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"Bart the Genius"

Episode Information Showrunner: [[{{{showrunner}}}]]

Bart the Genius was the second non short episode of The Simpsons released on television.

In this episode, Bart is caught vandalising school property with a crude spray-painting of Principal Skinner and then swaps IQ tests with Martin and is declared a genius.

Synopsis

Faced with the prospect of flunking an intelligence test, Bart switches exams with brainy Martin Prince. When school psychologist Dr. Pryor studies the results, he identifies Bart as a genius, to the delight of Homer and Marge, who enroll Bart in a new school.

On his first day at the Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children, Bart feels out of place among other students with advanced academic skills. At home, however, he enjoys the newfound attention Homer shows him. Hoping to stimulate her son with a little culture, Marge buys the family opera tickets.

Ostracized by his genius classmates, Bart visits his old school, where he is rejected by his friends and labeled a "poindexter." When Bart's science project explodes and nearly destroys his new school, he confesses to Dr. Pryor that Martin Prince is the real genius. Bart returns home and tells Homer that he switched tests, and although it was a stupid thing to do, he is glad that they are now closer togeher. An irate Homer chases Bart through the house.

Production

The concept for the episode developed from writer Jon Vitti coming up with a long list of bad things Bart could do and imagining the potential consequences. The only idea that developed into an interesting episode concept was Bart cheating on an IQ test.^[1] This idea was based on an incident from Vitti's childhood when a number of his classmates did not take an intelligence test seriously and suffered poor academic treatment because of it. Because Bart was already obviously unintelligent, Vitti reversed the problem for his episode.^[2] Vitti used all his memories of elementary school behavior to produce a draft script of 71 pages, substantially above the required length of about 45 pages. It was Vitti's first script for a 30-minute television program.^[1] Bart's use of the phrase "Eat my shorts" was intended to reflect his adoption of catchphrases he had heard on TV; the creative team had told Vitti that he should not come up with original taglines for the character.^[1] The scene where the family plays Scrabble was inspired by the 1985 cartoon The Big Snit.^[3]

The episode was the first to feature the series' full title sequence, including the chalkboard gag and couch gag. Matt Groening developed the lengthy sequence in order to cut down on the animation necessary for each episode, but devised the two gags as compensation for the repeated material each week.^[3] Groening, who had not paid much attention to television since his own childhood, was unaware that title sequences of such length were uncommon by that time.^[3] As the finished episodes became longer, the production team were reluctant to cut the stories in order to allow for the long title sequence, so shorter versions of it were developed.^[4]

Director David Silverman had difficulty devising a legible Scrabble board for the opening scene that would get across the idea that the Simpsons had only been able to come up with very simple words.^[4] The design of Bart's visualization of the math problem was partially inspired by the art of Saul Steinberg. The increasing appearance of numbers in that sequence derived from Silverman's use of a similar tactic when he had to develop a set design for the play The Adding Machine. Each successive scene in the sequence was shorter than the one before it by exactly one frame.^[4] The scene where Bart writes his confession was done as one long take to balance the shorter scenes elsewhere in the episode. It was animated in the United States by Dan Haskett.^[4] There were a few problems with the finished animation for the episode. The banana in the opening scene was colored incorrectly, as the Korean animators were unfamiliar with the fruit,^[3] and the final bathtub scene was particularly problematic, including issues with lip sync. The version in the broadcast episode was the best of several attempts.^[4] Martin Prince and Edna Krabappel make their first appearances in this episode.^[5]

Cultural references

In the opening scene, Maggie spells EMCSQU with her blocks, a reference to Albert Einstein's mass-energy equivalence equation. A picture of Einstein also appears on the wall of Dr. Pryor's office.^[6] At one point Homer erroneously refers to Einstein as the inventor of the light bulb. Dr. Pryor compares Bart's proposed work among ordinary children to Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees.^[5] Goodall was pleased to be mentioned in the episode, sending the program a letter,^[3] and Vitti a signed book.^[1] The composer of the opera the family attends is named Boris Csuposki, a reference to animator Gabor Csupo.^[6] The opera attended by the family is Carmen, by Georges Bizet; the song Bart mocks is a famous aria called the Toreador Song.^[6]

• "Scrabble" The Simpsons are playing it in the beginning.
• "Albert Einstein" Various references throughout the episode.
• "Carmen" The Simpsons go to see it.
• "Gabor Csupo" Look carefully on the poster and you will see the name Boris Csuposki a play on animator Gabor Csupo.
• "Plato" Appears on bookshelf.
• "Moby Dick" Appears on bookshelf.
• "Leonard DaVinci" A book called The Life of Leonardo appears on the bookshelf.

Trivia

Strange Stuff

• Maggie spells out EMCSQU (or E=MC²) on her building blocks.

Introductions

• Millhouse has black hair in this episode.
• This is the first episode where Bart uses his soon to be famous catch phrase "Eat My Shorts".

Hard to See Stuff

• Martin is the train conductor when Bart is told to visualize his IQ problems.
• Principal Skinner devotes an entire file drawer to Bart Simpson.
• Homer makes a cheque of $75, to pay for Bart's defacing of school property, to "Dept. of Education"
• Bart's, but in reality Martin's, IQ is 216.
• Bart wears a pink shirt to his first day of class at the "Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children".
• Books on the shelf in Bart's new advanced school classroom include Crime & Punishment, Babylonian Myths, Paradise Lost, Moby-Dick, Plato, Dante's Inferno,The Illiad, Plato, Design of Computers (remember this is 1990), Astrophysics, Wana by Emile Zona, Puskin, Shakespeare I-XV,Quantum Mechanics, and the Life of Leonardo.
• The Simpson attends the opera "Carmen", advertised as "Tonight Only in Russian."
• On the opera poster, the conductor is identified as Boris Csuposki, a play on the name of producer and supervising animation director Gabor Csupo.
• After he is dubbed a genius, Bart's Principal Skinner graffiti likeness and word balloon is framed and labeled as a work of art entitled "The Principal" by Bart Simpson.
• There is a picture of Bart on the wall opposite one of Albert Einstein in Dr. Pryor's office.
• After Bart comes home green Homer washes him in Turpentine.
• Homer thinks it was Albert Einstein that invented the light bulb.

Errors

• Millhouse has black hair in this episode.
• Marcia Wallace's name is misspelled "Masha" in the closing credits.
• Martin's last name is Prace when Bart changes the name on the IQ tests. He then writes Martin Prince on his own paper and hands it in.