One of the earliest underlying gags of the Ullman shorts (and one which inevitably lost its bite as the animation gradually became tidier and the inherent grotesqueness of Groening's character designs, with their bulging eyeballs and gaping overbites, became softer, even familiar) was that the Simpson family were such a feral, vulgar and primordial-looking bunch that any attempt at civilised behaviour on their part came across as basically gestural, a thin veneer of respectability that was always threatening to crack at any moment. Even their perfunctory efforts at personal grooming play like exercises in futility, feeble attempts to scrub off the messiness of day-to-day living so deeply ingrained in their curtains and carpet fibres that they become thoroughly encrusted the instant they emerge from their bathroom (this is a gag played to very on-the-nose degrees in the Season 1 episode "Some Enchanted Evening", in which Homer shaves his five o'clock shadow only for it grow back almost instantly). To that end, it should come as no real shock to us to learn that Bart would sooner not make the effort at all.
Even if you haven't plundered the full catalogue of Ullman shorts in extensive depth, odds are that you know "Bathtime", which is the only Ullman short other than "Good Night" to be featured in its entirety in the Season 7 episode "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular", and is most notable for Bart's affectionate impersonation of marine documentarist Jacques-Yves Cousteau. This nod to Cousteau feels, on the one hand, like an expression of nostalgia for the documentaries of yore, playfully contrasting Bart's bathtime experience with the eerie undersea voyages through unchartered realms that seem more like ghostly, half-remembered dreams when stacked up against the banalities of modern domestic living. On another level, it taps into that strange sensation one gets, when watching early Simpsons, that we are observing our own lifestyle and behaviours superficially represented as the behaviours of another species altogether. At their heart, the Ullman shorts are a celebration of the human animal, and how that animal has continued to thrive as we have ventured ever further down the path of domesticity. The early shorts in particular give such a loving focus to the cruder aspects of the human condition that they almost play like a collection of miniature mockumentaries upon the survival of the human animal in its new natural habitat; the perpetual caveman who managed to adapt to the modern world by putting on a shirt and pants and wiring up a TV.
"Bathtime" opens with the now-familiar scenario of Bart trying to hide himself away from parental authority - this time, the looming threat comes in the form of his Sunday night bath, which Bart is determined to avoid. Having apparently not learned anything from his experience in "Closeted" (or, being so averse to the prospect of bathing that he's prepared to take the risk of being made to repeat the ordeal), Bart conceals himself in his bedroom closet in the hopes that Homer won't flush him out. On this occasion his own uncouth body fails him, for an ill-timed belch alerts Homer to his whereabouts, and he ends up being unceremoniously hauled down the corridor in the buff and tossed into the bath. There's a pretty nice perspective shot in which we see Homer searching for, and finally closing in on Bart through the closet keyhole, although some eye-poppingly weird animation also worms its way in, as usual, with Homer making some odd St. Vitus Dance hand gestures right after dumping Bart in the bath. Bart's objections to being subjected to this weekly cleansing ritual appear to stem at least partly from Homer's tendency to run the water ridiculously cold, but Bart copes with the situation by running the hot tap and escaping into fantasy, in which he envisions himself as the deep sea adventurer in his own version of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, wittily (and haphazardly) transforming the domestic sphere into an undersea wilderness (which of course becomes all-too real when he neglects to turn the tap off).
Bart's daddy issues rear their head yet again when his search for the wily and elusive washcloth is interrupted by the appearance of an octopus-shaped bath toy that bears more than a passing resemblance to Homer, and he is compelled to tussle with it. The Homer-opus makes for a charming sight gag, one that's reinforced when Homer opens the bathroom door and is knocked down by the bathwater deluge, and he and the toy are shown side-by-side in the aftermath. This linking of Homer and deep sea beast also foreshadows the punchline of the short, in which the line separating refinement from barbarity is shown to be far thinner in Homer's case than that of his belching, bath-avoiding son. Bart comes out of the ordeal "clean as a whistle", a fact he is happy to flaunt before Homer, but Homer's final response is to cast aside all aspirations of civility and embrace savagery, as he chases after Bart in one of his overpowering gorilla-like rages. Bart won't stay clean for long.
Strange Picture Watch: We see portraits of Marge and an unidentified sea captain, which ties in with the nautical theme. Also, for some reason the Simpsons appear to have a framed picture depicting a boot with a bare hairy leg sticking out of it. If there's any deeper subliminal symbolism to be mined there, then don't ask me to decode it.
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