Review: The Simpsons “Bartless”

Overview

When Bart’s latest prank leads to chaos at Springfield Elementary, Marge and Homer dream of a world in which their rambunctious son was never a Simpson.

Our Take

Despite the episode being called “Bartless”, don’t expect to see an episode of The Simpsons that doesn’t feature arguably one of the show’s best known characters. In fact, we’re not exactly “Bartless” as the episode seems to tease, we’re more like, “Bart Something” in that we get an episode that sees what it would be like if the Simpsons hosted Bart as a temporary ward of the State.

What we end up getting is almost like a highlight reel of the early years of Bart Simpson’s rise. By far this episode featured some of Bart’s best pranks in years with some of my personal favorites including Bart launching feces filled diapers via catapults, stealing Homer’s wallets, and defacing school property. By the way, there’s this quick background scene early in the episode that is bizarre featuring Ralph drawing stairs on the wall and then walking up them. As creepy as that is, it showcases that the producers of The Simpsons still feature the best background gags in the world.

Kerry Washington makes a quick stop-in returning as Bart’s teacher “Rayshelle Peyton” and she’s due to be back in next week’s episode as well, but what was refreshing about her approach is that she’s the opposite of the late Ms. Krabappel in that Edna would’ve hung Bart out to dry for what he did whereas Ms. Peyton embraces Bart’s positive traits. That said, I’m not so sure that Bart teaching kids to draw in books is the “end of the world” scenario that would inspire Homer and Marge to really think about a world without Bart. I think I would have preferred to see something a bit more destructive and then counterbalance that with a dream sequence that TRULY omitted Bart just to see how things shake down.

Still though, if you don’t get as hung up on what I did about the plot flaws, the jokes presented were enough to keep me going. A rather hilarious reminder that Bart is just as well-written as ever.