Homer vs Patty and Selma (aka Neither A Borrower Nor A Lender Be)

There is something faintly paradoxical about the way in which "Homer vs. Patty and Selma" (2F14) handles the overdue grudge match promised upfront by its title. On the one hand, this is the first Simpsons episode in which the mutual dislike between Homer and his twin sister-in-laws is permitted to take centre stage. Their antipathy has been a fixture of the show since its very first episode, where having to accommodate Patty and Selma was one of the many grievances weathered by Homer during a particularly grim holiday in "Simpsons Roasting on An Open Fire", but had seldom escalated into anything more dramatic than regular rounds of passive aggressive murmurs. The characters make little secret of what anathema their respective existences are to one another, but it's always been something that, for the most part, everyone just has to tiptoe around. So long as they've ample opportunity to take snide potshots at the enemy party (often from behind their back), then Homer and Patty and Selma are about able to coexist, united on the understanding that they're required to put up with one another for the sake of Marge. It's far from ideal, but it's a kind of equilibrium. "Homer vs. Patty and Selma" attempts to explore in-depth what putting up for Patty and Selma for Marge's sake really looks like for Homer, by thrusting him into a situation where that equilibrium is flipped hopelessly out of whack, with Patty and Selma gaining the critical advantage. Showrunner David Mirkin suggests on the DVD commentary that when this first aired, on February 26th 1995, it represented the show's most exhaustive dive to date into this uneasy dynamic, and I'd agree insofar as it does more with it from a narrative standpoint than any episode before it was wont to do. But I'm not sure if that necessarily makes it the most developed look at the relationship between Homer and his sister-in-laws, as it has to be said that this is something of a regressive entry on Patty and Selma's end. It makes the move of casting them as straight up villains, for which there is honestly very little precedent. Patty and Selma have never been the most affable of souls, but they have typically always been treated with more nuance than is evident here. Whereas a lesser series might have settled for painting them as the loathsome boogeywomen Homer assumes them to be, with no greater drive than to make his life miserable, The Simpsons has always been careful to give them distinct shades of humanity, with doubts and vulnerabilities all of their own. "Homer vs. Patty and Selma" is a rare episode in which their characterisation is determined exclusively by Homer's perspective, and therein lies the paradox - their disdain for Homer gets a ton of focus, but they themselves are at their most one-dimensional, to the point that you would have to go as far back as "Simpsons Roasting on An Open Fire" to find an episode where the matter was ever quite this one-sided.

That's not to say that Homer is without fault, since he gets into his situation through an act of flagrant misjudgement, the kind that could only validate Patty and Selma's perspective that he is an unworthy husband for Marge. The episode opens with him having invested all of the family's savings in pumpkins, observing that demand for the gourd has been souring all throughout October but failing to grasp the obvious reason for this (ie: Halloween is right around the corner). The season passes, leaving him with only a worthless investment, a looming mortgage payment and too much shame to be capable of explaining the situation to Marge. Having exhausted every other possible avenue of support, he turns to his last ditch option of Patty and Selma, who've recently received a big promotion at the DMV and are in a sound position financially. They agree to lend Homer the money, keeping the wolf from the Simpsons' door but leaving it wide open to a disagreeable intrusion of another nature. Not surprisingly, Patty and Selma had an ulterior motive for their generosity, having spied an opportunity to gain leverage over Homer - as Selma so elegantly puts it, "We know something you don't want Marge to know.  Now we own you, like Siegfried owns Roy." The twins insist on calling at the Simpsons' house more frequently, forcing Homer to perform a variety of degrading tasks at their beck and call in exchange for their continued silence around Marge. But of course that cat's only staying in that bag for so long.

As Mirkin observes, this an unusually straightforward and grounded story for its era, the kind of conflict we might expect to have come up not just in the show's earlier seasons but in any number of its live action counterparts. It has, though, unmistakably the flavour of a Season 6 installment. It's a wholly relatable situation - at some point in our lives, we've all had to ask a favour of someone with whom we did not ordinarily get along, and perhaps they weren't exactly gracious about it - but it paints itself in distinctly big and broad strokes. Take the comically exaggerated sequence where Patty and Selma are first inducted into the conflict, as Homer arrives home to find smoke gushing out from under his front door and is initially elated, thinking the house is on fire and that insurance money will cover his pumpkin losses. He rushes in, to find the source of the smoke to be none other than his sister-in-laws with their usual cigarette-biting antics. They're established, none too subtly, as toxic invaders, filling the household with their noxious fumes like a couple of rapacious fire-breathing dragons. But the sequence feels just as telling for the troubling window it offers into Homer's muddled, overly-impulsive psyche; he spends the entire first act struggling to save his family's home from repossession, yet he was momentarily happy at the thought of it going up in flames if it meant an imminent cash payout. It foreshadows how the story will eventually develop, as Patty and Selma do indeed turn out to be Homer's salvation, at least in the short-term. In the long-term they prove to be just as destructive as his hypothetical fire, making his home life unliveable and dragging his already battered self-esteem to blistering new lows.

The resulting episode is one of assorted contradictions. It's a small story that, in narrative terms, is content to stay small. Neither Patty and Selma nor writer Brent Forrester seem interested in taking their unholy arrangement to overly dramatic heights, the tasks Homer is required to do being unpleasant but basically nondescript. The nastiest it gets is when they force him to grovel at their freshly-massaged feet and to talk in the voice of a stereotypical Hanna Barbera dog. Yet the larger-than-lifeness that dominated your average Simpsons outing by the mid-1990s stays firmly in the driver seat. It isn't entirely disconnected from the realism of the earlier seasons; for one, it's nice to have another story in which the family struggles with money in a meaningful way, something that used to happen a lot in the early years but now rarely seemed to be an issue any more (we were just a season away from that infamous moment where Homer hands Bart $750 like it was pocket change). But the undeniable despair of the predicament is buffered by copious amounts of silliness, and this is before we get into the comparatively lighter subplot. There's the ridiculous means through which Homer loses the family's money in the first place (which, admittedly, seems quite sedate compared to his recent get-rich-quick shenanigans involving a sugar pile and a trampoline), the cartoonish physicality of the sequences where he ejects Patty and Selma (and Marge, in one instance) from the house, and the way he protests Marge's evaluation of the matter by smashing a plate against his head. There are a few downright baffling gags, including a total non-sequitur involving a possibly paranormal television and a nod to The X-Files. And then the third act development where Homer resolves to bring in more money by moonlighting as a chauffeur takes a distinctly improbable detour, which Homer puts neatly into quotation marks: "I can't believe my very first passenger is comedy legend Mel Brooks!" With hindsight, Brooks' cameo seems kind of ominous, it being an early example of a celebrity appearance that's been conspicuously crowbarred in for the sake of a celebrity appearance (Brooks' wife Anne Bancroft had recently voiced a character in the episode "Fear of Flying", and the producers wanted to stick Brooks into an adjacent story while they were at it). Brooks is given no substantial link to this particular narrative; he's there because he just happened to be passing through. They could have dropped any celebrity into the backseat of Homer's limo and it would have made every bit as much sense. And yet I can't really begrudge the Brooks sequence because it contains what might be my second favourite joke of the episode, one so subtle that it took a few watches for it to completely register - Homer telling Brooks that he loved his movie Young Frankenstein because it scared the hell out of him. (I can relate to that; I'll never forget my confusion on being shown the movie Airplane! at age 7 and, being too callow to comprehend the idea of a spoof movie, trying to follow it as a serious adventure story. It certainly made me leery about airline catering.) Besides, the script is able to scrape some decent humor out of Brooks' sidelined status, when Homer is found by Wiggum to be driving without the correct licence, and ordered to apply to Patty and Selma at the DMV. Homer starts screaming uncontrollably, and Brooks, not comprehending the situation on which he's vaguely impinging, concludes simply that Homer is dangerous and opts to bum a ride with Wiggum instead.

This is also the episode where Homer envisions Bart as a giant rat. Bart, sadly, perceives that as an insult, but I know I would much rather be compared to a rat than to a royal.

