Apocalypse Cow

"Apocalypse Cow"
The Simpsons episode
Episode no.	Season 19
Directed by	Nancy Kruse
Written by	Jeff Westbrook
Original air dates	April 27, 2008
Episode features
Chalkboard gag	A person's a person, no matter how Ralph
Couch gag	A medieval tapestry shows the Flanders stealing the Simpson family's couch. The Simpsons then take it back and kill the Flanders.

"Apocalypse Cow" is the seventeenth episode of The Simpsons' nineteenth season. It aired on April 27, 2008. After joining 4-H, Bart saves a cow named Lou and gives it to Mary (guest voice Zooey Deschanel), a farm girl. Her father, Cletus, mistakenly believes it as a token for Mary's hand in marriage, and attempts to get the two married. It was written by Jeff Westbrook and directed by Nancy Kruse. All of Cletus' children from "Yokel Chords" return in this episode. Cletus's cousin, Dia-Betty, makes her third appearance on the show. 7.69 million viewers tuned into this episode.

Plot

Bart and Lisa watch the Krusty the Clown show's opening cartoon, "Transclown-O-Morphs". The show's main character is quickly placed in a life-threatening situation and pleads with the viewers to help him survive by buying the new Transclown-O-Morphs cereal. Fed up with the commercial messages placed in every TV show the kids watch, a frustrated Marge orders Lisa to make banana bread and Bart to go to Shelbyville with his father to have the beanbag chairs "rebeaned". While Bart and Homer drive to Shelbyville, they see Martin Prince driving a combine. Bart asks why someone like Martin would be driving a tractor, and Martin informs him he has joined 4-H. Lured by the prospect of operating heavy machinery, Bart joins as well and quickly masters driving a tractor. Later, the 4-H instructor introduces the members to a competition. Taking them to the calf pen, he informs them that they will each pick a calf and raise it over the summer, at the end of which the cattle will be judged at the county fair.

Bart is stuck with the runt of the litter, the misfit, and is unable to trade it away. He disappointedly goes to the milk shack, and meets Mary, (Zooey Deschanel), a fellow member, who encourages Bart not to give up in the competition so that he can show everyone what a misfit can really do. Bart agrees, and they name the young bull Lou. Throughout the following weeks, Bart takes good care of Lou and helps him become stronger, while also bonding with him and growing to love him. When the day of the competition arrives, Lou has evolved into a large bull and is awarded the blue ribbon. Bart is ecstatic until Lisa informs him that the next step is to send Lou to a slaughterhouse.

Bart tries to convince Marge and Homer to buy the bull, but they refuse. That night, Bart hears mooing as he lies in bed and believes it to be a hallucination caused by his inability to help Lou. He starts yelling in fear, and Lisa arrives and says it's simply his subconscious telling him to stop eating meat. However, the mooing is suddenly replaced by clucking noises, and Bart discovers that it was only a CD of Tress MacNeille's "Anguished Animal Noises," placed by Lisa, in an attempt to turn him vegetarian. Nevertheless, Bart, Lisa, and Lisa's friends, "Compost" and "Solar Panel", go to the slaughterhouse in the middle of the night, determined to save Lou. They discover that Lou, who has been fed growth hormones, is now much bigger, so they use a forklift to pick him up and carry him away. Hurrying from the slaughterhouse, they decide the only safe place they can take him is to Mary's home, which is on a farm. The next morning, they are shocked to discover that Cletus Spuckler is Mary's father.

Bart gives the cow to Mary, and Mary agrees to take it. Cletus then yells for Brandine to come to the door. When she learns that Bart offered Mary the cow, she informs them that according to the ancient law of the "hill folk", the giving of a cow constitutes a formal proposal of marriage. Against the wishes of both Bart and Mary, Cletus and Brandine plan the wedding for the next day; Lisa convinces Bart to go along with it long enough to let them figure out a way to save Lou. Upon learning what has happened, Homer and Marge are shocked that Bart would get married again and devise a scheme to prevent it. The next day, Marge arrives to stop the wedding, prompting Cletus to send Lou to the slaughterhouse. However, the "Lou" Cletus sent was actually Homer in disguise, while the real Lou is being sent to Apu's home country to be treated like a god. They save Homer from the slaughterhouse after a close shave, after which Homer vows to cut back on his meat eating and Bart reflects with pride that he can finally say, wherever Lou is, "I had a cow, man."

Cultural references

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Transclownomorphs

The episode's title is a reference to the film Apocalypse Now. "Trans-Clown-O-Morphs" are a parody of Transformers. The training of Lou punching meat is similar to a scene in Rocky. When Bart is combining, he goes over manure and creates Pirates of the Carribean 3. The airport scene at the end is a parody of a scene in Casablanca.

Reception

7.7 million viewers tuned into this episode. Richard Keller of TV Squad thought of the episode as another decent installment in the Simpsons like other Bart and Lisa centric episodes. He also thought "it was unfortunate that these kinds of episodes couldn't have dispersed more evenly throughout the season". He also thought of "the idea of Bart being put into a nature-related environment was unnatural like putting Dustin Diamond in an Academy Award nominated film." He also stated that "episodes that center around Bart and Lisa tend to be more interesting as [he] stated in many of his previous reviews because those characters have more dimensions, and their diverse personalities and passions there is more to explore about them.". Robert Canning of IGN also enjoyed the episode. Although he mentioned that the episode's plot had already been done numerous times, he enjoyed the unique way in which it was told and was surprised by some of the plot elements, such as Bart being forced to marry Mary. He gave the episode 7.5 out of 10.