“Don’t look in my closet!  In fact, stay out of my room altogether.” – Bart Simpson
“If the pets die, don’t replace them.  I’ll know!” – Lisa Simpson

The A.V. Club’s massive and (very) long running series of reviews of what they call “Classic” episodes picked up this week with “Kamp Krusty”.  The article is justifiably glowing (“still feels bracingly dark and sharp and uncompromising”), and it makes much of the wonderfully subversive theme of kids revolting against the unjust and incompetent adults who run their lives.  But it glosses over one of the best scenes in the episode: when the bus to camp finally departs and the adults celebrate like they just won a war.

Part of what makes this scene so great is the unmitigated joy the parents feel, with that one anonymous mother even yelling, “Don’t come back!”.  Parents disliking their kids isn’t exactly a new idea in fiction, anyone who’s ever encountered a Grimm fairy tale can tell you that, but on The Simpsons it isn’t just some parents, it’s all of them.  The implication to any kid viewer is loud and clear: your parents don’t actually like you.

Another great part of this is the way the kids understand that and don’t trust  their parents.  There’s Martin’s disgust that his parents are forcing him into “fat camp”, but there’s also Bart and Lisa’s last second pleas as the bus departs.  Even the children who are going willingly know that the adults are up to something. 

But what makes it one of those perfect moments The Simpsons was incomprehensibly good at creating is that the worst instincts of both sides are true.  The kids are indeed right to distrust the parents, and the episode makes much of their rebellion.  But the parents are also right to want to get rid of their spawn.  Life is better without the little monsters, and there’s nothing in the episode that suggests otherwise. 

That thought is hilariously grim, in no small part because given even a moment’s consideration it’s also self evidently true.  Having kids is expensive and stressful, and while most popular culture will fall back on lighthearted jokes and platitudes about love and indefinable value when confronting that, The Simpsons just leaves it there to stand on its own.  That rapturous cheer when the bus pulls away is made even funnier because, as far as this episode is concerned, it isn’t a joke.