 "Homer vs. Patty and Selma" is less interested in how Homer relates to Patty and Selma (something touched on in more nuanced, if not pivotal ways in episodes such as "Principal Charming" and "Selma's Choice") than the depths of his devotion to Marge, and this is where the emotional crux of the story lies. Which is not to say that it's even half as interested in Marge herself, who doesn't have much to do other than stand on the sidelines and look sad. Her reaction on coming up to speed with Homer's financial ills is curiously downplayed, given how much he'd feared her finding out. Other than voicing her confusion as to why he didn't tell her, she doesn't express much of an opinion on her husband blowing the family's savings on Jack-o-Lanterns, leaving it unclear what she's really feeling in the aftermath. Disappointment? Concern? Resignation? Homer's self-loathing, and his assumptions about what his investment fiasco says about him ends up overshadowing anything that Marges actually says or does, which is doubtlessly the point, but it keeps her in a position of total passivity throughout. Conversely, this is one of the few episodes in which Marge gets to openly highlight something that should be obvious but nearly always gets ignored whenever her husband and sisters are spitting venom at one another - just how shitty it must be for her to be caught in the middle of it all. In one scene she tells Homer, "It's very hard on me to have you fighting all the time." With that in mind, there is a layer of hidden poignancy in Marge's de-emphasised view of events, since for a chunk of it she's under the impression that Homer and her sisters are finally getting along, when things are actually worse then ever while her back is turned. Which takes us into my absolute favourite joke of the episode, following Patty and Selma's "perfect" dinner with the Simpsons where nothing at all went wrong. Even more revealing than the strained, plastic grin on Homer's face is Marge's joyous aspiration to celebrate the ostensible truce by serving the most international coffee in the house - Montreal Morn! That one line says pretty much everything about Marge, about her outlook on life, her expectations and her lived reality. It's capped off by another fantastic gag when she returns a few moments later, announcing shamefacedly that her Montreal Morn supplies have been depleted and all she has to offer in its place is some cheap and nasty Nescafe (yuck, I would be ashamed too). Marge's life is an onslaught of perpetual disappointments, her hopes of impressing by serving flashy coffee about as realistic as all prospects of her husband and her sisters ever putting aside their bad blood.

Since Homer's story is a (relatively) grounded one with (somewhat) genuine stakes, a B-story is woven in to pad it out with extra levity. This involves Bart being forced to take ballet lessons and discovering a latent talent for the dance. When tasked with performing before the rest of the school, however, he balks, fearing that the bullies will target him for enjoying a traditionally feminine pursuit. As B-stories go, it's a fairly arbitrary one, offering not even the vaguest of intersections with the A-story (the aforementioned "Rat Boy" moment is the only point where Bart and Homer even interact). The most they have is a loose thematic parallel about the Simpsons boys harbouring secrets for shame of what others might think of them. But as a premise it certainly has boundless appeal. There's something about Bart being a natural ballet dancer that just makes perfect sense to me, to the point that it feels as though this might have been expanded into an actual A-story with further refinement. As it happens, the writers are content to treat it as a bit of fluff on the side. Maybe they didn't think there was anything more to be done with the idea than the standard expose and takedown of gender norms - which, judging how this arc ends, they were clearly not interested in doing sincerely. Giving it considerable momentum is the wonderful performance from guest star Susan Sarandon as Bart's ballet instructor, doing a very similar voice to the one she would subsequently use as a talking spider in James and The Giant Peach (1996). Whenever she's on screen, the story positively sparkles. Once she fades from the picture and we enter into Bart's recital, it struggles with where to take itself, ultimately settling on rather an iffy conclusion. I'm not really talking about how Jimbo, Nelson and co turn on him when he summons the courage to reveal his passion for ballet to the school - we all saw that one coming (to the point where you could question if it's even that much of a subversion) - but what happens at the very end, when Bart fails to jeté himself across a ditch to escape the bullies, and winds up potentially breaking a few bones down at the bottom. Lisa suddenly appears, embracing the injured Bart and telling him how proud she is that he showed his sensitive side. This is supposed to be our heartfelt moment to take the sting off, by having someone commend Bart for following his dreams in spite of what it cost him. In practice, it plays like an unconvincing attempt to suggest that Bart's relationship with Lisa was what the subplot was really about, which totally doesn't work because Lisa had barely even featured in it up until now. Honestly, it felt as though she had more of a meaningful presence in Homer's story, where he filled her in on his intentions to find a second job. It's also not helped by its inconclusive ending, with Lisa apparently wandering off while Bart groans, "Why'd you just leave me when I clearly need medical attention?" Yeah, why Lisa? I mean that does seem very out of character for you. Again, I think a more substantially developed version of this story might have fixed things so that Lisa's moment feels less like a tacked on afterthought; the version we have is fun, but effectively fizzles. Besides Sarandon, I think my favourite thing about it is the rare witticism we receive from Richard and Lewis. ("If they don't get here soon, it'll be T.S. for them!")

The A-story likewise bows out on rather an abrupt final note, as though it absolutely cannot wait to reset the status quo and move on, and I think it's the hurried nature of the respective wrap-ups for each narrative, coupled with their total disconnect from one another, that makes it all-too easy to dismiss the episode as one of the season's fillers. Erik Adams of The AV Club calls the two stories "undercooked" and "partially formed", characteristics he attributes to pressures Fox had placed upon the writers at the time. (Now that you mention it, while Season 6 both starts and ends strongly, there is a fairly noticeable lag around the middle.) We may come away feeling underwhelmed, as though nothing that happened therein was of any real consequence. Which seems unfair, because the developments that occur toward the end of Homer's arc are genuinely potent. It takes the earnest route, at least in the short-term, with an unusual display of maturity on Homer's part. He manages to salvage his pride, not by meeting Patty and Selma at their level and continuing the cycle of antipathy, but by rising above it and acting on the opportunity to be kind to them. As with "Black Widower", the twins' cigarette addiction ends up being the factor that nearly spells disaster, in a way that taps deftly into the niceties of life in the nineties. Having failed Homer on his driving test, Patty and Selma are so exhilarated that they momentarily let their guard down about smoking on the job and are caught by their boss with the offending cancer sticks. She's so outraged that they'd be smoking in a government building that she threatens to rescind their promotions. Homer is all ready to savour the schadenfreude, until he notices how anxious Marge appears about the situation and puts aside his desire for petty vengeance. Instead, he helps Patty and Selma by pretending the cigarettes were his, redirecting their boss's wrath his way ("You, sir, are worse than Hitler!") and sparing their jobs. He admits afterwards that his Good Samaritanism was motivated not by sympathy for Patty and Selma, but by empathy for Marge and the recognition that if her sisters were to suffer, so would she. If Patty and Selma bring out the worst in him, then she's a constant reminder of why he should keep striving to be the best he can be. By taking the higher ground, he leaves Patty and Selma totally disarmed; they are humbled by his actions, and Marge is able to make her own case for why, in spite of all his failings, she'd still be with him. Perhaps there is a better side to Homer that, up until now, Patty and Selma have simply never witnessed.

These observations feel more heartfelt and rightfully earned than those used to round off Bart's arc. But the script insists on undercutting them in a typical Simpsons fashion. The conclusion comes abruptly by design, in a way that seems to mercilessly dash all possibility of any durable understanding between the warring parties. Patty and Selma behave graciously, apologising to Homer for their recent mistreatment of him and suggesting that they might be able to do him a favour in return. The implicit offer they're actually making is to pass him on his driving test, but he has set his sights set on a much bigger prize. He demands that Patty and Selma forgive his debt altogether, which they are clearly reluctant to do. Homer, though, isn't settling for anything less - he's located a convenient out to this story's entire predicament, and with only seconds left on the clock you can bet he's taking it. A cancelled debt means that he no longer needs the chauffeur gig and can walk away scot-free. And so he does, declaring the debt void and bolting off with Marge in tow before Patty and Selma have leeway to negotiate. They're left standing there, powerless and obviously put out. The debt may have been nullified, but we sense that so too has a wad of their newfound goodwill toward their brother-in-law. It paves the way for the cycle of resentment to only continue, so I guess nobody really won.

Oh, and I noted in my recent coverage "Team Homer" that, originating with that episode, there seemed to be a conscious push on the writers' part to have Moe promoted to the status of Homer's best friend. You might not have guessed that that was so imminent from how Moe is depicted here, with his very darkest of inclinations on display. He agrees to lend Homer the money, not as a friend, but as a loan shark, and on the condition that he gets to break Homer's legs in advance since he has no collateral. Homer backs out when he can't convince Moe to deal him a bloody head injury instead. Sure, with friends like that, who even needs enemies?

The Case For Sidney's Family Tree (aka Knighty Knight Bugs Is A Stupid Cartoon)

There have been many, many contentious Oscar rivalries across the decades, but few quite so endearingly offbeat as that between Looney Tunes mega star Bugs Bunny and Terrytoons newcomer Silly Sidney the elephant, who in 1959 went against each other for the Academy Award For Best Animated Short Film (or Best Short Subjects, Cartoons, as it was known at the time). Actually, when Bugs' entry, Knighty Knight Bugs, triumphed and Sidney's Family Tree was sent away empty-handed, I doubt it was considered a terribly earth-shattering outcome from anyone within the industry. After years of languishing in the shadows of Disney and MGM, Warner Bros were increasingly becoming the studio to beat for this award; Knighty Knight Bugs represented their fifth overall win, four of which had occurred within the past decade (Knighty Knight Bugs would prove to be the last of their victories, as the 1960s were a spectacularly unkind time to the Looney Tunes, and to theatrical animation in general). Terrytoons, meanwhile, seldom had their shot at Oscar glory, with Sidney's Family Tree being only their fourth nomination in the history of the award, and the taste of victory was consistently denied them. In the years that followed, it seems unlikely that many people lost sleep over the match-up, or even gave it a second thought. And then, 31 years after the fact, it suddenly gained retroactive notoriety, when it became the basis of the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny?" It was 1990, and Sidney was back from the abyss of obscurity...in a manner of speaking. The elephant in question went by the name of "Sappy Stanley" and his character design was given a grotesque modification, courtesy of John Kricfalusi, so that his mouth was located inside his trunk. It was patently obvious that this was meant to be Sidney, however. He was still bitter about losing to Bugs after all these years, and apparently vindictive enough to kidnap the rabbit and steal his Oscar (or Shloscar, as it was called in-universe), setting Daffy Duck up to take the fall along the way - a startling turn of events for an elephant who, in his original series of shorts, was never depicted as having a mean bone in his body. ^[1] That's what the sting of losing to Knighty Knight Bugs had done to him!  This portrayal of Sidney (sorry, "Stanley") was voiced by Jonathan Winters, and for an entire generation of children (yours truly among them) he would have been their introduction to the character. And what a first impression! Casting him as a villain with such a vicious axe to grind might seem like a terribly mean-spirited move (this was, after all, a written-by-the-victors scenario, with Warner Bros mocking a character they'd already defeated once), but they made a singularly cool antagonist out of the neurotic elephant. Far from defiling Sidney's legacy, they gifted it with a fun and affectionate new twist.

