and then Homer replies 'Homer Simpson smiling politely', I did find I had to explain that to a few people before haha. They're really clever though cause a lot of the times The Simpsons make you go 'Ah yeah' afterwards. Their humour is really clever though.

They tend to do that sometimes with the play on words like the not/knot thing you mentioned. Reminds me of the 'You like Thai, I like Tie, you like shirt' clip of Homer lol

I think sometimes I tend to not be too familiar with some of the guest stars specially if they're US based as opposed to international, so sometimes if a joke is relating to them or their career then it doesn't really click with me because I don't really know of them, so there is that. I can't think off the top of my head who but I know there's been times where it's been like that just simply because I didn't know enough about the person in the episode that they've got in.

[Financial Panther]

I'm that way with a lot of guest stars because I don't pay much attention to pop culture. That's why I don't find a lot of episodes that center on guest stars to be very good, especially if it has a lot of jokes that rely on you knowing about the person. They can still be decent if the guest star only plays a supporting role, though.

[Steamed Hams]

Yeah, I kinda feel with the guest stars too it's all down to how the role was done for them. For example the Michael Jackson one was brilliant (he was a huge fan of the show anyway) and I thought Mulder & Scully was great too in their episode, Kim Basinger is another however I also quite liked the small roles in some ways as they often created a nice touch to the episode.

I think one of my favourites in that sense was Bret Hart in 'The Old Man & The Lisa' as although the role was quite short, it seemed kinda fitting for that scene and I thought it was done well.

[Financial Panther]

Ah, you liked Stark Raving Dad? It's not bad, and I liked the fact that Jackson played a guy who pretended he was Jackson instead of just playing himself, which he likely would've done if the episode had aired later. Still, it's a little too Jackson...er, Kompowksy-focused for me, and it seemed to be pandering to him a bit.

[Steamed Hams]

Yeah. I do wonder if that episode was done like that because at the time he was a huge fan of the show, really wanted to work with them and of course we know all the complications in regards to Sony not wanting him to do anything that was outside of their contract but I do know that the singing part of the show was a sound a like because they were funny about him performing on the show. The voice was fine but singing not so much as he was signed to Sony at the time and they got a bit funny about it, as many people know he left Sony anyway in the end and pretty much outed them but still, it's interesting is that cause he could have actually appeared as Michael in that episode had their not been these complications around it.

Who knows?

[huejass]

That Boo-Urns joke I still don't really get

[spankologicalprofile]

In "Homer the Father", Homer tries to order a collectable plate, and Marge moans sadly as he reads aloud the mailing address from the catalogue, which was from a 1980's TV merchandise company. The mailing address was "1 World Trade Center". I didn't really get it when I was younger, until I saw the episode "Rednecks and Broomsticks", which had Selma saying "you didn't think I was so ugly when we made out behind a fish joint once". Kent Brockman then says, "oh yeah, we all did crazy things during 9/11". I finally realized that the mailing order joke was a 9/11 reference after that. Surprisingly though, when it comes to 9/11 jokes, The Simpsons has tried to be tasteful and subtle with theirs.