Bart's Girlfriend (aka You Can't Trust Your Perception At This Altitude)

"Bart's Girlfriend" (2F04) is yet another Simpsons installment where it might be pertinent to begin our coverage by bearing in mind where everything within is eventually headed. Bart closes the narrative by claiming to have learned something from his experience, but is unable to define what exactly, simply that he's "a little wiser and a little less naive". Based on what actually happens in that final scene, it's safe to say that he hasn't learned a damned thing, and this much shouldn't surprise us. He did, after all, initiate his ill-fated relationship with spotlight character Jessica Lovejoy by demonstrating what a fatally short memory he has, finding himself entranced by her beguiling aura and proclaiming, "I've never felt this way about a girl before". Obviously, this isn't true; when "Bart's Girlfriend" debuted, on November 6 1994, we weren't even a full two years away from his previous crush on hip teen next door Laura Powers in the Season 4 installment "New Kid on The Block". What's more, we had only recently been reminded of the events of said episode in the love-themed collage job "Another Simpsons Clip Show", where the family reflected on their failed romances from the past five years (and with Bart notably having forgotten how his crush on Laura had played out until Marge prompted the awareness back into his brain). The lesson Bart explicitly took from the reminiscing in "Another Simpsons Clip Show" is that being on the pointy end of Cupid's arrow invariably screws you up, and while he would have done well to have heeded his own words, after laying eyes on Jessica he evidently couldn't help himself. Well, that's amore. Suddenly the entire interlude with Laura has faded into irrelevancy and he's ready to get his tender heart ripped out all over again. And if he thought the outcome of "New Kid on The Block" was emotionally wounding, the kid hasn't seen anything yet.

Despite the familiar subject matter, "Bart's Girlfriend" certainly never feels like a retread of "New Kid on The Block", not least because it is a vastly more bitter, more toxic tale than its predecessor. "New Kid" had a fundamental earnestness in its depiction of young infatuation, even in its somewhat sour resolution, which had Bart sabotaging Jimbo's relationship with Laura for entirely petty reasons, and under entirely petty circumstances. It dealt with Bart's nascent attractions in a way that was about looking backwards fondly on the innocence of youth. Bart's victory over Jimbo was in not losing Laura to her adolescent stirrings, convincing her to keep goofing around with him and making prank calls to Moe's when she was at risk of transmuting into the kind of indifferent babysitter who ignores her charges to make out with her boyfriend. "New Kid" ends with Bart and Laura laughing in unison; a two-way romance might be off the table on account of their age gap, but they share a kinship that's affirmed as more enduring and sincere than Laura's ephemeral pull to Jimbo. Bart is also heard laughing during the fade-out from "Bart's Girlfriend", but here that laughter is deceptive and crucially, he laughs by himself. He closes the episode in a lonelier, more inauspicious position than in he did in "New Kid", but seems determined to convince himself that he is somehow the victor. The frustrations that "New Kid" touched on were those primarily associated with childhood and with the anguish of being taken less seriously than your elders, whereas the injustices "Girlfriend" addresses with are implied to be of the ilk that are going to translate into the chronic injustices of life. Bart's insistence that he's come out his ordeal less naive doesn't disguise the fact that he hasn't escaped the cycle at all by the end.

Jessica Lovejoy is at least of the same age as Bart, and in that regard more attainable than Laura before her. The initial roadblock is that she also happens to be the daughter of the town's most prominent religious authority, and there's an assumption that she would gravitate toward someone who is as upstanding a citizen as she is purported to be. Bart's infatuation is so commanding that he's willing to rein in his natural tendencies toward roguery in an effort to impress her, but she still won't give him the time of day. He then discovers the scandalous truth about Jessica, which at first seems better than he'd ever dared to imagine. She's actually a thoroughgoing gremlin who hides behind the facade of sweet-spoken innocence, and Bart thinks he's found in her a kindred spirit - that is, until Jessica's lawlessness transpires to be far more treacherous than even Bart can handle.  

The first of two extraordinarily awesome things about "Bart's Girlfriend" is that the basic plot was inspired by the 1968 film Pretty Poison, starring Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld. Perkins (typecast from his Psycho association, as is evident from the first minute of the film) plays a young delinquent who falls for the seemingly guileless Weld, only for her to out herself as the more dangerous and predatory of the two. They go over this a little on the DVD commentary, noting that this was the significance of having Jessica twirl a baton in a scene where Bart is confronting her about her behaviour (a nod to Weld's entrance as part of a marching band). The second is that Jessica was voiced by Academy Awards darling Meryl Streep, who achieves something that's honestly very rare among Simpsons guest stars, in that she gives a performance that allows her to disappear completely into the character. As you're watching Jessica, I don't think you're ever consciously aware that it's Streep you're hearing, and if you hadn't looked at the credits, would you even have guessed that it was her? The only other guest voice who leaps out as doing anything halfway comparable would be Streep's Kramer vs. Kramer co-star Dustin Hoffman, as Mr Bergstrom in "Lisa's Substitute" - in his case, he was so set on disappearing into the character that he insisted on being credited under the puntastic moniker of Sam Etic, a move that probably undid his attempts at discretion in the long run (the script also teased him by working in a moment that winkingly evoked his role in The Graduate). With how endemic guest celebrities had already become by this point in the series' lifespan, there was something to be said for any actor who simply wanted to put their all into becoming a denizen of the Simpsons universe, without drawing overt attention to their real-life brand.