When confronted by Babs and Buster, Stanley's justification for his crimes was that he deserved the award by right for good taste, since "Knighty Knight Bugs is a stupid cartoon". That's a sentiment to which I am honestly very sympathetic. While I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to call Knighty Knight Bugs "stupid", I do find it astonishing to think that the ONLY Oscar of Bugs' entire rich career was for this cartoon. They couldn't have picked a more pedestrian, more middle of the road example of his work if they'd tried. There is nothing outstanding about it other than that it happens to be Bugs Bunny's sole Oscar win. That it won the award while the phenomenal What's Opera, Doc? (1957) wasn't even nominated a year prior feels like a sick cosmic joke in itself. But then nominations for Bugs shorts were surprisingly sparse in general - only two shorts, A Wild Hare (1940) and Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (1941) had previously attained the honor. The success of Knighty Knight Bugs is a blatant example of the Academy handing out a win not on the merits of the nomination itself, but in compensation for their having overlooked a body of much stronger works to an artist's name. On that basis, I think Sidney/Stanley has every right to feel aggrieved.

Could Sidney's Family Tree actually have beaten Knighty Knight Bugs in a battle based solely on the respective merits of each cartoon? Here's where Sidney's Family Tree would still be at a hot disadvantage - there is little getting around the fact that the animation in Knighty Knight Bugs is of a considerably higher quality than that of Sidney's Family Tree. Terrytoons was, after all, renowned for doing things on the cheap. Studio founder Paul Terry infamously cared more about the quantity of his output than the quality and never had any pretensions to making serious art. Sidney himself came about as part of a new wave of Terrytoons characters created after Terry retired in the mid-1950s, leaving his studio in the hands of Gene Deitch (remembered chiefly for his infamous run of Tom & Jerry shorts in the early 1960s). Deitch's strategy had been to move away from the studio's existing store of characters (Mighty Mouse, Heckle & Jeckle, Little Roquefort & Percy) in favour of implementing new blood, and with only a fraction of the budgets of his already notoriously frugal predecessor. A former apprentice of United Productions of America, Deitch applied that studio's approach of limited animation against basic, undetailed backgrounds (techniques that would prove instrumental with animation's impending shift to being a medium of television) ^[2]. And lo, the look of Terrytoons got even cheaper. A second's glance at Sidney's Family Tree would clue you in that this was a considerably less prestigious production than Knighty Knight Bugs.

Likewise, it is important to acknowledge that the competition for Best Animated Short of 1958 was hardly a two-horse race, three contenders being the category's bare minimum. Sidney had not just the heavy-hitters at Warner Bros to worry about, but Disney too. The also-ran who's largely been squeezed out of this discussion is Paul Bunyan, the House of Mouse's take on the overgrown lumberjack of American folklore. But then again Disney, the undisputed kings of this award in the 1930s, had fallen quite vastly out of favour by the 1950s. Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom (1953) was their only win for Best Animated Short that whole decade. At a hefty 17 minutes, Paul Bunyan was certainly the most epic short in contention that year, although that might even have worked against it. It goes on a long time and offers rather a wishy washy pay-off. I can see why Academy voters might have felt underwhelmed by it. Whatever their shortcomings, Knighty Knight Bugs and Sidney's Family Tree do have the virtue of being short.

Somehow, it's my impression that 1958 wasn't the strongest of years for short animation, and Academy voters weren't exactly left with an embarrassment of riches at the end of it. They had their choice of the mediocre Bugs Bunny cartoon, the interminable shaggy dog story from Disney, or the unassuming, frugally-animated short about the unknown elephant. "Oh jeez. Well, everyone loves Bug Bunny, and this is his first nomination in 17 years. Let's just give it to him now while we have the chance, and take a load off our consciences." It's not fair, but it's where we are.

Am I really poised to argue that Sidney's Family Tree was the worthiest of the three nominees after all? I'm sure that part of the joke, in Tiny Toon Adventures, was in Sidney/Stanley ever seeing himself as a serious contender to begin with. And yet where Sidney's Family Tree is at an advantage, at least in my eyes, is that, unlike Knighty Knight Bugs, it actually feels like it's about something. That something being neediness. The characters have a loneliness and a vulnerability that makes them endearing, even if it exists largely within the subtext. It may not be the most technically accomplished of the three entrants, but is the one to which I am the most warmly-disposed.

Sidney's Family Tree was only the second of Sidney's adventures (he'd made his debut earlier that same year with Sick, Sick Sidney).  Directed by Art Bartsch, it follows Sidney (voice of Lionel Wilson, better known to modern viewers as Eustace from the early seasons of Courage The Cowardly Dog) in his efforts to find himself an adoptive family. The whereabouts of his biological parents are accounted for in a verse recited by Sidney during the opening credits; they joined a circus and left him alone in the jungle. Initially, his plight is met with little sympathy by the other animals, who remind Sidney that he's 44 years old. Which is one of Sidney's main running gags - his crippling anxieties about having to live in the adult world whilst being a perpetual kid at heart. And really, who couldn't relate to that? The guy's cast off and alone in the world, being in his 40s doesn't preclude him from still not having a clue what he's doing, and all he yearns for is a whisker of emotional security and validation. He tries taking his case to a passing hippo and giraffe, but gets brushed aside in both cases. They've already got offspring of their own, and don't have time to be indulging a neurotic elephant on the side. (The giraffe, incidentally, is named Cleo, and she would become a recurring character in Sidney's subsequent cartoons. For now, Sidney addresses her only as "Mrs So-and-So", which probably isn't going to score him many points in the courtesy leagues. She seems to know exactly who he is, however.) 

Sidney's luck changes when he runs into an animal also looking to fill an emotional void, a female chimpanzee who's desperate for a baby of her own, but doesn't have one. She eagerly agrees to be Sidney's adoptive mother, but her mate isn't so thrilled when she breaks the news that this two-ton elephant manchild is moving in with them. It's through what's implicit in the chimpanzees' interactions that the short adds a dash of hidden substance to its subtext. The male chimpanzee is every bit as keen to start a family as she is, and when she indicates that they've made good on that aspiration, his immediate assumption is clearly that she's pregnant. This is even reinforced with a cheeky subliminal visual gag, wherein he joyously squirts an obviously phallic banana out of its skin on thinking that he's finally managed to sire offspring of his own. It's not a point that the script particularly lingers on, but it's easy enough to read in between the lines and interpret the chimps as a couple who want to procreate, but haven't had much luck with the conception process. The female chimp sees Sidney as the answer to their problems, but the male isn't so willing to accept him as a baby substitute. The interplay between Sidney and his grudging adoptive Pop is where most of the narrative focus lies, as he first attempts to cope with the arrangement and then aspires to get rid of Sidney, but it also takes the time to establish a bond between Sidney and his mother, incorporating a tender moment where she knits him a trunk cozy and bids him a good night. The connection between the two seems heartfelt enough that you genuinely feel a sense of her pain at the end, when her mate announces that Sidney is out of their lives for good.

Sidney's Family Tree is an extraordinarily gentle cartoon. Possessing neither the loftiness of Paul Bunyan nor the anarchic aggression of Knighty Knight Bugs, it coasts along considerably on basic geniality. The very darkest thing that happens is when Sidney's adoptive father attempts to ditch him by trapping him inside a cave, which he obviously doesn't get far with. Even the frugal production values, and the all-round lack of technical sophistication, come together in ways that play to the film's merits. The plain, predominantly yellow backgrounds dusted with crude floral outlines are barebones as can be, yet they radiate a warmth and vibrancy. Phil Scheib's flute and percussion score is repetitive, but adds to the soothing ambience of the piece.

