Hi folks and this is the second post for this weekend. I haven’t actually watched Brother from the Same Planet all that much, so I will leave the heavy lifting on this to a video I had recently found on Youtube. Check out this from a Simpsons related YouTuber and then I will go over main parts of the plot and what I love about the episode. By the way, if you have read my post on The Simpsons and Youtube, this guy should be familiar to you. https://youtu.be/y07dagypqQI
Let’s remember that the plot basically goes as follows, with Homer forgetting to pick Bart up after socker practice and wen he finally does, Bart will not speak to his father. So, Bart gets a big brother at the Bigger Brothers Agency named Tom, who is voiced by Phil Hartman. The guy is musclebound and drives a pretty cool car.
Meanwhile, Homer gets jealous and gets a little brother named Pepi. Eventually, Tom and Homer meet after Bart had made up a story, about Homer being a drunken gambler and then, the knockdown drag out fight ensued. Bart felt bad and had resolved to make things right with Tom taking Pepi home and we get a father and son reunion.
With Lisa, she runs up a massive phone bill calling the Corey Hotline, which is probably one of those 1900 numbers, which always charges you when you call them. There was a number I knew about in the early 2000s called Weather Menu, which was only available in Ontario and had recorded weather forecasts and weather conditions on it, by pressing various keys on the keypad. That was paid for by the federal government, as it was a service of Environment Canada. There was another service called Weather One-On-One where you can talk to a meteorologist and on both numbers, they would provide special forecasts you wouldn’t hear on Weatheradio Canada, especially with the new software which was burbling out information to us on the phone, and on WXR’s, or Weatheradio Canada transmitters across Canada. There were also individual phone numbers for various cities and towns across Canada, including Toronto and Ottawa, where you could call them and you would get the option of hearing only forecasts or weather conditions, along with air quality index forecasts. These days it has been consolidated into one toll-free number, per language, now called Hello Weather! And it is pretty cool, if you get to know how to access information for your local area. If you know your numbers and letters as it applies to the telephone keypad, you are in business. This number is only available to Canadians and if you want it, here it is in this link in another of my blogs. https://weatheradiolistenersnewsletter.wordpress.com/2021/11/17/say-hello-2-weather/
Probably my favourite part is when Kent Brockman has been had, when he reads out a prank call on the air, when reporting the brawl between Homer and Tom, which also happens to be a call back to Season 1 and one of Bart’s prank calls to Moe. I love his reaction to it, especially when he has no problem being all sensationalist, when it comes to news and this is even before he gets fired for swearing.
Back to the Corey Hotline for a moment, why couldn’t Corey Taylor of Slipknot guest star as Corey, but as a villainess version, encouraging Lisa to do dastardly things to Springfield and against her own beliefs? It would be an original idea and maybe it could also be a satire of some obscure horror movie, but I’d love to hear this happen. Yes, I know that I am grasping at straws trying to find some way of a member of Slipknot to guest star on The Simpsons, because they are one of my favourite bands.
One more thing I should mention is that Bart and Tom watch The Ren & Stimpy Show and back in 1993, I was a fan and only watched a few episodes. Me and a friend did Ren and Stimpy, with me being Stimpy and my friend doing Ren, as he sounded more like Ren than me. Altho, we could do both voices reasonably well. We used that talent for our audio yearbook for that school year, as I would graduate in June 1994. Me and my friend were room mates for a few months in a house on campus and the idea was for us to be in there for a year. I was in the house for six months previous to the school year starting and so, I had moved out in February 1994. I would move back into a residence, which I hated. The only good thing is that I got to eat with the other students instead of the same 6 other guys and there was a female counterpart house that was around then. Anyway, I don’t know how I got onto that, when talking about Ren & Stimpy, but I did.
Over all, I like the episode and it is kinda cool, that Bart got to hang with someone else besides Homer and I wish they could have done more episodes with Tom, but with a different voice.
Simpsons on Sundays 