I'll admit to having some reservations about how the episode opens. John Collier's script gets things off on a note that's inventive, subversive and a whole lot of fun but then, much like our featured antagonist, insists on taking it to an uncomfortable extreme. I speak of the sequence where the children of Springfield are fleeing the clutches of their parents, desperate to get out of having to spend a sizeable chunk of their precious weekend mired to a church pew, and it turns into an allusion to the scene from Planet of The Apes (1968) where the apes pursue Charlton Heston and friends through the cornfields. The build-up to the gag is simply beautiful. The children are hard at play at the local Veteran's Park (named, according to its signage "in honor of some veterans") when their japery is interrupted by the ominous sounds of church bells and the distant cries of their parents beckoning them to the Sunday service. We first hear Marge call out from off-screen: "Bart! Lisa! Time for church!" Then Luann Van Houten chimes in, with "Milhouse! Time for church!" Finally, an anonymous Jewish voice breaks the pattern: "Shlomo! Time for your violin lesson!" The Apes homage commences, with an inspired shot of Marge stalking Bart through the grasses, where only her hair is visible; the sight of her towering beehive inching closer to the terrified Bart is at once ludicrous and downright menacing. It's when Kirk Van Houten gallops by on horseback and bundles his son up in a mesh while Marge has Bart and Lisa shackled by the neck that I'm thinking that the allusion has maybe become a mite overplayed and the entire sequence suddenly crossed that fine line between energetic waggishness and all-out inanity. Are we to conclude that Marge has literally taken to affixing manacles to the throats of her offspring, or is the moment intended to be at least somewhat impressionistic? At this stage it was difficult to say quite where the line should be drawn in terms of the show's internal reality. But then again, it's hard to deny that the overblown nature of the sequence isn't fully in keeping with how adult authority is characterised throughout "Bart's Girlfriend". Take the ridiculous "Scotchtoberfest" sting operation Skinner uses to bust Bart for a cheeky prank involving helium balloons and Groundskeeper Willie's kilt - a prank that Skinner deliberately went out of his way to orchestrate the opportunity for with the sole intention of slapping Bart with three months' detention (Willie, though, is more outraged that Skinner would exploit his Scottish heritage in such a manner). Uglier still is the Hannibal Lecter treatment given to Bart when he's falsely accused of the nefarious crime of stealing from the church collection plate. All in all, there's a cartoonish heavy-handedness to how rules and boundaries are enforced on Springfield's youngest denizens that borders on the grotesque, and seems to nullify any professions on the part of the enforcers to be upholders of righteousness.

 

Adult hypocrisy is at the heart of "Bart's Girlfriend", even with the prepubescent romance being in the foreground, and the episode takes assorted irreverent jabs at the role of organised religion in sustaining these hypocrisies. Marge's assertion that the entire purpose of having the children attend church is to instil in them morals, decency and love for their fellow men is promptly undermined by the sermon Reverend Lovejoy delivers, which concerns how the Aromites slaughtered their fellow men with flaming swords and cannibalised their pulverised eyeballs (and if you think Jessica comes across as sociopathic, you should check out the bright-eyed glee with which Rod and Todd are receiving his lurid narration). On a more personal level, the incorrigible Jessica is heavily insinuated to be a product of the Lovejoys' reliance on external virtue to cover over more heinous realities. By the show's sixth season we still knew next to nothing about the Lovejoys' private lives (other than that they were repeatedly beleaguered by phone calls from a frantic Ned Flanders), so it wasn't a terribly egregious cheat to reveal that they have a daughter who had been hitherto hidden away at boarding school. Timothy and Helen themselves get only minimal screen time in "Bart's Girlfriend", but the little window Jessica offers into the unseen dynamics of their household is nevertheless illuminating. At first glance, she serves as an extension of the Lovejoys' social superiority, in being a seemingly perfect daughter about whom they can brag ad infinitum. When Bart is invited by Jessica to have dinner with her family, Helen asks him how school is going - a genial enough question in itself, except that she immediately adds, "Jessica always gets straight As", as if to pre-emptively show Bart up for whatever answer he's about to give. Watching the sequence with the episode's numerous twists in mind, it becomes even easier to read this as a knee-jerk denial on Helen's part; she cannot so much as raise the delicate issue of school without having to reassure herself that the situation with Jessica is as flawless as everything else about her. The truth is that the Lovejoys are sitting on a myriad of bombshells when it comes to their daughter, the biggest and most explosive of them all being that Jessica has come home from boarding school because she was expelled. It's a fact that the Lovejoys cannot bring themselves to look in the face, even as it's living right under the same roof as them, and even as Jessica pushes ever more defiantly for her parents to acknowledge her imperfections.