Sidney remains too naive and trusting to ever cotton onto the fact that his adoptive father doesn't want him around, interpreting his hostility as tokens of affection. His priorities seem to change, however, when a female elephant happens to wander past and catch his eye, and Sidney is compelled to follow after her, seemingly forgetting about his simian kin. The male chimp is giddy with delight, attempting to sell the outcome to his heartbroken mate as a case of nature running its course, an empty nest an inevitability she signed up to when she chose to take on a baby. His relief proves to be short-lived; as it turns out, Sidney still has no intention of taking his place within the adult world, reaffirming his commitment to his protracted childhood by inducting his new mate Hortense into the fold. The elephants show up at the chimps' tree and announce that they'll be moving in with them until they find their feet (as if that's ever going to happen). Sidney believes that they make the nicest family in the jungle, and while the closing visual gag, in which the branch collapses under their combined weight, would ostensibly undermine that, what's important is that they all go down together - a chaotic and unconventional unit, but ultimately as valid as any other, connected firmly by the basic need to be needed on both sides. I'm sure the male chimp will come round eventually (or maybe not - later Sidney shorts appear to indicate that Cleo the giraffe wound up becoming his parental figure after all, along with a lion who was ironically named Stanley).

Sidney's failure to beat Bugs to the Oscar did not deter him from enjoying a prosperous enough run of shorts. His cartoons continued up until 1964, by which point he had made the transition from theatrical animation to television (such were the changing times), finishing up his career as a supporting segment on The Hector Heathcote Show. Since then, he hasn't exactly remained at the forefront of public consciousness (few, if any, Terrytoons characters honestly have in the 2020s). An elephant never forgets (nor forgives, as his thinly-veiled resurfacing on Tiny Toon Adventures would bear out), but the world forgot Sidney long ago. His 1990 grudge match against Bugs, Babs and Buster, far from being a mean-spirited dig, was a real shot in the arm of relevancy for a character who'd been otherwise consigned to stagnation. My only regret is that they restricted Sidney/Stanley to that one episode and he did not become a recurring nemesis for the Tiny Toons gang. It was not, however, his last hurrah - Sidney was a featured character on Curbside, an attempted Terrytoons revival project made by Nickelodeon in 1999, in which he was voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, although this never got further than the pilot. As to whether we'll ever see Sidney again, who knows? Paramount Pictures currently owns the rights to the Terrytoons characters, but don't appear to be doing a great deal with them.

At the very least, Sidney has an Oscar nomination to his name, and that's something that can never be taken away from him. It's also one more Oscar nomination than Daffy Duck ever received (sad, but true).

Now if Tiny Toons Looniversity would just do something as awesome as to bring back Sappy Stanley, it might even be worth my while to watch it. So far as I can tell it hasn't happened, so the revival gets a hard pass from me.

[1] Although a latent dark side was arguably hinted in the short "Meat, Drink and Be Merry". This is the one where Sidney attempts to become a carnivore, and the way it plays out is so weird and unsettling, like he's aspiring to be the neighbourhood serial killer.

[2] Mind you, while Terrytoons never won this award, there was precedent for UPA doing so twice, with the Mr Magoo shorts When Magoo Flew (1954) and Magoo's Puddle Jumper (1956).

The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #50: John Smith's Penguins (featuring Jack Dee)

For the 50th entry in this retrospective, I'm doing something very special and going in search of one of most heavily-guarded of all of my personal advertising-inflicted traumas. Lurking somewhere within the darkest depths of my psyche is a penguin-shaped cicatrix that on occasion still throbs and causes me to lose sleep to this day. It's high time we put a spotlight on one of the freakiest, unholiest, most thoroughly cursed unions in advertising history - the union between John Smith's Bitter, a waddle of beady-eyed, singing, tap-dancing penguins, and morose comedian Jack Dee, never for a second dropping the mask and giving the impression that he wanted to be there. Such was the man's charm. I should confess upfront that I am mostly unfamiliar with Dee's work outside of this campaign, but it's my understanding that the moroseness and the unenthusiasm were part of his brand. And singing, dancing penguins are ostensibly the antithesis of all that, and of John Smith's. Ostensibly.

The partnership between Dee and John Smith's originated in the early stages of the 1990s, but it took a few installments for penguins to be added to the formula. A ladybird theme was dabbled with at one point (in theory, they should have been the ideal counter to Dee, since they're such bright, colourful and cheering bugs), but it didn't stick. From the start, the basic premise of the ads, pinned to the slogan of "No Nonsense," was about putting themselves in quotation marks, professing an awareness of how hackneyed it was to have fake animals and (one assumes) equally fake celebrities endorsing your products. This was a campaign about the naffness of other campaigns, which in practice amounted to it getting to have its cake and nosily scarf it down too. Dee's sour face provided a humorous departure from the plastic grins of your typical celebrity shill, while the ladybirds he was initially and all-too-reluctantly paired with lampooned the kind of hollow visual gimmickry endemic to television advertising. In one installment, Dee was surrounded by people in ladybird costumes chirping some inane jingle. In another, Dee himself was physically transformed into one of the spotted bugs. All very much against his will in the ads' internal narrative, for Dee was a down-to-earth man who preferred to tell the people about the virtues of John Smith's straight, with no bells and whistles. Then in 1995, somebody decided that the ladybirds were too subtle and what Dee really needed to go up against was a plague of musically-inclined penguins. And with that, a full-blown televisual nightmare was born. That first diabolical penguin spot happened to catch me unawares as a child, and I could practically feel my personality warping in eight different directions just watching it. The world didn't seem like quite the same place after. Nothing seemed quite the same.

What did the penguins have that the ladybirds didn't? I think a lot of it goes back to what I said in my piece on the Bud Ice Penguin. Spheniscids give off that unique cocktail of cuddliness, clownishness and, owing to their vaguely human-shaped appearance, utter uncanniness. Viewed from just the right angle, they can seem strangely off-kilter, a quality that the "No Nonsense" leans into with a particular dry fiendishness. I maintain that my visceral reaction to the John Smith's penguin, as a child, was not the result of a callow mind overreacting to offbeat stimuli - there's something about these birds that I find innately sinister to this day. Compared to them, Feathers McGraw seems like the sweetest-faced of jokers. All by design, I'm sure. The "No Nonsense" had to walk a careful tightrope between revelling in the very lunacy it appeared to decry and establishing some distance from it. On one level, the penguins were intended to be comical; the viewer was supposed to laugh at the hilarious contrast between the singing spheniscids and the po-faced Dee. But they were also intended as a parody of the general inaneness and vapidity of advertising, a point communicated by giving them a certain grotesqueness. The over the top spectacle of the penguin chorus is meant to feel reminiscent of a fever dream; the viewer is bombarded with absurd sounds and imagery at a faster rate than they can reasonably process it. The flashiness of television advertising, the campaign warns us, is something that should engender suspicion. The penguins, however superficially amusing, embody the falseness and the hollowness of product marketing, the sourpuss tones of Dee and the taste of John Smith's representing the welcome interjections of reality undercutting it at every turning. The two forces appear to be at odds, but are actually cozy bedfellows; something that is gone for even more full-throttle with the penguins than it was with the ladybirds is the sense that we are being given leeway to enjoy the silliness while pretending to sneer at it. Above all else, the "No Nonsense" ads are concessions to the guilty pleasures of advertising, and to the base level on which our brains respond to the absurd spectacle of dancing penguins, even when knowing we should be above such things.

The initial penguin spot ended with Dee banishing the offending creatures from the bar. But of course, he couldn't keep them at bay for long. The birds proved such a hit that they returned in subsequent ads to continue their uncanny song and dance routine, with the caveat that Dee invariably got to send them packing with his abuse. (Dee typically limited his abuse to verbal put-downs, but at least one ad, which contained a nod to puppeteer Rod Hull, involved implied physical abuse. The penguins scream in that one.) Somehow, the campaign took an even stranger turn in 1996, in an ad that parodied the bombast of Hollywood blockbusters as much as the vapidity of advertising. The twist here was that the penguins were finally given the upper hand (or flipper) and had free reign for the entirety of the ad. Dee was completely oblivious to their presence, with the narrative that the penguins had been added in the aftermath using green screen technology, and without Dee's consent; he thinks that he has finally succeeded and convinced the advertising executives to ditch the gimmicks, when in actuality they have settled a devious workaround. And the results were utterly terrifying, with the penguins having adopted an apparent vindictiveness after so many turns at being berated by Dee. They have dropped their song and dance routine in favour of aggressive mockery, and scatology. Not only could the penguins now breathe fire, they could apparently also propel themselves into the air by farting fire. Perhaps in retaliation for that earlier Rod Hull gag, one over-sized penguin even stuffs Dee up its rear and then belches him out through its beak. At the end of the ad, Dee's image was even manipulated so that he appeared to be wearing a penguin suit, a playful admission that Dee and the marketing sidekicks he supposedly loathed were really birds of a feather.

The Dee campaign came to an end before the decade was out, with one of the last installments yielding what felt like the perfect punchline to the series. Dee finally got his wish - we found him alone in a room with only a pint of John Smith's and "no gimmicks, no penguins". A slight pause. And then: "Might as well go down the pub." Indeed. In the end, our fascination with kitschy advertising amounts to much the same thing as our fascination with what lurks at the bottom of a pub glass. If it's not about escapism, then what is it for?

