Bart the Genius
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"Bart the Genius"
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Episode Information
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- "Now, Ms. Oglethorp, you will tell me all about your little midnight dalliances, or else you will taste doom!"
- ―Erwin McCobb
"No. 2" is the second episode of Season 1 and the first episode of the series to use the famous opening sequence. It aired on February 28, 1981.
Contents
Synopsis
Erwin, Jim's neighbors' creepy 11-year-old son, attempts to take Jim hostage upon believing that he is carrying on a secret liaison with another spy. Erwin (who knows Jim's secret identity) holds him for ransom and demands that his parents pay an exorbitant sum of money for his release.
Plot
The episode begins when Jim has gotten home tired from another battle with Teenage Kickass, and is cheerfully carrying his "golden ring of adventure" in his hands. Erwin, his next-door neighbors' son, begins following him around and asking him questions about his personal life. Jim is becoming more and more exasperated by Erwin's nosiness, and his tendency to refer to Jim as "Ms. Oglethorp", so he becomes infuriated and tells him to "go pick on someone [his] own size. Like an ant!" Erwin grudgingly leaves him alone for the time being. The next morning, Jim and his best friends Fred and Pamela are sitting in class before Senator Stitch, their teacher, comes in. Jim is growing somewhat annoyed by Fred and Pamela's obvious flirting, and complains that "I'm just chopped liver!" Then Emily McPherson, a shy, overachieving little violet walks in and lispingly asks Jim what he's doing later that day. Fred eggs him on and calls him Romeo, but he wants nothing to do with her (despite her being very pretty) and makes up a story about having to visit his uncle in Flinty Knoll.
Later, during lunch, Jim is looking around when suddenly Nora catches his eye. She is sitting with none other than Emily McPherson. He is at first weirded out, but later Fred tells him that Emily is a distant cousin of Nora's and therefore is allowed to sit in the presence of the "cool kids". Pamela, who is sitting closest to Nora's table, overhears some of the conversation. "Nora's talking about you," she says. Immediately, Jim is thrilled, and even more so when Pamela says that she is hearing the word "infatuation" being thrown about. Jim becomes full of self-confidence and walks up to the popular kid's table. Emily looks very embarrased and blushes, but manages to ask him to "see her some time after school at The Comestible Giraffe" before covering her face with her long hair. Jim, realizing that Nora did not really like him, and was merely talking to Emily about him, becomes very flustered and angry and makes it very clear that he is not interested in Emily. Emily leaves in tears and Nora follows to comfort her, but not before telling Jim to "go make love to a donkey."
After school, Jim is starting to feel bad about what he did, especially after Pamela calls him a "sexist" and Fred refuses to meet him at The Comestible Giraffe. He attempts to drown his sorrow in soda, and at the Giraffe strikes up a conversation with Ez, a sales clerk. Ez is much older and wiser, and counsels Jim about his troubles. He says that when he was a young boy, he had an experience just like this, in which a girl loved him and he didn't love her back, and so he told her off. Jim asks what came of it and Ez replies, "I've been dating Laura now for 5 1/2 years, at kleast." Ez tells Jim to apologize and give Emily a second try, but as soon as he attempts to he gets a call from "The Office" and must dash into action. He runs back home in order to change into his spy outfit, but before he reaches it he is captured and handcuffed by Erwin, who then drags him into his basement in a donkey wagon.
Erwin reveals that he knows all about Jim's life as a spy, and smashes Jim's beeper with his foot, thereby cutting off any communication with his spy headquarters. He tells Jim all about his deep affection for him, and also makes it clear that he honsetly believes Jim is a girl. Jim constantly attempts to tell him that he is male, but Erwin will have none of that. Erwin says he thinks Jim has been "going to see other guys" and that he (or 'she' according to Erwin) has been unfaithful to him. The episode ends when Erwin is called up to dinner by his mom, an extremely masculine butchy character. The story is continued in No. 3.
Production
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It has been requested that this page or section be rewritten due to the fact that the page has parts that have been dumped from Wikipedia, making the article not original to Wikisimpsons.
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The episode is notable for being the first American cartoon series ever to portray gender-bending. In retrospect, it is often viewed as one of the series' most daring moments. Some Christian watchdog groups complained about Erwin's seeming bisexuality and mental instability, as well as the line about making love to a donkey (which was the first bestiality reference in an American cartoon).
Aside from the controversy, the episode is also notable for introducing three new characters - Erwin, McPherson, and Ez - all of whom would become important 'classic characters' in later episodes. Due to the controversial nature of the episode, later Erwin was somewhat 'bowdlerized', his obsession with Jim became more of a "looking-up-to-him-as-a-positive-role-model" one; Hmorgin himself stated in an interview though that Erwin did not "change": he was still just as mentally unstable, but he learned to hide it better. In later episodes, Jim treated McPherson more kindly as well; in fact she became one of his friends until she was phased out of the series late in the second season. Ez would later become one of Jim's good friends as well, giving him all sorts of bizarre advice on life and love. (In general, the series became somewhat less dark with time; the first seven episodes were by far the darkest.)
External links
- "Bart the Genius" at The Simpsons.com
"Bart the Genius" at the The Simpsons Archive