"Girlfriend" also works as a nice little character study for Bart, in examining the nature of his own wayward tendencies and where he senses that the line should be drawn. As Lisa puts it, he's already cemented his reputation as the Devil's cabana boy, a sheep so unrepentantly far from the flock that the church's Sunday school have written him off as a hopeless case. This leads to another of those mistreated hamster jokes that the Simpsons writers are so fond of for some reason, with the implication that Bart had a history of making life difficult for the Sunday school hamster - a gag that frankly feels out of step with Bart's characterisation, since animal abuse is not ordinarily something he goes for, a factor that seems important in establishing that his deviancy is fundamentally about mischief and not malice. He's all about punching upwards at the admonishers of the world, not downwards at tiny creatures that couldn't defend themselves. The itch to sock it to authority in all of its forms is so hard-wired into his neurons that it takes all the restraint he has to spare the Sunday school teacher when she opens up a golden opportunity by handing him a replica of the slingshot David used to slay Goliath before turning around to straighten her desk (an appalling waste it is too, since I'll admit to having a really strong dislike for that teacher, although she's probably at her most tolerable in this episode). Ultimately, he can't even fake it; even when he's intent on making a good impression during his dinner with the Lovejoys, he gets himself unceremoniously ejected for repeating a joke he heard on Fox that contained gratuitous use of the word "butt". Bart clearly isn't one for the angels. But it's those very impulses that make him such an amoral menace in the eyes of the parishioners that also make him vulnerable to the calculating Jessica, once she cottons on to what an ideal fall guy he would be for her lower-key depravity. It's a ready-made narrative the town is all too eager to devour; as she words it to Bart, "I'm the sweet, perfect minister's daughter, and you're just yellow trash."

Jessica, it has to be said, is one heck of an unsettling antagonist. The only Simpsons villain who has her bested in that regard (outside of the Halloween shows) is Ms Botz from "Some Enchanted Evening". She works as well as she does, in part, because the episode is willing to take its time in building up a full picture of her character, so that the viewer is never more than a step ahead than Bart in comprehending quite what he's dealing with. Our first impression of Jessica is that she's a reticent, unassuming kid who's put off by Bart's forwardness, but is willing to extend him her sympathies on witnessing him fall victim to Skinner's sting operation. At the same time, we get miniature hints that there might be more going on with her than meets the eye, such as her somewhat sassy response to Bart's overreaching suggestion that they stay after Sunday school and help the teacher clean up ("Do you ever think anything you don't say?"), and if you look closely, you can see that she's clearly enjoying the way Bart is inadvertently ruffling her parents' feathers at the dinner table. When she reveals to Bart that she's drawn to his unruly nature, for deep down inside she's cut from the same miscreant cloth, it's a natural assumption that she likes him because he represents such a breath of fresh air next to the uptight, excessively pious environment she's been raised in. There's a fleeting interlude where the two are depicted as equals, roaming the streets of Springfield after dark and letting their puckishness hang out to the theme from Pulp Fiction. It becomes apparent that Bart is way out his depth, however, when Jessica later coaxes him into skateboarding down a perilously steep hill, informing him (more tauntingly than reassuringly) that "You can't trust your perception at this altitude." The ensuing sequence is every bit as ludicrously cartoony as the opening Planet of The Apes homage, but the sharp direction and array of slick visual gags are able to sell it as an inspired metaphor for the critical power imbalance that's destined to characterise this relationship, and the disaster for which Bart is now irreversibly headed. Jessica savours the adrenalin rush, while Bart endures a royal grazing on his way down to the bottom, before coming to a (literally) sticky end when a truck full of glue unleashes its contents on him.

At this point, it is still possible to give Jessica the benefit of the doubt, even as we can see that she's clearly not the soul mate to bring validation to Bart's playfully deviant urges. Maybe she's having too much fun and expects Bart to keep up with that, but isn't being purposely cruel. Still, when she commits her most egregious misdeed - pocketing the contents of the church collection plate and setting up Bart to take the rap - I don't think we're particularly shocked, for the girl blatantly has no limits. It's here that the line is explicitly drawn between Bart and Jessica's respective values, for this is a low to which Bart would never stoop; in his words, "You're turning me into a criminal when all I want to be is a petty thug." He might have been tempted to undermine the individual authority of the Sunday School teacher, but swiping the income of the town's most sacred institution is on a whole other level. That plate does, after all, represent the goodwill and generosity of the entire parish (including Homer, who slips in a coupon for 20 cents off Shake n Bake), making it an affront to the community at large. For Jessica, it's something else entirely. It's discernible from the outset that her theft isn't motivated by avarice. She doesn't want the money per se. She is instead playing two games at once, getting to live out her resentment toward her parents, whose authority is intertwined with that of the church, whilst having the thrill of seeing how far she can string her human plaything along. Jessica delights in the power she holds over Bart, and in his inclination toward silence even when he recognises that it is not in his interests to protect her. But then, as she points out, it's not as though Springfield are a particularly understanding or non-judgemental bunch (even when associating with a religion that, as Lisa argues, has something to say about not judging, lest ye be judged). If Bart did speak up, his protests would fall on deaf ears. The town has immediately accepted him as their sticky fingered churchgoer, and are only too eager to inflict on him their typically grotesque and heavy-handed wrath.