Cadbury's Creme Egg: Float On (aka Creme, Get On Top)

Note: It was initially my intention to try working this in as another edition of "Horrifying Advertising Animals", but all the while I had the voice of David St. Hubbins from Spinal Tap bellowing in my head: "They're not animals, they're signs of the Zodiac!" Fine, it can stand on its own.

Somehow or other Cadbury's Creme Eggs managed to crank out an awful lot of UK marketing mileage from a question that I seriously doubt very many level-headed people cared to complicate: "How do you eat yours?" (or alternatively, "How do YOU do it?"). The implications of this campaign hook were both grotesque and banal. Banal, because how many variations can there even be when it comes to ingesting a piece of egg-shaped chocolate confectionery? The average consumer is either going to eat the whole thing together in bite-sized chunks like a civilised person (relatively speaking, given the product) or extract the fondant innards with their tongue or forefinger and then eat the chocolate shell; is there really a great deal else to be done with the thing? And grotesque because...do I really want to know some of the possible answers to the question I just posed? I think that forefinger option is frankly already pushing it. And is focussing on the various disgusting methodologies other people might apply to the act of eating likely to boost our own appetites? There reached a point, round about the new millennium, where the campaign started to lean quite heavily into those gross-out implications, with ads showing people dunking chips into the fondant and other mank images that I swear were only a step away from belonging in a John Waters movie (granted, IIRC the woman doing the chip-dunking was pregnant, which explains her oddball cravings, but I still can't say that I enjoyed the visual). Which, by coincidence or not, is around the time I went off creme eggs as a product. Possibly chips for a while, too.

The least repulsive campaign ever spun around the concept arose circa early 1990s, and hinged upon a cute idea - that the way you ate your creme egg, like your star sign, spoke volumes about your personality. What it was actually trading on, which meant absolutely nothing to me at the time, was 1970s nostalgia. The campaign was structured around a clever reworking of "Float On", a 1977 hit for soul group The Floaters, notable mainly for its spoken word interludes, in which each Floater gave his name, his star sign and his mating preferences in a style designed to recall the formalities of video dating. The TV ads mimicked this format in having a representative of each star sign step out before a microphone and deliver some slick statement on how they did it with their creme eggs, while the song's titular hook was modified into a jingle directly extolling the product. Having no prior reference for "Float On", my kid brain accepted it as an original tune, and to this day, whenever I hear the actual Floaters tracks my neurons are invariably wanting to work a "Cadbury's Creme Egg!" in there.

The campaign's real magic ingredient, though, was its visual wit. The characters in question were all claymation figures, courtesy of the ever-reliable Aardman and animated (I believe) by one of the studio's founding fathers, Peter Lord himself. The twist being that when they spoke about their respective pun-laden affections for creme eggs, they each morphed into the creature or item that symbolises their sign. As with Aardman production, even their advertising work, the amount of care, heart and craftsmanship that goes into the process is simply impossible to ignore. The ads had such a warmth and a vigor to them, and it's on that basis that they had me so enraptured as a small child...even when pretty much every other aspect of the premise was floating on right over my head (aside from the obvious - the pro-creme egg message). Astrology was not something I understood at the time; it was enough for me to think that the characters were turning into animals and other beings that somehow symbolised the quirky nature of their chocolate rapacity. Something else I was obviously not going to get was the very blatant sexual innuendo that permeated the campaign from top to bottom. Because yeah, that's the other thing that makes it an interesting series to revisit as an adult - it's hard to seriously entertain the notion that the characters are talking about creme eggs. Here, you get the impression that the eggs are really just the metaphor.

There exists a 90 second super-cut of the campaign combining all twelve star signs into one, but at the time I only ever saw these aired in three separate 30-second segments, with four characters apiece. Note that the ordering within the shorter versions differs from that of the full edit (and in neither case does the ordering align with that of the actual Zodiac). Here's a rundown of who appeared where, and what salacious quips they each came out with:

Ad #1: Leo/Gemini/Sagittarius/Taurus

• "Hi, I'm LEO! I eat the lion's share! Roar!" He has a rapacious appetite and he dominates.
  
• "GEMINI! And I like to slurp it!" "Bite it!" "Slurp it!" "Bite it!" I remain divided on whether these are actual twins we're seeing here or if the implication is that Gemini has something of a split personality when it comes to her mode of creme egg consumption. If the former, then they're licking/biting from the same egg, which is as gross-out as this campaign gets.
  
• "SAGITTARIUS! I could eat two or three on the trot!" Cos he's got hooves, see? Are centaurs known for their promiscuity or am I getting them mixed up with satyrs?
  
• "TAURUS! And I go at it like a bull in a sweet shop!" This is an odd one, for multiple reasons. Obviously it's a play on the expression "bull in a china shop", referring to a person who behaves gauchely in a situation that demands subtly or delicacy, with the words tweaked to make it more pertinent to the product being touted. Bovines aren't exactly renowned for being sugar addicts, but I suspect it was also intended to play as an amalgamation with another expression, "like a kid in a candy store", meaning to be overwhelmed by the array of wonderful options before you (now, that's a pun that might have worked a treat for Capricorn). That in turn makes me conscious of the fact that Taurus, like most of the swingers on parade here, has an American accent, so is he likely to say "sweet shop" instead of "candy store"? I guess what he means to convey is that he's going to throw his weight around with sheer excitement. Taurus wears a leather jacket, which is appropriate to his bull motif, although it's maybe a little morbid for him to be wearing the skin of the animal he ultimately morphs into.
  

Ad #2: Pisces/Aries/Libra/Cancer

• "PISCES! And I dive right in!" I'm a Pisces, and I find my sign's representation a bit on the mixed side. Visually it's great; I like how Pisces' sparkly sequin dress transforms into fish scales, and I absolutely dig how, as a fish, she's got both eyes on the side of her face like a flatfish (even if her overall design seems to be based more on a swordfish). But the innuendo's not the most tantalising, and I'm a little hung up on the fact that Pisces is represented specifically by TWO fish swimming in opposite directions - was there no way of working that concept in here? Or did they feel that the split personality motif would get too repetitive alongside Gemini? Incidentally, Pisces is the only female character to undergo any kind of beastly transformation (since Scorpio is a no-go in that regard - see below).
  
• "ARIES! I give it a good battering!" This ad so makes me want to be an Aries, given that sheep boy gets by far the sauciest innuendo. Fun fact: a snippet of his dialogue was also sampled in the Gorillaz track "Aries". His attire is, naturally, wool-themed - he wears a woolly sweater AND a jacket lined with wool. How is he not boiling under those stage lights?
  
• "LIBRA! I like to weigh up the alternatives! Weigh-hey!" I've seen a lot of speculation that Libra was voiced by Danny John-Jules, who is best known for playing Cat in Red Dwarf. I've yet to find any official source on the matter, but yeah, it certainly sounds like him. Libra seems like a tough sign to incorporate into this particular premise, since it's represented by an inanimate object, not a creature, but they managed to have him embody those scales in a way that feels slick and not excessively goofy. He holds an egg in each hand in a weighing motion, and his eyes turn into the dials. Gotta love the bonus pun he signs off with too.
  
• "CANCER! And I'm a shell man myself!" Nice crab nod, but unless I'm missing something, not much in the way of innuendo. And why is he wearing a hoodie and not a shell suit? If you ask me, Cancer got the most short-changed by this campaign. His sideways scuttling exit in the 90-second version looks cool, at least.
  

 

Ad #3: Aquarius/Scorpio/Virgo/Capricorn

• "AQUARIUS! And sometimes I get carried away!" Yeah, I'll say. Aquarius gets the kinkiest visual of the lot, in that she pours the contents of the egg all over her face and proceeds to lick it off. It's worth noting at this point that the creme eggs seen in this campaign are ALL disproportionately large, but Aquarius's really takes the cake. Hers is an ostrich egg edition.
  
• "SCORPIO! One nip from me and it's history!" Scorpio is, strangely, the only animal sign who doesn't morph into the critter in question. Instead, her pigtail rears up behind her in the manner of a scorpion's tail and slashes the creme egg open. She looks properly badass, but if you were hoping to see an actual scorpion then it's an anti-climax nevertheless.
  
• "VIRGO! Ah-hem. This is my first one..." For a while, Ad #3 was the only installment I was having difficulty locating on YouTube, and a large part of what was stoking my curiosity in the meantime (besides completism) was wondering how on earth they were going to represent Virgo. It's an awkward concept to have to work with in this context, more so than Libra. What they came up with was definitely clever - this girl's never had a creme egg before, and she's understandably nervous about putting something this dubious-looking into her mouth. Virgo is, unsurprisingly, the least sexualised of the bunch, with plain clothing that's supposed to convey a mix of chasteness (the collar blouse) and girlish innocence (the bow in her hair). For some reason she's also the only character to not speak with an American accent. I guess the idea was make her sound a less sultry than the others; she's out of place within the soul music ambience.
  
