“For decimating our pigeon population, and making Springfield a less oppressive place to while away our worthless lives, I present you with this scented candle.” – Mayor Quimby
For the third summer in a row, we at the Dead Homer Society are looking to satisfy your off-season longing for substandard commentary on substandard Simpsons. This summer we’ll be looking at Season 10. Why Season 10? Because we’ve already done Seasons 8 and 9 and we can’t put it off any longer. Prior to Season 10, we watched as the show started falling over, this is when it fell over. And while the dust wouldn’t settle completely for another season or so, there is no bigger gap in quality than the one between Season 9 and Season 10. Since we prefer things to remain just as they were in 1995, we’re sticking with this chatroom thing instead of some newer means of communication that we all know just isn’t as good. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “blithely”).
Today’s episode is 1003, “Bart the Mother”. Tomorrow will be 1004, “Treehouse of Horror IX”.
[Note: Mad Jon was trying to join us via smart phone and it, uh, didn’t work quite as well as we hoped. So if this seems stupider than usual, blame Steve Jobs.]
Charlie Sweatpants: Good to go?
Dave: I am
Charlie Sweatpants: "Bart the Mother" is like all the bad parts of "Marge Be Not Proud", but even slower and minus most of the humor. There’s a reason I never watch this episode.
Mad Jon: This one really makes me feel bad, and relatively anxious. Not quite what I’m looking for in a cartoon.
Dave: It is really dull as shit.
It tries to tug at your heartstrings but fails pretty hard.
Charlie Sweatpants: And it takes so damn long to do it. Everything from Bart’s reluctance to shoot, to Marge finding out about the bird and then the eggs, what’s going to happen becomes obvious long before individual scenes are even close to completed.
Dave: Oh sure, but it’s just co-opting normal sitcom conventions, right? You gotta ease the audience in and then make them feel smart as they figure out the obvious
Charlie Sweatpants: Normal sitcom conventions indeed. That’s always been my big complaint about "Marge Be Not Proud", and here it’s even worse.
Dave: I suppose there could have been an opportunity there to have some fun, but expecting that out of the show’s writers in S10 is asking a lot.
Charlie Sweatpants: Well, the Troy McClure video is pretty good. I always laugh at "Man vs. Nature: The Road to Victory".
Dave: I do like the tongs, for reasons I’ve never fully resolved.
Charlie Sweatpants: Well, it’s pretty funny the way he’s just blithely tormenting the bird.
Dave: I guess that makes me a bad person.
Charlie Sweatpants: Nah, there’s plenty of other reasons you’re a bad person.
Dave: Thanks.
Charlie Sweatpants: I calls ’em like I sees ’em.
Back to the episode, there are quite a few good one liners here, but that’s all they are, one liners.
Here it seems like they’ve really lost their ability to string together whole scenes
Dave: I’d agree with that.
They were quite good with horns of sadness and suspense though.
Does that balance things out?
Charlie Sweatpants: No. No it does not.
There’s also a distinct whiff of Zombie Simpsons at the bird watching meeting. Why the hell were Burns and Smithers there?
Dave: Because.
Charlie Sweatpants: Exactly, it’s that same impulse to just jam characters into scenes.
Skinner I can buy, Apu I can buy, Burns? Not so much.
Mad Jon: I did like how Jasper sees the pigeon, crosses it off the list and bolts like he was there for punishment.
Dave: I’d even say Smithers is acceptable.
But the combination of the two of them is quite off.
Charlie Sweatpants: Yeah, I could see Smithers there.
Dave: As if they were setup for a "joke" that didn’t happen.
Charlie Sweatpants: I guess it’s always possible something got cut, but this isn’t an episode that felt like a lot got left out. Quite the opposite, many things felt like time killing.
And speaking of whiffs of Zombie Simpsons, Homer in the batting cage.
Dave: Ugh, yeah.
And the whole go kart nonsense.
They just go on. Forever.
Mad Jon: I like the sign at the Family Fun Center "As seen on When Disaster Strikes 4"
Charlie Sweatpants: Agreed. I kinda like Marge’s "stick with the plan" thing, but, much like the rest of the episode, most of the scene tacks on way too long.
So a couple of good things aside (Quimby’s speech, Skinner listing the dirty sounding bird names), we’re agreed that this one is pretty lame overall?
Dave: That sums it up, yeah.
Charlie Sweatpants: Unless there’s anything else, let’s make it Halloween in June.
Dave: Let’s.