As noted, the adults are presented in brutally caricatured terms for much of the narrative, although tempering that are a series of scenes in which Homer and Marge are able to weigh in from the sidelines on Bart's situation. Initially, they echo the optimism of his budding puppy love (at least until Homer's train of thought takes him to the more haunting prospect of having no bananas), before Marge picks up that something in Bart's world has gone sour, but is unable to pinpoint what - although this too takes a bizarrely disturbing turn, when Homer misinterprets Marge's concern about potentially smothering her son all-too literally (and prior to that is so inattentive to the basic details that he attributes Bart's malcontent to glasses that he doesn't even wear, unless he's still got the subplot of "The Last Temptation of Homer" in his head). Even when the adults are trying to be compassionate, an underpinning of unsettling inhumanity can't help but work its way into the proceedings. Marge does at least accept Bart's assertions of innocence over the theft of the collection money, but she also stands back and lets the town do its evil the following Sunday, by trussing him up like a cannibalistic serial killer, in spite her concerns about what it could do to his self-esteem. It fits in with the broader themes of the episode, which have to do with passiveness being adopted as a response to cruelty. On an individual level, Bart is learning helplessness as a means of navigating Jessica's abuses. He lays out a bleak future for himself when he proposes putting up with it for the time being, in the hope that she'll eventually come around to treating him better once they're married and have children. ("After all, I deserve it".) The way this dovetails into the abuses he endures at the hands of the town points to a wider culture of callousness he's expected to fall in line with, of which Jessica is both a product and the tip of the iceberg.

Naturally, Bart finds his strongest alley in Lisa, who urges him not to stay with Jessica on the assumption that he can temper her depravity over time (wisdom she would later go against in "Lisa's Date With Density", although to be fair that was on the insistence of Marge) and who summons the gumption to confront Jessica, but not without having her own values tested in the process. Lisa enters into the ring with the intention of not directly exposing Jessica as the culprit, but instead getting her to confess voluntarily by appealing to her guilty conscience. She immediately runs into a problem, in that Jessica doesn't have a conscience, so Lisa is forced to switch up her tactics and encourage the town to ransack Jessica's bedroom for the stolen money. One bed check later and the evidence is irrefutable, and yet Reverend Lovejoy still persists in attempting to bend the narrative so that it points away from the obvious conclusion. "Bart Simpson has somehow managed to sneak his bedroom into my house!", he protests, before imploring the townspeople to use their imaginations when not even they prove ridiculous enough to buy it. It's here that Jessica comes clean and admits to her father that she did it, describing it as a classic cry for attention. Some viewers have doubts about the sincerity of this plea - we know by now how manipulative she is, and it is a little suspect how she's able to turn on the waterworks in the moment and then switch them off as abruptly - but I think the mask is well and truly dropped when she attempts to make her father face the facts about why she left boarding school, while he very tellingly refuses to listen, preferring to reflexively cover his ears and flee the vicinity. We're left to conclude that Jessica's antisocial behaviour stems from her distaste at having to live up to the predetermined version of herself that suits her parents' social standing, and which they would evidently sooner convince themselves is there than have to engage with their daughter as a complex and sometimes messy human being. The collection plate theft, the glee club brawl and the pipe bomb incident all amount to disaffected attempts to combat her own powerlessness by taking control of her own narrative. The problem being that her parents only become more withdrawn into their delusions, prompting Jessica to go for bigger and more shocking transgressions, in an ever-escalating arms race between denial and audacity.  

There are, it seems, two competing objectives to Jessica's fun and recreation. On the one level, she wants to get caught, and for the sham that is her family's spiritual and domestic purity to be thoroughly exposed, not least to her family themselves. But she's also getting a tremendous kick out of setting Bart up as the scapegoat for her wrongdoing. If the opportunity to rewrite her narrative is continuously denied her, then she'll settle for the next best thing by taking control of Bart's. In some respects Bart and Jessica really are kindred spirits, since both are rebelling against a system that's boxed them into its antithetical preconceptions and believes it already knows everything about them that it ever needs to know. The key difference is in the targets that they choose - Bart (Sunday school hamster notwithstanding) punches directly upward at the disapproving scolds looking down on him, while Jessica punches both upward, to truly dizzying heights, and downward without mercy at the tiny creatures that couldn't defend themselves (ie: Bart). 