• "CAPRICORN! Mind if I butt in?" So Capricorn's style is that he's a thief. He steals Virgo's egg, in the only instance of two signs interacting, thus forcing her to retain her creme egg virginity. Capricorn wears a turtleneck sweater (presumably made out of mohair), has a goatee and also two weird bumps protruding from his head that I guess are supposed to be his hair? Dude comes off as somewhat of a creep (stick a pitchfork in his hand and in his human form he could pass for your archetypal cartoon devil), but he does make one heck of a charming aqua goat. In fact, if I'm applying to this fictional dating agency, then Capricorn's the one I'm coming away with, just on the basis of his winsome goat grin.
   

Bart The Genius (aka The Kid That Made Delinquency an Art)

"Bart The Genius" (7G02) is a Simpsons episode of immense personal significance for me. This is, in part, because it was one of the first Simpsons episodes I ever saw. That in itself isn't too outstanding - I was around when the series debuted; this would have been one of the first episodes seen by most people of my age. It was, after all, only the second installment in the show's protracted history, and its initial airing, on January 14th 1990, marked one of the first really earth-shattering pop cultural turnings of the decade. One 23-minute peek into Bart's academic angst and the world was never quite the same again. "Simpsons Roasting on An Open Fire" had already weathered the gargantuan challenge of introducing the series as its own standalone thing, proving that the characters could handle longer-form storytelling than sketch show interstitials or candy commercials, but arguably had an easier ride of it in debuting during the holiday season, when tolerance for animated drivel tends to be a lot higher. The question of whether this unassuming cartoon show could cut it as a weekly thing, and as appointment viewing for the adult crowd still hung in the balance. "Bart The Genius" had the task of getting viewers accustomed to that more regular Simpsons flavour - which included, among other things, the first usage of the show's now-iconic opening sequence (or rather, the prototypical version, where Bart steals a stop sign and Lisa makes it home first, but all of the really important beats are already nailed - the chalkboard gag, the couch gag, Marge nearly running Homer down). It could not have gone over more swimmingly. Viewers of all ages were endeared by the underachieving underdog and his penchant for anarchy, and a thousand trashy t shirt slogans were unleashed upon an unsuspecting market.

My own first viewing of "Bart The Genius" was through a VHS release, where it was paired with "The Call of The Simpsons" (remember that The Simpsons initially aired as a Sky exclusive in the UK, so those VHS tapes were the only way most of us were going to see the show). It was an experience that changed my life, both for better and for worse. From the start, I loved the world and its characters and knew that I had to delve deeper into the series' canon. But "Bart The Genius" also sticks out for being the Simpsons episode that left me with something of an indelible psychological scar. I was only six years old at the time, and there is a very specific moment in "Bart The Genius" that went some way in teaching me what a fucked up place the world intrinsically is. To this day, the episode holds a very special place in my heart. I have likewise never forgiven it.

"Bart The Genius" is of course the episode where Bart cheats in an IQ test by exchanging his paper for that of resident egghead Martin Prince. He is subsequently assessed as a misunderstood genius by educational psychologist Dr Pryor, and strings are pulled for him to be sent to a more appropriate schooling environment, the Enriched Learning Center for Gifted Children. On arrival, Bart is greeted by his new "learning coordinator", Ms Melon, who straight off the bat has some obvious features in common with his erstwhile teacher, Ms Krabappel. Both are voiced by Marcia Wallace and both have fruity pun monikers, only hers is a lot sweeter on the ears, so it's easy to form the impression that she's Krabappel's nicer counterpart from an all-round gentler universe. But oooooh, she soooooo isn't. Melon introduces Bart to a few of his classmates, including a girl by the name of Cecile Shapiro who's standing beside a couple of hamster cages. Bart, naively assuming that the hamsters are the class pets, asks for their names. Cecile gives a response that's already unpleasant enough in itself, but mostly went over my head as a small child: "Hamster number 1 has been infected with a staphylococci virus. Hamster number 2 is the control hamster." Then the ultimate bombshell. Bart is advised by Melon not to get too attached to the control hamster, since he's scheduled for dissection next week. I had no idea what that meant, so I turned to my dad and asked him to explain. He told me they were going to cut the hamster open and look at what was inside him. And just like that, a little something inside of me died then and there. Until then I'd had no idea that that was even a thing. The hamsters do escape and flee the premises at the end, and that helped to take the sting off, sure (writer Jon Vitti explicitly states on the DVD commentary that they couldn't have gotten away with the dissection remark if they didn't later show the hamsters escaping), but it was like Artax's last-minute resurrection in the coda to The Never-Ending Story. We'd already seen that horse sink into the bog. And I'd already heard Melon announce her intention to slice that hamster open. In both cases the damage was done.

Watching that scene more than three decades on, I still feel a lingering twang of young Scampy's pain. Granted, it probably hits me particularly hard because I am both a rodent lover and a hamster owner, but there is something about that line that strikes me as entirely willful in terms of how gratuitously unsettling it is. Clearly, we're not supposed to accord with the Enriched Learning Center as an institution, no matter how ostensibly attractive some of its philosophies, such as its lessened emphasis on punctuality (Bart is told by Pryor to show up at nine-ish) and its encouraging of students to shape their own learning. The kids who communicate in palindromes and backwards phonetics instantly emit warped mirror universe vibes, Melon gives the bombastic instruction that students "discover" their desks, and there's an evident mean-spirited disdain for popular culture in their implied assumption that people who read comic books are effectively illiterate. The hamster remark, though? Doesn't it just completely poison the atmosphere inside that place? I'm not sure that anything could have turned me more vehemently against the Enriched Learning Center. I didn't want to see Bart become a part of this school. Instead, I found myself hoping that Bart would bring the entire institution down by the end of the episode. As it happened, he came close enough in blowing up the science lab, covering its occupants with a revolting green slime and allowing the hamsters to run free. Mission accomplished! As far as I was concerned, this entire ordeal was all worth it, if Bart had managed to save a couple of rodents from the scalpel. Why they insisted on working in that horrible line in is, I suspect, to create greater disparity between Bart and his new environs in a way that paints Bart in a much more wholesome colour. Bart might not explicitly oppose the pending hamster dissection, but it clearly clashes with his first instinct to want to know the creatures by name and to bond with them. That those instincts should prove so out of place within the Enriched Learning Center sets up an ugly side to these young geniuses, in depicting them as being above sentiment. Give these kids a a hamster, and they don't see it as a pet to be cared for and enjoyed but as a resource to be mercilessly exploited. In the end their keenness and their thirst for knowledge comes off as basically cold.

The one saving grace about this school, however? The lunch boxes. One kid, an obvious chess enthusiast, has an Anatoly Karpov lunchbox. Another has one themed around Brideshead Revisited. I love how, right from the start, the series had an eye for such intelligent and miniscule details, and the tremendous amount of character they inject into the furthest corners of each scene. We're not given much of a chance to get to know any of Bart's new classmates as individuals (see below), but low-key details such as this give us a world of insight into who they each are.

It's fair to say that "Bart The Genius" is a less plot-driven installment than "Simpsons Roasting on An Open Fire". The premise of Bart being mistaken for a prodigy and whisked away to an educational setting for the precocious is a strong one, but one that actually isn't developed all that far, at least in terms of what happens within the school itself. In one scene, it looks as though the other students might be cottoning on to Bart's fish-out-of-water-ness, but nothing too significant comes of it - they dismiss him as "rather a mediocre genius", as opposed to a total fraud, and apparently decide to shun him (we hear that nobody will volunteer to be his lab partner). And despite incorporating a moment where Bart manages to blow up a chemistry lab, the school arc reaches a surprisingly quiet and civilised resolution, wherein Bart simply tires of the deception and openly confesses. I suspect that if this same premise had shown up any later down the line (even in Seasons 2 or 3), he might have been put through more of a dramatic noose-tightening before the beans were inevitably spilled. None of these observations are intended as a criticisms of "Bart The Genius"; the developments within the school are kept reined in by choice, because they clearly aren't where the emotional heft of the episode is intended to lie. The script has plenty of sharp observations to make about the education system and Bart's endless frustrations therewith, but this is fundamentally a story about how Bart relates to the rest of his family, particularly Homer. Its greatest interests lie in taking valuable time to explore the main cast, the way each Simpson reacts to Bart's newly-declared genius offering a telling snapshot of where their own characterisation would soon be headed. Small scenes centred on the family dynamics, such as the opening one with the Simpsons playing Scrabble (a tribute to Canadian apocalyptic comedy The Big Snit), might feel like remnants of the series' origins as a collection of shorter-form sketches, but they do so much to cement who they are and how it's going to matter for the succeeding twenty minutes. Homer is an ill-educated grouch, Marge is the family mediator, Lisa is precocious and, most importantly, Bart is an audacious rebel with real creativity when it comes to undermining the rules. Bart might not be a genius, but there is an appealing inventiveness in how he plays his made-up word "Kwyjibo". As would be explored in greater depth in the Season 2 opener "Bart Gets an F", the kid's got real talent. Sadly, it's just not the kind of talent that can be channelled into any kind of academic success.

