Bart's New Friend

"Bart's New Friend"
The Simpsons episode
Episode no.	Season 26
Directed by	Bob Anderson
Written by	Judd Apatow
Original air date	January 11, 2015 (2015-01-11)
Episode features
Chalkboard gag	Snowmen don't have carrot penises.
Couch gag	In an updated version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Homer, Marge and Bart are shown walking into their home. They find out that someone has been eating their porridge and broke their couches but they catch Lisa who is sleeping on Bart's couch. She wakes up to find the three of them surrounding her, causing a fight between them that ends with the Simpsons eating parts of Homer's body. The scene is revealed to be a story Homer told to a traumatized Maggie.

"Bart's New Friend" is the eleventh episode of the 26th season of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons, and the 563rd episode of the series. It aired on Fox on January 11, 2015, and focused on Bart's new friendship with his father Homer, who has been hypnotized in order to think he is a young boy.

Plot

Homer learns that his co-safety inspector Don Bookner of Sector 7G retires, which means that he will have to do the work by himself. He is put under pressure and is unable to take a break. Marge suggests that the family could go to a circus. Here, Homer still can't have fun and even punches a clown who attempts to trick him. Bart suggests that they could see the hypnotist. The hypnotist Sven Golly makes Homer believe that he is 10 years old again before evading Chief Wiggum when it is revealed that the hypnotist is a criminal. At the hospital, Dr. Hibbert explains that the only way to bring Homer back is to contact Sven Golly again.

This forces Bart to share his room with Homer, and he is surprised when the new Homer says that when he will grow up, he will not have a job or a family. Bart makes Homer his new best friend and accomplice, to Milhouse's dismay. On the other side, Marge begins to miss her husband, despite their children having fun with him: Lisa holds a concert with him and Bart evades bullies due to Homer's protection. Chief Wiggum finally manages to capture Sven Golly and plans to bring him back, but he and Marge discover that Homer and Bart left the house and ran off to Itchy & Scratchy Land.

Homer is finally caught and torn between his love for Marge and his new bond with Bart. He chooses the former and says goodbye to his best friend, advising him to be 10 years old forever. Sven Golly then brings Homer back to his old self, but before Marge can explain what happened, he assumes that the reason of his presence at Itchy & Scratchy Land was because he was drunk and asks for forgiveness, which Marge agrees. At the end of this episode, Homer confides to Bart that he had a special friend as a kid but can't remember who it is. He also decides not to strangle him again and rather wants to begin a new step with him. Then, it is revealed that Marge asked Sven Golly to make Homer more affectionate. Later, in a specially made cell, it is revealed that Sven Golly managed to hypnotize Wiggum into thinking he is the actual prisoner and is left locked in the cell before being visited by Loki.

Development

Judd Apatow wrote the episode, basing it on a spec script he had written in 1990

"Bart's New Friend" was written by Judd Apatow, better known for films such as Bridesmaids and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The episode originated as a spec script Apatow had written when he was 22 years old, in the style of the first episodes of the series. In an interview with TVGuide.com, Apatow explained that "I also wrote a spec script for the great Chris Elliott show Get a Life. They at least brought me in for a meeting, but that didn't lead to any work, either. Then, all these years later, Al Jean calls and says, 'Hey, we'll make it now!'"

Cultural references

The episode has a scene in remembrance of the victims of the January 7 shootings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris with a cutscene of Maggie, whose posture resembles Eugène Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People, holding a flag reading Je Suis Charlie.

Reception

The episode received an audience of 4.28 million, making it the most watched show on Fox that night. It was the third most watched show in its timeslot, led by coverage of the Golden Globe Awards on NBC.

Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club gave the episode a B, saying "Bart’s New Friend" aims for that sweet spot between broad premise and emotional truth, and if its aim is a little off, the effort is at least appreciated. Homer and Bart have reconnected many times over the years, but that’s not an impediment in itself—The Simpsons can revisit familial themes over and over again, its template of the American family redressed to fit the emotional core of the story. I’m repeating myself in these reviews, but I reject the idea that The Simpsons is out of stories, because there is no end to the stories to be spun out of the relationships and conflicts of the family unit. So Homer being made to think he’s the same age as his son is as good a premise as any to explore the divide between a parent and child, the way children see their parents, how adults lose touch with the sort of adults they thought they’d be, and on, and on."

Writing for IGN, Jesse Schedeen concluded that while it was a "perfectly decent new chapter of the show", the episode felt typical of the current season instead of resembling the older episodes Apatow had been watching when he first wrote it. He gave it a score of 6.8 out of 10.

External links

• "Bart's New Friend" at the Internet Movie Database