By the final scene, we see that the Lovejoys have conceded enough to their painful reality to have tasked Jessica with the punitive responsibility of scrubbing clean the church porchway. It's here that Bart shows up to weigh in on his takeaway from their entanglement, with the moral outcome being deliberately muddied. Bart purports to have learned something, but does not articulate what. Jessica, on the other hand, is able to specify exactly what she's learned - that she can make men do whatever she wants. Bart objects that this means she really hasn't learned anything, but that's his small-mindedness on display. Jessica has figured out where her talents lie, she recognises what a screwed up world this is, and you can bet she's going to hone whatever weapons she has to stay afloat in it. She exits the episode as a true survivor, last seen riding off to freedom with a brand new beau while Bart is left doing her dirty work, having instantly complied with her suggestion that he scrub the porchway in her place. Important question - is the guy Jessica rides off with supposed to be the same well-read snarker from the library with whom Lisa was besotted in an earlier scene? Nah, it couldn't be. There's definitely a striking resemblance between the two, but something about that scenario doesn't add up. The kid we see at the end is clearly a child of around the same age as Bart and Jessica, whereas the guy in Lisa's library flashback looks older and surely has to be older, on account of the fact that he's in the library's employment. I deem them to be separate characters, with the joke being that they are both visibly modelled upon James Dean's character from the 1955 film Rebel Without A Cause, and are thus both part of the same "bad boy" archetype that gets the girls' stereotypical hearts a flutter. Having Jessica flee her parents' command with such an archetype reaffirms her as an outlaw for life. For all intents and purposes she has escaped them for good, since it's not like she's going to stick around and become a recurring character anyway.

It is rather a peculiar ending, and one that I've walked back on over the years. Ostensibly, the last laugh goes to Bart, who declares that, unlike that Jim Stark wannabe over there, he wouldn't do anything for a pretty face, and that Jessica might be surprised when she sees the second-rate job he does in cleaning the porchway. As a kid, I took that to mean that Bart's subservience was merely feigned; that he was in total control of the final situation, with the goal of getting back at Jessica through more underhanded means, which I guess was all a reflection of my own naivety. Now, I think the whole point is that this is a pitifully hollow rebellion on Bart's part, the clue being that he says "second-rate", not "third-rate". His scrubbing won't be of top standard, but it won't be abysmally terrible either. His first instinct is indeed to submit, and the expression he allows himself comes from squarely within the limits of that compliance - he knows that Jessica has played him, but reassures himself that it's okay because his cleaning abilities will only be so good anyway. This is a world in which you either eat or be eaten, and Bart's laughter comes from deep within the belly of the beast.

Bitsa: What On Earth Was Going On At The Last Stop Cafe?

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the most baffling quarter-hour of television I ever watched in my life was an episode of a children's art show that aired on CBBC in the mid-1990s. If that was also your era, then I'll wager that tucked away near the back of your brain are at least a few memories of Bitsa. The program started life in 1991 and enjoyed a healthy run into 1996, yet it never attained the cult status of its CITV counterpart Art Attack - presenters Caitlin Easterby and Simon Pascoe were both on fabulous form throughout, but there was ultimately no challenging the legendary Neil Buchanan as the champion of after-school creativity. Nonetheless, I reckon Bitsa would have a much more prominent following if people were to look back and appreciate how balls to the walls weird the thing was.

The premise of Bitsa was that Caitlin and Simon would demonstrate various methods for flexing your creative muscles, guiding you the processes of making exciting knick-knacks out of sticky tape and Mr Kipling boxes. Assisting them in in their endeavours was a robotic being named Hands (a puppet operated by series co-creator Paul Goddard) who did not talk and communicated solely by humming. Episodes were made to a certain formula, where Caitlin, Simon and Hands would each get their turn in showing you how to make something, the children from a selected school would show off an art project they'd been working on, and we'd get the really manic part where Caitlin and Simon were challenged with making something within a time limit and with specified materials - although not all necessarily in that order, however. The connective tissue between each of these segments is where the series permitted itself to get truly weird, a quality that only became more pronounced the deeper it got into its lifespan. Whereas earlier installments had tended to have Caitlin and Simon assembling their creations from the confines of their studio, there was presumably enough of a budget boost in the show's later years for more filming on location. The vibe of the series felt more expansive, and with it the framing narratives seemed to get more ambitious, following an almost dream-like flow of developments - that is, if dreams were intermittently put on hold to allow room for crafting tutorials. I've likened it to Art Attack, but truthfully it was more like an arthouse version of Blue Peter.

The episode of Bitsa that stood out to me as being particularly incomprehensible aired in 1995 under the title of "Last Stop Cafe". It involved Caitlin and Simon being on location in London and having bizarre encounters (though never with one another) in various dining venues. I have distinct memories of watching it and immediately regretting that I hadn't taped it because I wanted so desperately to go back to the beginning and see there was any lick of sense to be squeezed from the entire demented affair. I settled for the next best option I had available at the time, which was to describe the events of the episode from memory to my eternally patient mum in the hopes that she would be able to explain it to me, as I so often did whenever something I'd seen on television (or advertising billboards) had left me totally disconcerted. But just you try describing the events of any Bitsa episode, not least this one, in an even vaguely coherent fashion. What chance did my mother have? My confusion was there for the long haul, with the image of Caitlin sitting in her squalid little cafe, surrounded by mannequins and indifferent waitresses, vexed by the time and by Simon's failure to show, being all set to nibble away at my brain for the ensuing three decades. Caitlin was permanently stuck in that moment, and so was I. It was only in 2025 that I found any prospect of release, with the discovery that "Last Stop Cafe" was finally up on YouTube. On getting reacquainted with it, I was surprised at just how much of the episode had stuck with me over the years. The only part that I had more or less completely forgotten was the entire sequence with Simon at the train station, but the rest of it still felt so fresh and vivid in my mind, as if I'd viewed it only a few weeks ago. Clearly it was something that the younger me had made a real effort to hang onto, in the hopes that my persistence would eventually pay off, and I would suddenly be in on the elusive joke. The punchline to that joke was always self-evident: "Three minutes to four...Simon should be here soon". It was the set-up that I couldn't make head nor tail of. The question is, am I any better equipped to do so 30+ years on, or is this rabbit hole darker and more interminable than the younger me had ever imagined?