Here are my two favourite takeaways from the Scrabble game:

1. The "Oxidize" joke is brilliant (a variation on the "CARROST" gag from The Big Snit) but even if Homer had recognised the word, he wouldn't actually have been able to play it. If you study the tiles on the Scrabble board, you'll see that he had no way of inserting it into what was already on there.
2. Having said that, there's also no way that Homer should have been able to play "Do" either. The layout of the Scrabble board changes between shots. An F disappears. The word "My" appears. Ah well, this must be a magic Scrabble board.
   

 

That Lisa remains the least vocal on the episode's pivotal development (after Maggie) might strike one as its most jarring facet from a modern perspective. It's hard to imagine a latter day version of this scenario where Bart is sent to a genius school and Lisa doesn't resent the shit out him. But you know, still waters run deep, and in Lisa's deceptively minimal role she gets to speak volumes. The middle Simpsons child remained something of a dark horse going into the series proper, and you can see how they were using that as a springboard for her hidden depths. Vitti's script is already laying the groundwork for Lisa being the unsung genius of her family (and to a lesser extent Maggie, who, in a wonderful sight gag, spells EMCSQU with her alphabet blocks at the start of the episode). It just doesn't place it front and centre, layering it amid the various episode subtleties for viewers to pick up on themselves. It's Lisa who plays the most advanced word during the family's otherwise vapid game of Scrabble (the girl did love her psychological parlance back in the day). She also knows that "nurturing" is the word Marge wants when she talks about encouraging Bart to grow (Marge compliments her "brainy brain", but immediately goes back to Bart). Most revealing of all, Lisa is the one character who isn't duped by Bart's test scores (Skinner too has his reservations, but brushes them aside when he learns that he can offload Bart onto another school). She knows her brother too well not to know that something is up. Bart, just as revealingly, doesn't put up any pretence in front of Lisa. When she taunts him at the breakfast table with her insistence that, "I don't care what that stupid test says, Bart, you're a dimwit", he does not refute her observation, instead retorting, "Maybe so, but from now on this dimwit is on easy street." Lisa makes no active effort to expose part as a fraud, in part because she's blatantly savvy enough to know that it isn't needed. She operates on an unspoken trust that the truth will eventually out itself, as indicated by her totally unfazed response to seeing Homer blow his top with Bart at the end: "I think Bart's stupid again." Where the episode is locked into a more prototypical version of her character is in her relationship with Bart feeling a little too fundamentally antagonistic. Her battle cry of "Yeah, Bart!" whenever Marge or Homer put him in his place was briefly carried over as her catchphrase from the Tracy Ullman days. Compare it to "Bart Gets an F", where Lisa's purpose was still to explicitly remind Bart of his failings, but from the perspective of wanting to steer him in the right direction. And yet Lisa isn't entirely at odds with Bart throughout the episode. When the family attend their first opera and Bart and Homer are inclined to riff their way through the utterly alien experience, Lisa ultimately succumbs to the same temptation and giggles along with them. On this occasion she can't help but see the funny side to Bart's subversive desire to rewrite the rules of the game.

The character who I do think comes off as really undefined at this point is Marge. She's a little all over the place in this episode. The most significant character development she gets is in interpreting Bart's alleged genius as a cue to start introducing the family as a whole to more highbrow cultural fare like opera and Scandinavian arthouse. During the Carmen sequence, she gets to be the solitary sensible Simpson with an ideal of how she'd like the family to be, and is inevitably mortified when they fail to conform to it. Homer would be cast in the exact same role in "There's No Disgrace Like Home", suggesting that the writers were still fairly open at this stage with regard to the family's internal dynamics, but this is an important first step for Marge, in establishing that she privately hungers for something outside of her bland domestic sphere. Elsewhere, I kind of get the impression that Vitti wrote her to be as much of an airhead as Homer, just from a sweeter-tempered angle. Take Marge's response on being summoned to Skinner's office on account of Bart's vandalism: "He's a good boy now and he's getting better, and sometimes even the best sheep stray from the flock and need to be hugged extra hard." It's a much nicer and more sensitive response than Homer's go-to angry outbursts, but as a solution feels every bit as vacuous. Marge, like every other adult in this episode, is applying her own preconceived narrative to Bart's behaviour and is failing as much as anyone to get to the root of why he's acting out the way he does. It's this tendency toward preconceived narratives that keep the adult characters from realising the truth staring them square in the face the whole time - that Bart is not a kid genius, just a kid with a particular adroitness for subversion and bluffing.

"Bart The Genius", much like "Bart Gets an F", deals with the cruelties of the school system and its eagerness to pigeonhole students into categories that stifle personal development more than encourage it. We get some insights into the horrors of being pegged as an underachiever in the first act. Edna Krapabbel, making her debut appearance, has already written Bart off as incorrigible and is astoundingly upfront in her acidity ("There are students in this class with a chance to do well. Will you kindly stop bothering them?"). We can see just how callous and unsupportive her remarks are, following a visually inspired nightmare sequence in which Bart makes a sincere attempt at working out a math problem before the process overwhelms him. And then when Pryor pigeonholes him into another category, that of the misunderstood genius, Bart soon grows just as weary with having to live with that designation. It drives a wedge between himself and his peers, leaving him friendless and alone; the prodigies won't accept him, and his old friends Milhouse, Richard and Lewis no longer want anything to do with him (for reasons that the script doesn't make overtly clear, but they're presumably angry at Bart for how he upped and abandoned them). The adults, meanwhile, prove frustratingly obtuse in picking up on Bart's fraudulence, something that should make it easier for Bart but in practice gives him nowhere to go; much like Edna K, they've already made up their minds about Bart, and their responses are every bit as unhelpful in weighing up his educational needs. When Bart can't make a simple experiment work, Pryor's immediate assumption is that the Enriched Learning Center isn't challenging this brightest of sparks enough. Eventually, Bart learns to play into Pryor's preconceived narrative, when he advocates his reinstatement to Springfield Elementary, on the understanding that he'll be conducting some kind of covert scientific enquiry into the psychology of the average child (like Jane Goodall and the chimps, as Pryor so condescendingly puts it). But he's only willing to play along so far. In the end, Bart decides that maintaining the ruse is more trouble than it's worth and just confesses, stating what should always have been patently obvious to Pryor, Melon and co. Still, for as woefully as Pryor misconstrued the situation as a whole, there is one matter on which he probably was always entirely correct, and that's that Bart's rap sheet of unruly behaviour represents his lashing out at a system that doesn't value him. For this much, Pryor has no solution, nor any enthusiasm for understanding Bart's discontent, and this is the bleakest thing about the episode's resolution. Bart must return to a normality in which he was already flat-out told that he had no future social status or financial success. When the narrative can't be spun into something as joyously positive as your disobedience being a symptom of latent genius, you're very much on your own. Bart's trajectory ends up upholding the one nugget of paradoxical wisdom he was able to bestow on his classmates at the Enriched Learning Center - you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

Somewhere at the back of Bart's sorry tale is the tale of a real young genius who's also ignored, at least by the narrative progression. "Bart The Genius" introduces us to Martin Prince, who good as disappears after the first act, but dominates every scene he's in (Russi Taylor was a legendary voice actress and is very much missed). He's another character who doesn't seem to be fully nailed down at this stage - obviously, he's the anti-Bart, but the script seems to vary on just how knowing he is in his anti-Bartness. He can't help being an insufferable goody two-shoes, compelled not only to report Bart's act of vandalism directly to Skinner but to comment on the carelessness of his vandalism in not using the preferred spelling of "Wiener" with the i before the e (though conceding that "Weiner" is an acceptable ethnic variant). To begin with, Martin doesn't come off as being motivated by spite; he simply can't bare to see such flagrant disrespect for the school grounds, and makes a sincere, if socially inept attempt to get Bart to see it that way. The next thing you know, he's reminding Krabappel that Bart is supposed to face the window during exams, lest he be tempted to copy his neighbour's paper, and there's such unmistakable joy in Taylor's delivery that you just know the little snot is doing it on purpose. Then later on, he's making rude faces at Bart from beneath the tree. Given that Martin is basically the victim of the story, I would guess the intention was to make him a little unsympathetic. But that's a loose end the script leaves hanging - we don't find out what the consequences were for Martin when he gets saddled with Bart's miserable score, and it's something that's always nagging at the corner of my mind whenever I watch the episode. His narrative is allowed to fade into the backdrop, a brief reappearance with his parents among the spectators of Carmen being the nearest thing he gets to closure. It's not clear if Martin was even vindicated in the end; Bart admits to cheating but doesn't explain how he accomplished this. Here, Martin doesn't get to be a whole lot more than a plot device and a further reflection of Springfield Elementary's endless hostility toward Bart. But what an enduring first impression.

