Postcards from the Wedge

"Postcards from the Wedge"
The Simpsons episode
File:Postcards From The Wedge.png
Episode no.	Season 21
Directed by	Mark Kirkland
Written by	Brian Kelley
Original air date	March 14, 2010
Episode features
Couch gag	The couch is a piñata. A blindfolded Ralph hits it, and the family falls out.

"Postcards from the Wedge" is the fourteenth episode of The Simpsons' twenty-first season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 14, 2010. In the episode, Once again, Homer and Marge try to discipline Bart after Mrs. Krabappel tells them that Bart has not been doing his homework, but Bart has a plan to manipulate Homer's strictness and Marge's sympathetic ear.

The episode was written by Brian Kelley and directed by Mark Kirkland. The episode features references to fello FOX show House and The Jetsons. The episode received mostly positive reviews and got an 18-49 Nielsen Rating of 2.6/8.

Plot

At school, after Mrs. Krabappel shows a video from 1956 to her students about the future, she tells her students to turn in their homework project (which they had three months to do). Bart cannot find his homework, so he tries to make his homework on the fly out of odds and ends found in his desk. Unfortunately Mrs. Krabappel does not approve and prepares to send a letter to his parents. She gives it to Martin to mail and he heads out the door. Bart shoots an eraser at the pull station, breaking the glass, pressing the button and activating the alarm. Everyone evacuates, but Bart runs through 6th graders to which he gets through. He almost gets the letter when it drops out of the mail slot but Groundskeeper Willie heads off with the mailbag.

Homer and Marge then receive the letter from Edna Krabappel informing them that Bart is one month behind on his homework. When Homer is informed that he does not have to help Bart with this work, he is eager to increase his son's workload. Marge, however, is concerned that the heavy workload will dissuade Bart from liking school. When Bart realizes his parents do not agree on this issue, he uses their opposing views to avoid homework entirely. Lisa explains that this is a wedge issue, that is, an issue that sharply divides two parties.

Marge and Homer begin to argue more and more, with Bart inciting the two to argue about very minor things. Marge seeks counsel from Ned Flanders, who recalls having a minor argument with Maude on the day she died. He mentions that this argument still haunts him and Marge decides to apologize. Meanwhile, Homer dreams about accidentally killing Marge and realizes that he too wants to apologize. The two spot each other in traffic, rush out of their vehicles and embrace. They then decide to let Bart fend for himself.

When Bart realizes that neither parent will react to his misbehavior, he and Milhouse play a prank on Principal Skinner. To evade capture by Skinner, Bart and Milhouse hide in the abandoned Springfield subway system where they discover the subway trains still work. They race down the tracks and cause a seismic tremor to shake the town. When Homer and Marge fail to react to this, Bart confesses to Nelson that he no longer feels a thrill when he plays a prank. Nelson suggests Bart receives no gratification from pranks unless someone gets angry.

Bart decides to destroy Springfield Elementary, which was damaged by the first subway tremor, by driving the train under it. Homer and Marge find a note from Lisa informing them of this prank and they decide to stop ignoring Bart. They rush to the subway station, where Homer pulls the emergency kill switch, but the school is destroyed anyway, when a flagpole falls against the already damaged building. Bart is grounded but is happy that his parents are paying attention to him once more. At the end, Lisa reveals that Bart wrote the note about the subway prank, suggesting that he wanted to be caught, but promising to keep it secret to protect his bad-boy reputation.

Cultural references

The opening is a parody of The Jetsons. Bart watches Pokémon anime on TV, and he questions how the show has managed to stay so "fresh" over the years. The Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver games, remakes of the original Pokémon Gold and Silver versions, were released on the same day this episode first went to air in North America. When Homer and Marge are punishing Bart at the end, Homer said : "You must consistently twitter me exactly what you're up to even though I don't know what twitter is and I've no desire to find out." The Itchy & Scratchy episode Mouse, M.D. is a reference to the TV series House.When Patty and Selma are over, Patty is eating a Hersheys bar. The film shown at the beginning promoting the automobile over public transportation is spoofed after a cartoon produced in 1957 by the Automobile Manufacturers Association and GM's "Design for Dreaming" promotional film. In keeping with the theme of public transit systems being abandoned due to the automobile, the Springfield Subway's fate is a reference to the GM Streetcar Scandal. The train cars in the Springfield Subway is modeled after Los Angeles' Pacific Electric streetcars.

Reception

In the original American broadcast, "Postcards from the Wedge" was viewed by 5.233 million viewers and got a 18-49 Nielsen Rating of 2.6/8 coming second in its timeslot after Amazing Race making it the third most viewed show on Fox that night after a new episode of Family Guy and a rerun of the Simpsons episode, "The Great Wife Hope, but the second highest rated show on FOX that night after Family Guy." The episode received positive reviews. Robert Canning of IGN gave the episode an 8 saying it was "Outstanding" and "Again, the story was nothing entirely new, but the jokes were smart and fun and worth sitting on the couch for a half-hour.".Ariel Ponywether of firefox gave the episode a B- and said that "There were some very solid moments in this episode, with some surprisingly subversive humor throughout, and the final scene was a real winner.The middle stretch slows down the episode’s pacing a bit." On Yahoo TV the episode got 84% saying it was good out of 6 ratings.Todd VerDan Werff of The A.V Club gave the episode a B the tieing Family Guy and said that " I don't think the plotting here was as tight as it might have been - lots of threads were introduced and then mostly left dangling, and the end was particularly abrupt - but I laughed fairly frequently, and that will be enough".Jason Hughes of The TV Squad said that "All in all, while it was an unexpectedly serious episode, it was a pleasant enough one as well. No big guffaws, but enough smiles to go around."