"Last Stop Cafe" opens with Caitlin at the titular establishment, a run-down, bohemian-looking coffee bar that seems unlikely to pass its next hygiene inspection. The time is three minutes to four, and she's expecting Simon to meet up with her very soon. We find that Simon is enjoying coffee and a late lunch from quite another source, a food truck run by Hands, before becoming aware of the time and making a mad dash across London in an effort to keep the scheduled appointment with Caitlin. It initially appears as though Simon is having a much better time of it than Caitlin, who's stuck with the Last Stop's signature beverage of stale coffee (a distinctly unappetising-looking black sludge), while Simon gets an ordinary-looking espresso. I'm not so sure that the rest of the menu Hands is flogging compares so favourably to that of the Last Stop - the waitress's practice of serving spaghetti with her bare hands (and into a kidney dish at that) is wont to raise some objections, but at least it looks like actual edible spaghetti, as opposed to the pasta Hands offers Simon, which looks more like a plate of wires. More troubling still than the dubious food items on offer is the temporal mismatch between Caitlin and Simon's respective worlds. Simon takes his cues from Big Ben, which gives the time as quarter to four, and this does not align with the clock in the Last Stop Cafe, where it seems to be perpetually three minutes to four. The contrast established in these parallel narratives is one of frenzy versus inertia. Simon will spend the episode rushing from venue to venue while Caitlin never leaves the Last Stop (until the very end), and only moves from her seat to participate in the challenge segment. Caitlin looks to have settled in a place where time has ground to a complete halt, while Simon is constantly on the move.

My first question, on revisiting "Last Stop Cafe", had to do with whether time in the titular venue had literally stopped, or just the clock adorning its decrepit walls? After all, it seems perfectly in keeping with the broader theming of the cafe for it to put up a clock to give the appearance of broken time, with the joke being that Caitlin never quite cottons on. But then the very name, "Last Stop", feels particularly ominous in that regard. It could mean the last as in "last resort", meaning that it's right at the bottom of establishments you would consider trying. Alternatively, it may indicate the end of progression and that we have nowhere else to go from here. The distortion of time within is further hinted at via a sneaky visual gag that I certainly hope was not unintentional. Positioned on the saucer that holds Caitlin's cup of gloopy coffee is what looks to be an out of shape biscuit. The way that biscuit hangs over the side of the saucer puts me in mind of the melting clocks from Salvador Dali's 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory, commonly interpreted as signifying the nebulous nature of time within human perception.

It wouldn't be any more inexplicable than what unfolds at the end of the episode, when Simon, realising that he will not keep his appointment with Caitlin, attempts to buy additional time by scaling Big Ben (or rather a mat mocked up to look like the face of the clock) and turning back the hands. In doing so, he appears to do damage to the space time continuum, for rather than simply going back in time the entire scenario resets, with the participants rearranged. Simon is now seated in the Last Stop Cafe, being served stale coffee and observing, from the clock on the wall reading three minutes to four, that Caitlin should be here soon. Caitlin, meanwhile, has been transplanted to Simon's starting point, standing at Hands' food truck and receiving a plate of wire-spaghetti - which, unlike Simon, she is discerning enough to reject. The process seems set to repeat itself with the roles reversed (a la the Twilight Zone episode "Shadow Play"), but for the fact that Caitlin still seems to be caught up on some kind of time loop at the other end, with the moment of her pushing the plate back Hands' way repeating over and over.