Dead Homer Society 
13 responses to “Crazy Noises: Bart the Mother”
I think the only reason why I’m not tough and critical of this episode is because (as I recall) it was David S. Cohen’s last episode that he wrote for the show before leaving for greener pastures as executive producer of Futurama. I do admit that I love the twist that he put in (they being lizards instead of birds), which made the episode memorable to me, at least, as something that only Cohen, with his scientific background, would do.
It’s not exactly up there as the best, but I look at it more fondly than later episodes in this season because of this. (Plus, I’ll admit i embarrassment that I did get some of my heartstrings tugged when I first watched this episode.)
On a side note, it always depresses me to think that this was the last episode that Phil Hartman had a part in. But, you could say that at the very least, his untimely death managed to get his two characters out of future episodes for good, before the writers had a chance to ruin them, much like they did to Moe, for example.
Woah, I had no idea Phil Hartman appeared after season 9. I assumed that was his last one… there ya go.
I will always change the channel if this episode is on. It is just Marge Be Not Proud recycled, but with rubbish tacked on at the end. More so than in MBNP, I feel like I’m the one being punished for Bart’s mischief. It’s one of the first ones that I really despise.
I think you’re halfway right. This was the last time Troy McClure ever appeared in the show, although by that time I think Hartman was already gone. They produced this episode very early in the season, plus I think they could modify some of Troy’s speech with the way it went. So yeah, the actor was already dead when it aired.
I don’t know if they modified any of his lines, but this one was a holdover from the Season 9 “5F” production run, so even though it was broadcast four months after he died, it would make sense that they already had his part in the can.
I’ve always wondered if any source made mention of this episode’s obvious inspiration (at least in my mind): the “Andy Griffith Show” episode, “Opie the Birdman.”
The one thing I’ll remember about this is it being the last time we hear from Troy McClure, as well as Mr. Hartman.
However, this episode wasn’t very good at all–it is like “Marge Be Not Proud,” just with a lot less humor. While “Marge Be Not Proud”‘s main failing (in my opinion) was that it is more formulaic, it still had some good lines and jokes, like “Buy me Bonestorm or go to Hell!” and Thrillhouse (spelled as “Thrillho”). This doesn’t even have that much; it tries to be too dramatic, yet somehow funny with the end.
The batting cage is the low point, while several things were milked for time. I do like Kent Brockman referring to the pigeon as the “feathered rat,” though, but it’s not worth wading through just about everything else to get to.
The batting cage scene is one of those things that really invokes Zombie Simpsons. Homer calling “ball” after he misses, and then confidently saying “this guy’s gonna walk me”, is funny. If they had cut the scene right there all would be well. Instead they let it go on and on and on.
Yea, I meant the part where Homer needlessly gets battered by baseballs is the low point for me and is very Zombie-like.
As for what he says before, I feel the same way. I think Homer says, “This bozo’s gonna walk me,” but either way, the batting cage scene should have ended there.
Relinquish the lizards.
Not a great episode, but still watchable compared to anything this millennium.
Loathed this episode when it first aired, still loath it now. I still vividly remember the look of disgust I had when hearing Bart make some comment about the eggs being his babies and he loved them. I’ve heard Nancy Cartwright say several times that this is one of her favourite episodes as well…
If memory serves, “Bart the Mother” is the first Simpsons episode I flat-out hated. I believe the line you’re referring to is “Everyone thinks they’re monsters, but I raised them, and I love them!” Urgh, I hate the fact that this stinkfest was penned by the usually-reliable David Cohen, and that it was Phil Hartman’s last episode.
Never one of my favorites, and it’s sad to think that this was Phil Hartman’s last role on the show.
Was this the one where Homer yells out the window to Milhouse to see where Bart is? I kind of liked that bit.
The critic on High Def Digest Mentioned this episode in his review of “Mega Python vs Gatoroid”:
“Perhaps these creature versus creature features have more in common with cartoons than I once thought. With ‘Mega Python vs Gatoroid,’ the newest attempt to capitalize on the rebirth of this low budget trend, I couldn’t help but think of two very memorable sequences, one from ‘The Simpsons’ (before it went all to hell), the other, a gag from classic ‘Looney Tunes’ lore. See, in ‘Bart the Mother,’ we have Bart Simpson accidentally killing a bird, only to find out it was to be a mother soon. So Bart cares for the eggs, only to sees lizards hatch, rather than what he was expecting. Soon an epidemic sweeps the town. In the end, though, the lizards kill the pigeons, which were a major nuisance, but soon, there are too many lizards. So, it’s proposed, Chinese needle snakes to take care of them, then snake-eating gorillas to clean up that mess. Then, “when wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.”