Bart the Genius
"Bart the Genius"
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Episode Information
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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.
Trivia
- Chalkboard Scene: Bart writes " I will not waste chalk".
- In the first title opening sequence we see not Mr Burns and Smithers behind Homer in the power plant but an employee eating a sandwich with tongs.
- Bart does not skate across a street but rather steals a bus stop sign and the people waiting for the bus watch the bus speed by without stopping.
- Signature Couch Scene: They all run to the couch and hop on except Bart gets popped up into the air and does not come back down, credits role, then Bart falls down from the sky in front of the TV.
- Maggie spells out EMCSQU (or E=MC²) on her building blocks.
- The family playing scrabble Homer cannot make a word yet his letters spell "oxidize" so he decides to make the word "do".
- The dictionary is under the short leg of the couch.
- Bart spells "Kwyjibo" meaning, according to him, "a big, dumb, balding North American Ape" referring to Homer who is questioning him holding a banana.
- 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".
- Martin is the train conductor when Bart is told to visualize his IQ problems.
- 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.
- 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".
- Bart's new teacher, or Learning Coordinator, is Miss Milan.
- 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.
- Marcia Wallace's name is misspelled "Masha" in the closing credits.