There are probably a heap of different directions in which the scenario might have been further developed, but it would have overcomplicated what's ultimately a straightforward study of the love-hate relationship between Homer and Bart. Bart might be dejected and lonely as a perceived genius, but the one bright spot of the experience is that he and Homer suddenly find it a whole lot easier to relate to one another. Homer's ill-gotten pride at the prospect of having sired this pint-sized brainiac might be based on a lie, but what it effectively gives him is leeway for connecting with Bart on the basis of the talents he genuinely has, now that he's no longer an embarrassment who gets him summoned to Skinner's office on a weekly basis. We see ample evidence that Homer actually enjoys and identifies with Bart's penchant for mischief, so long as he isn't the butt of the joke (as was the case with the "Kwyjibo" incident). He might be incensed by Bart's vandalism (particularly when Skinner indicates that the Simpsons are financially liable for the damage), but he also accords with the observation, in Bart's graffiti, that Skinner is a "weiner". And Homer and Bart are on an equal wavelength in their inability to see the production of Carmen as anything other than a snooty ritual to be taken down. There's also a genuinely tender sequence where they play baseball after dark, having ducked out of an evening at the film festival, and the two engage in some very natural father-son banter. I guess it doesn't surprise me that Rabin would go after this sequence in his AV Club review, calling it "sweet if overly sentimental and incongruously sappy", but I'm inclined to defend it. From a story perspective, it establishes what's really at stake for Bart, since he was on the verge of coming clean with Homer before their bonding exercise caused him to reconsider; even with genius school having lost his lustre, he sincerely regrets the idea of disturbing his newfound connection with his father. I also think that a little emotional vulnerability was entirely warranted in order to give the story's very gleefully unsentimental resolution its sting. We've already witnessed how Homer and Bart are fully capable of seeing eye to eye, and having the ideal father-son bond, should the circumstances allow it. But in the end that all gets thrown out the window, as their respective worst traits each get the better of them. When Bart finally confesses the truth to Homer, he points out that the two of them have grown closer as a result of the lie, and on that basis it shouldn't be seen as a bad thing, but Homer doesn't fall for it. As he shouldn't. It's amazing just how quickly Bart's confession slips from a place of brutal honesty to barefaced manipulation.

We conclude, then, with the disturbing sight of a raving Homer chasing a butt-naked, literally off-colour Bart through the house. Bart's final victory comes in being smart enough to one-up his father, who changes tactics and plays his own emotional card when his quarry conceals himself in his bedroom, promising that if Bart comes out, he will comfort him and make him feel better. Bart points out that he isn't dumb enough to fall for that, and Homer collapses into a violent rage once again. The episode bows out with the two of them still at their ridiculous impasse; Homer slamming his body repeatedly against the bedroom door, and Bart committed to the dubious endeavour of having to stay in there forever. Equilibrium restored!

As a final note, a feature carried over from the Tracy Ullman shorts that would soon be discarded was the practice of inserting prominent framed pictures into the backdrop of each scene. Unlike in the Ullman shorts these pictures no longer appeared to possess a life and animation of their own, but they were still rather odd and dislocating in their way. Check out that Droste effect going on in the one in the Simpsons' kitchen. Doesn't it just speak to the infinitely monotonous entrapment in which the characters find themselves?

Reebok: Escape The Sofa (A Darker Chairy Tale)

At the dawn of the millennium, rival sportswear brands Nike and Reebok tapped into a compelling marketing hook, one that emphasised the value of physical fitness in a manner far exceeding the usual perks of looking cool and having a competitive edge. Regular work-outs, we were reminded, are a matter of meeting a primal survival need, the ability to run and stay ahead of anything on our trail being one of the most basic and effective anti-predator tactics at our disposal. Nobody today would seriously entertain the possibility of having to outrun a sabre-tooth cat on their way to the office, but there is still a plethora of horror to be projected onto the modern world if we care to see it. It was a train of thought that allowed for some creative and tongue-in-cheek campaigning, humorously extolling the benefits of exercise by playing around with the conventions of horror cinema. Nike had a particularly infamous and controversial spot designed to accompany the 2000 Sydney Olympics, in which a gym rat is pursued by a Jason Voorhees type, who quickly throws in the chainsaw when he realises he has no prospect of keeping up with her. (Their "Run. Because of What's Out There" print ad was of a similar vein, but I am unable to put a precise year to it). Reebok tried something all the more knowingly ludicrous in 2001 with "Escape The Sofa", a miniature horror about an aspiring sportsman looking to avoid being devoured by a tatty old couch. If you're thinking that a sofa is too prosaic an item to make for functional nightmare food, then you really should see this one in action. The ad was devised by Lowe Lintas & Partners and directed by Frank Budgen, who previously helmed the "Bet on Black" spot for Guinness. The prospective sofa chow is played by Ashley Artus, whom you might recognise as one of the Death Eaters from Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire.

What most amuses me about Budgen's ad is how the set-up calls to mind Claude Jutra and Norman McLaren's classic 1957 short A Chairy Tale. That too was about the conflict between a man and an item of animate furniture - a man who wanted to sit and a chair that emphatically did not want to be sat upon. Here the struggle is flipped on its head, so that the sofa becomes the dominant force in the equation, with Artus having to pry himself away in order to assert his status as a man and not the sedentary object it desires him to be. It offers a clever inversion on what we might suppose to be the actual problem going on beneath the metaphor, in which the sofa presents too safe and comfortable a haven for the occupant to have much of a mind to get his keister off of it. The sofa is instead envisioned as a maniacal entity, one intent on smothering the energy and resistance out of whomever might sit on it. It might lack facial features, yet it is strangely convincing as a beast on the rampage. The spot's most unsettling image arises from a brief interlude between the grappling, when both parties find themselves locked in a momentary stand-off and we're left facing the sofa head-on. Here, the sofa doesn't do anything other than pant heavily (how? I'm pretty sure it doesn't have lungs!), a loosened cushion hanging from its base like a tongue protruding from its non-existent mouth, a sight so eerily unnatural that it might bring out a few honest-to-god goosebumps. At the time, I was also genuinely spooked by the sofa's evident ninja prowess, during that specific moment when Artus retrieves his branded sports bag from the kitchen and attempts to make a break for the door, only for the sofa to have somehow gotten there before him. 

For all the ad's potential to inspire epiplaphobic reactions in susceptible viewers, it never loses sight of the fact that it is a story of a man who takes a physical walloping from a predatory sofa. It keeps the tone light, with one foot always in the absurdness of the matter and the other in the uncanniness. The sofa fights by stripping Artus's jeans from his body and exposing his underpants, a tactic as brutal as it is comical. The sofa is, after all, degrading Artus, shooting down his aspirations of entering the outside world and honing his athletic mettle. In that regard, he is effectively fighting himself. The sofa is the only object in Artus's apartment that appears to be alive (excepting the house plants), yet it plays as a monstrous reflection of his broader implied lifestyle. Our first glimpse of Artus in his natural habitat shows him sprawled out in an inelegant slouching position; the unvacuumed floor and haphazard piles of magazines suggest that he is accustomed to leading quite a slovenly existence. At this point, he is harmony with the sofa; it is the desire to get up and become physically active that suddenly pits him against this manifestation of his own slobbishness, one that threatens to swallow him whole. Meanwhile, the dark, somewhat chintzy leaf-patterned wallpaper in the backdrop is a subliminal clue that this seemingly calm domestic space is actually a wilderness, one in which Artus will shortly discover that he is not the apex predator. There is another implicit irony to the arrangement; we will be watching the battle play out from the "comfort" of our own sofas, our attachment to which, the ad suggests, may be consuming us through less dramatic means.

Still, it's a well-known fact that the saddest moment in any monster movie is when the monster dies. Here, the sofa isn't actually destroyed, but it is thoroughly vanquished when the pursuit takes it out of Artus's apartment and down a flight of stairs. The sofa becomes caught in the doorway and, while it continues to struggle, is left largely immobilised. Artus takes the opportunity to slip out from under it, refasten his jeans and exit the building, headed for the gym with his Reebok bag and his dignity salvaged. I am left reflecting at this point as to I really wanted Artus to succeed in the end, or if my sympathies were really with the sofa all along. I'm gripped with an irrefutable twang of regret in seeing this formidable beasts reduced to such a state of helplessness and vulnerability. I wonder if perhaps its intentions were really misunderstood, if it was motivated less by the desire to engulf Artus than by simple separation anxiety. Maybe it feels an attachment to Artus, likes the feeling of his body pressed against its fabric, and is fearful that his implementing a fitness regime will spell the end of their partnership. But it does also get me thinking about the nature of their relationship beyond this single incident. Artus is, presumably, not escaping the sofa for good. He is going to have to come back to his apartment later that same evening, and the sofa will still be there. This possessed item of furniture chomping at his thighs on a nightly basis is something that he's going to have to live with. In which case, is this how we should expect things to play out on every occasion where he fancies a visit to the gym? Are we to assume that the more in shape Artus gets, the more mastery he'll have over the sofa? Or will they eventually reach a peaceful compromise, as the two participants of A Chairy Tale did, one where they each aspire to see things from the other's perspective by allowing the sofa to momentarily lie on Artus? It's a thought that warms the cockles of my heart.