I was under the impression that in addition to the writers not liking him, Harry Shearer couldn't voice him without hurting his throat and that was a contributing factor.

Sorry I'm late. There was trouble at the lab with the running and the exploding and the crying when the monkeys stole the glasses off my head!

I never understood why Kent wound up in the Simpsons' house immediately after being fired when he owns a freaking mansion. Not that we hadn't seen that sort of plot hole before…

Astoundingly, everyone in the SNPP episode capsule gave "Homer and Apu" a B or better. This is from a group that thought "Homer's Barbershop Quartet" and "Homer Goes to College" were the worst episodes so far and the beginning of the show's decline.

Otto is a character that's been appearing less and less every year. It sounds like Harry Shearer can barely do his voice anymore, so maybe that's why - he's destined to become another Marvin Monroe.

"It's NBC. 'We Comedy!'"
"Kenneth, it's 'We Peacock Comedy.' You say the 'Peacock.'"
"What? That's insane!"

Dammit, you're right. The Simpsons stayed on Thursdays for 2 more years after The Cosby Show ended. My mistake.

It wasn't as successful against The Cosby Show as Fox had hoped, and that's probably why it moved from Thursdays back to Sundays, so there could be a grain of truth. I'd just never heard there was an actual threat of cancellation before.

Really? It was still the highest rated Fox show during most weeks of season 3, and the first time it regularly got less than 20 million viewers per episode was the second half of season 5. Season 5 was also the first season it wasn't one of the top 40 shows on tv.

You gotta love how much effort they put into all those books when a quick cash-in would have sufficed. My copy of "Bart Simpson's Guide to Life" is falling apart from all the times I've flipped through it.

That is so 1991.

My rationale for doing this in Classic Simpsons reviews is that it would be fun to recreate the "Simpsons at 8:00, KotH at 8:30" experience and always cover the KotH episode that aired on the same night as the corresponding Simpsons episode (except in March, where often one show would be new and the other a repeat).

Well, to prolong the series, Lisa was secretly given anti-growth hormones.

He was credited for another idea in one of the previous season 8 episodes I covered (can't remember which one), and I think I made a joke about how he must have been in his office for once that week.

His Tumblr says he studied at UC Berkeley for five semesters before dropping out, so it's entirely possible that we're both right.

See my edit. :)

I mentioned this discovery in a previous week's comments. It has to be, because both the SNPP contributor and the Comics Curmudgeon studied history at UC Berkeley. To ignore that evidence would be downright nutty!

I don't own any DVDs after this season, but I've heard that on the more modern commentaries, they're not apologetic at all, but it's obvious how they feel. They sound bored, ask each other boring questions, often go 2+ minutes without saying anything, launch into anecdotes that have nothing to do with the episode to…

King of the Hill

My job is awful this week, because it’s a sparse commentary and Wikipedia already has everything interesting from it (and it’s my policy not to duplicate Wikipedia), so half of my facts are not actually from the commentary.