Talk about working during an earthquake.

Very funny. My favorite part was when David Mirkin talked about how boring a choice George Meany was to have on Krusty's show.

Talk more about working during an earthquake.

At the beginning of this commentary, the commentators comment on how lousy this episode is, being a clip show and all. David Mirkin then spends the rest of the time talking about the process of making a Simpsons episode. If you're a gigantic geek like me, David Mirkin talking about table reads and animatics is really really interesting.

Talk about how an episode is made in detail.

Talk about censorship in cartoon violent.

Talk about how episode is a mock of the right-wing.

Talk about working with Meryl Streep.

They talk about how they hate what the media(news) as become. How the news is about making people look bad, not telling actually news.

Most of what is talked about is what is was like to work with Anne Bancroft and how much they love her work.

Talk about how Australia reacted to the episode.

This is the Simpsons episode that Matt Groening famously removed his name from. The topic is never brought to the foreground but Jon Lovitz repeatedly mentions that the commentary is supposed to be "positive" which of course means there's something to tiptoe around. Lovitz calls Al and Mike gay a bunch of times and then makes a joke about Phil Hartman being dead. I don't like this episode much, but I love watching it with the commentary to cover up that awful rapping rabbi joke at the beginning.

All they do is makes gay jokes.

It would have been very....errrr....'interesting' if Matt Groening had appeared on this commentary.

Talk about how 101 Dalmatians made them want to work in animation.

this commentary of the simpsons is the most informative i have ever seen. i have all the boxsets and i have listened to most of the commentaries and this beats loads of them. the especially interesting comment is a bout the competition "im not giving away anything". a truly magnificent commentary A+++++

This episode's commentary track may become part of this site's FAQ. That's because the site's owner, Herschel Gelman, mentioned at the bottom of each page, is talked about at length (relatively speaking) during the commentary, though not by name. The part that mentions Mr. Gelman is in Chapter 3.

"Who Shot Mr. Burns?" was a two-part cliff hanger which spanned the end of the sixth season and the beginning of the seventh. Fox held a contest people could enter to guess who the killer was. According to the commentary from show runner David Mirkin, "very, very, very" few people got it right. Although he didn't enter the contest, Herschel Gelman was one of them. Mirkin and the others commentators consider him -- Mirkin refers to him as the guy with the college email address -- the first one to get it right. This is based on the fact that Mr. Gelman posted the "right answer for the right reasons" to alt.tv.simpsons, a Usenet group the show's staff monitored. According to the commentary, Gelman got it right within an hour after broadcast, though the Google archive for the group makes it look like it might have been a few days later:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.simpsons/msg/0a577c84063d0a69
(warning: spoiler)

If Mr. Gelman hasn't tried to contact the Simpsons people by now, he needs to do so. The commentary track says they tried to reach him after the contest was over, but by that time his pitt.edu email address no longer worked. Here it is, ten years later, and they said on the commentary track that they tried again to track him down, with no luck. I don't think they tried very hard though, since I think I've found him after about fifteen minutes of google searches.

They say on the commentary that they want to give him a prize of some sort for being the first person to figure out who killed Mr. Burns. Herschel Gelman, if you haven't done so already, you need to collect your prize! :-)

Mainly talk about looking for guy who guessed who shot Mr. Burns right.