All of this puzzled me immensely as a child, but I suspect that "Last Stop Cafe" wouldn't have stayed with me and haunted me to the extent that it did if not for the one additional serving of discombobulation that comes in the form of our post-credits stinger. Once the names have all rolled we get a brief moment with Caitlin, who is back in the Last Stop, watching the clock and anticipating Simon's impending arrival as if the final role reversal never occurred and she never strayed from her temporal prison. That bite-sized epilogue threw pretty much everything I thought I'd fathomed about the episode (which was already on shaky enough ground) into total disarray. What are we to make of it? Should we assume that Caitlin eventually made it to the point when she was able to restart the process, as Simon did before her, causing the scenario to reset and their roles to reverse yet again? Have we gone backwards in time, to before Simon's resetting of the narrative? Or is this just a humorous bit of repetition for repetition's sake, the preceding ubiquitousness of the statement ("Three minutes to four...Simon should be here soon") having transformed it into a running gag in its own right? Nowadays I feel most inclined toward option 3, but it's still an unsettling way to close out the episode, by giving the final word to Caitlin's inertia and that state of limbo in which it's always three minutes to four and an appearance from Simon is imminent but never arrives. In 1995 it was the teasing punchline to a joke largely lost on me. On a subconscious level, I think it something in Caitlin's bemused delivery that I responded to - she never explicitly grasps her inability to progress beyond 15:57, and that she's been making the same observation about Simon ad infinitum, but at the same time she seems far from immune to the absurdity of her situation. Her tone, when referencing Simon's supposed coming, is one of wavering certainty, as if she recognises that something has gone awry but can't quite put her finger on what. Her quiet befuddlement at the end of the episode so perfectly articulated by own confusion on having sat through it. Much like her, I'd spent the last 15 minutes waiting for clarity to rear its head and it had never quite materialised. As it turns out, clarity would not be forthcoming for quite some time. After more than 30 years, I'm still not sure that I quite have a hold on it. But at least I was able to take another crack at revelling in the Last Stop Cafe and its grimy mysteries. The place is so beguiling that it's as if I never left it at all. 

Actually, a more morbid interpretation did cross my mind upon revisiting the experience, having noted that Simon falls from Big Ben while attempting to turn back its hands. Is it possible that he's dead, and that the Last Stop Cafe is really some bizarre metaphor for mortality? It all goes back to what I said about the name of the cafe being particularly ominous. It is specifically the last stop, cobbled together around a theme of inertia, decay and expiration. Time never moves, the coffee is stagnant, the television screen shows a static image, a proportion of the occupants are motionless mannequins, and in one sequence we assume the perspective of a fly buzzing around the tables. Arguably undermining this interpretation is that Simon is not reunited with Caitlin on the other side. Rather, she's been restored to the land of the living, perhaps signifying the renewal of the cycle of life and death (with the former being as futile as ever). Crucially, Simon and Caitlin are always where the other party isn't. Their scheduled meet-up never occurs; even during the challenge portion of the episode, where each creates a makeshift telephone using the materials available, they are unable to make the all-important connection, as if blocked by the automatic incompatibility between their respective realms (that, and their phones are made out of cheese graters and cardboard). And yet they might not be as far removed as the aggressive contrast of frenetic motion and uncanny stillness would imply - there are a number of echoes in their parallel predicaments, which seem equally evocative of the fundamental tensions between existence and oblivion. Both protagonists find themselves up against the tyranny of a clock; Caitlin is held captive by a stopped clock that keeps her in a stationary moment, while Simon has Big Ben looming over him all throughout his journey, an omnipresent reminder that his time is in short supply. Each is in search of some deeper meaning or understanding that is expected to be revealed through the anticipated union with the other. Caitlin, who has already reached the end of the line, has taken the more passive position, hoping (much like Vladimir and Estragon awaiting Godot) that everything will finally come into perspective when Simon waltzes through that cafe door. Simon, meanwhile, is in pursuit of a purpose that perpetually eludes him. He cannot keep his appointment with Caitlin, in part because the world he has to navigate is too overwhelming, but also because he lacks the discipline to prevent himself from being sidetracked along the way. "I've got to meet Caitlin", he tells himself, shortly before wandering into a burger bar for a bite to eat. He's well aware that the clock is ticking, but convinces himself that he can put things off for a little longer. Sure, who can't relate to that?

Fundamentally, Bitsa is a show about artistic endeavour, and amidst the existential insanity we get demonstrations on how to craft smashing items out of household refuse. Caitlin shows you how to make a fashion wheel that switches the clothing on pictures of mannequins as it rotates. Simon makes a snapping monster out of the discarded straws and sweet boxes he gathers at the station. Hands blesses a two dimensional figure with three dimensional arms that are given motion when a cord is pulled. There's the aforementioned challenge segment, where Simon and Caitlin each create phones in an unsuccessful effort to get through to one another. The most curious demonstration comes with no explanatory narration, and is the contribution from our featured school (identified in the credits as Grange Primary School, London). It is the creation of the titular cafe - in a temporal trick reminiscent of Pulp Fiction, we go backwards in time to the point where pupils from Grange Primary were tasked with assembling those mannequins, arranging bottles and misshapen baguettes in offbeat displays and affixing tiger patterning to the side of the counter, before seguing back into the centrepiece moment, with Caitlin present and pondering aloud about Simon's whereabouts. I suppose this is the episode's great paradox - the Last Stop Cafe might signify stagnation, but it is itself a work of beautifully vibrant expression. The dubiousness of the menu aside, it doesn't seem like a deadening place to hang; the eccentricity of the establishment is simply too charming. 

