The Monorail” lifted its grinning shyster straight from The Music Man. He starts spying on neighbors with a telescope and begins to suspect that Ned Flanders has murdered his wife. [7][8] In this original American broadcast, "Bart of Darkness" finished 44th in the ratings for the week of August 29 to September 4, 1994, with a Nielsen rating of 8.9 and an audience share of 17. Bart finds that staying in his room is boring, that is before he thinks of witnessing Ned Flanders murdering Maude. [1] In the episode, Bart breaks his leg and becomes increasingly isolated in his room. Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed. Sideshow Bob Roberts. While Ned is gone, Bart sends Lisa to search his house for murder evidence. Treehouse of Horror V. Bart's girlfriend. Another Simpsons clip show. #THESIMPSONS #ANIMATION The Simpsons Full Episode english | Animation Movies Top For Kids The satiric adventures of a working-class family in … Fear of flying. Did … Even while Lisa is basking in the newly uncovered admiration of her classmates, that admiration is insincere—its emptiness expertly illustrated by the falling water levels caused by her fairweather friends’ escape to Martin’s backyard. [3] This was because, along with "Lisa's Rival", the episode was in production at the time of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. On a dare, Bart attempts an ambitious dive into the pool from his tree house, but falls to the ground and breaks his left leg after getting distracted by Nelson. Schuman Farms Head of Lettuce (Bart of Darkness) What crime does Bart … The pool at 742 Evergreen Terrace is one of those Simpsons plot devices that’s introduced with great fanfare and never seen again, but it provided the show’s writers and animators with some fruitful raw materials. The earthquake damaged much of the Film Roman building in which The Simpsons writing and animation staff worked, forcing them to move out for three months and continue production in a temporary building. The episode may have marked the show’s induction into the television establishment, but it would be many more years before any of its well-honed edges would be blunted by complacency. A podcast brought to you by those goofballs from Nerds Amalgamated, for Nerds by nerds about Nerd pop-culture news. "Bart of Darkness" is the first episode of The Simpsons' sixth season, which originally aired September 4, 1994. Bart of Darkness. The swiftly draining pool is a fun visual gag, and the Esther Williams-Busby Berkeley fantasia that pours the salt into Bart’s summer-ruining wound is a credit to Jim Reardon’s direction. “Jeff” Jefferies. In a Rear Window parody, the Simpsons buy a swimming pool and everybody in the neighborhood joins in the enjoyment--except for Bart, whose broken leg prevents him from swimming. When Ned returns, Lisa is trapped in the Flanders house and hides in the attic. It's cool in here, boy. It was also the first chance to voice that now-familiar refrain: “The early seasons were better.”. [4] Having been a director on the series for five years before this episode, he believed that this "was closer to what [he] was trying to achieve as a director than [he] had done before". "Is it St. Swiven's Day already?' “Bart of Darkness” is its own creation, one which uses Rear Window extensively, but which has so many other things going on (Krusty re-runs, Bart’s play, Lisa becoming popular, etcetera) that the movie it’s parodying is only a small part of a much larger whole. [3] As a result, the staff was given a month more than they would usually have had to work on the episode, which Reardon described as "greatly benefiting" it. Any of the items that get stuck to Bart's cast as he tries to save Lisa from Ned. “Bart Of Darkness” is a hilarious episode that restricts a Simpsons’ go-to—Bart as hell-raiser—and mines much of its humor from the cruelties of childhood. -- The perils of a broken leg, "Bart of Darkness" In his room, Bart tries to rationalize his position: "What fun can you have in a pool anyway that you can't have in a bathtub with a garbage bag taped around your cast?" With the average American network series producing 20-some episodes per year, a show’s sixth season is often its first to air alongside syndicated reruns. I'm goin'! But the episode actually borrows more from Hitchcock’s classic, Rear Window. Despite his broken leg, Bart crawls to Flanders' house and makes his way to the attic. “Bart Of Darkness” (season six, episode one; originally aired 9/4/1994), In which no one seems to pull their blinds—or restrict access to their pool—during a hot spell like this…, There’s no established number of seasons to determine whether or not a TV show has “made it.” Plenty of crappy shows have run for close to a decade; some of the television medium’s finest offerings only got a handful of episodes to air. Bart of Darkness. But when a high-dive goes wrong and Bart breaks his leg, he ends up confined to his room, which only gets worse when he believes Ned Flanders has murdered his wife, Maude. It’s easy to forget in a time of DVRs, streaming services, and full-season DVD sets, but for Simpsons fans who hadn’t had to foresight to tape-record every episode from “The Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire” to “Secrets Of A Successful Marriage,” this was the first opportunity to see the show in its primordial stages, to have their fond memories of The One with Blinky or The One with Dustin Hoffman reinforced (or proven wrong). Bart of Darkness (The Book of Bart 2) - Kindle edition by Hill, Ryan. There are lots of fun details in the animation and direction of “Bart Of Darkness,” but the script and performances are given some room to goof around, too. Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, found that the "eventual explanation for [Flanders'] murderous behavior is hilarious". 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