What's also striking is the omnipresence of uncanny mannequins throughout the episode, with them popping up not just in the cafe itself, but at various stages of Simon's journey. In one skit he finds himself hampered by a queue of undressed mannequins (and clearly nobody saw anything overly risqué in having so many naked mannequin bossoms paraded around in a children's timeslot). Another mannequin is seated at the counter of the burger bar, prompting Simon to make the inevitable "don't be a dummy" joke, followed by a pun about the (then relatively novel) frustrations that come with using mobile phones, which he figures the static mannequin must love. As part of the backdrop in the Last Stop Cafe they feed into the overall aura immobility, but as far as Simon's interactions go it seems more pertinent to regard them as playful shorthands for consumerism and an eroded individuality, in an environment that's faster-paced but ultimately no less stifling than the one Caitlin is mired in. We might detect a similar critique of non-stop consumerism in the wastefulness of the commuters, who litter the station grounds with copious amounts of rubbish that Simon is wittily able to use as an outlet for his own creativity. Ultimately, my takeaway from the Last Stop Cafe is that artistic expression is the greatest power we have in a society structured to to leave us bombarded and overwhelmed. As is wonderfully befitting a series like Bitsa. All of those sessions in fashioning funky curios from materials otherwise destined for the tip weren't mere distractions designed to fill up a bit of empty time outside of school hours. They were lessons in preventing detritus, both literal and figurative, from getting on top of us by turning it into the tools of our own artistry. The clock is ticking, and precisely why we should allow those idle hands of ours a little mischief.

You Never Were One Of Us, Benny! (Skittles)

 

In 1997, Skittles came up with rather a peculiar metaphor through which to tout their virtues, blessing our screens with 30-second advert proposing that the sensation of consuming the chewy fruit-flavoured candies was akin to being gunned down by a mob of anthropomorphic fruit imagined as 1930s-era gangsters. This was Dick Tracy meets the Munch Bunch, if you will. The centres of the confectionery in question were reportedly softer, but their promotional imagery was the stuff of fever dreams. 

 

Snacking on Skittles, as our narrating figure Benny the Banana puts it, is a matter of tempting fate: "You eat Skittles, you expect a hit, right?" It's quickly established that, here, a "hit" equates to summoning CGI humanoids with fruit-shaped heads, who'll barge in bearing oversized weapons and fire barrages of lethal juices your way. It's a scenario that perhaps seems even the more twisted for the fact that the victims of this fruit-inflicted violence are all children (this being an era when kids were still openly the target of a lot of confectionery-based marketing), who are each shown to "die" in ways suggesting that they were at the height of ecstasy as they breathed their last. On the one level, the concept seems almost uncannily morbid, with each child going limp and lifeless while bathed in a colourful puddles evocative of the kind of bodily splatter you would expect to see in an actual massacre. But it's counterbalanced by all the elements of this pseudo-bloodshed being coded to appear more cartoony than threatening (the exaggerated panic of the children, the Looney Tunes-esque movements of the fruity assassins, etc). Crucially, it has a similar kind of winking theatricality as the cream pie metaphor from Bugsy Malone, where a character who takes a pie to the face is regarded as "dead" within the internal narrative, until the final scene, where the play pretence of the gimmick is lovingly exposed. You can tell that it's all for larks. The tone of the ad, while freaky as hell, is certainly a lot less malevolent than that of the Kelloggs Fruit Winders campaign from the early 2000s, which saw humanoid fruits torturing not-so-humanoid fruits in ways that the teenage me found honest-to-god unsettling. It's possible to be playfully twisted without being sadistic.

 

The set-up of the ad has these ill-fated (or not) kids hanging around a warehouse filled with boxes of fruit, which given the theming are presumably intended to be prohibited items (or forbidden fruit - ha!), reinforcing the underlying narrative that to ingest Skittles is to do something exhilaratingly off-limits. I'll admit this much - I get how the metaphor works with regards to the fruit people blasting down those children, but I'm not 100% sure what's meant to be going on as far as Benny the Banana is concerned. I think it's safe to assume that he owns this warehouse, since he has his own personal office in there, but is he meant to be a wily dealer who's supplying these sugar-starved children with their clandestine candies? Are they supposed to be his minions, assisting him in a nefarious fruit trade that, among people whose heads are literally made out of fruit, has uncomfortably cannibalistic implications? Or is he giving them a sincere warning to think carefully about their usage of Skittles, lest they can't handle the inevitable hit? It's complicated by the fact that Benny also serves as our narrator, and I'm detecting a certain degree of glee in his account of how each of these children are successively juiced. I would have guessed that he was in cahoots with the fruity assassins, in supplying them with victims to gun down, until the ending when they decide that he's a traitor and turn their weapons on him. Is that because he owns a warehouse stocked with boxes of arguably cannibalistic goods? Who can say? As a development, it makes perfects sense in terms of how it relates to the product. We're introduced to each armed fruit person and their alliterative/punny monikers - we have Lenny and Larry (Lemon and Lime), Ozzy (Orange), Suzie (Strawberry) and the Undercurrents (Blackcurrant) - and we might notice that this alludes to the mixture of flavours you'll find in a traditional packet of Skittles. Or, specifically, it alludes to the traditional mixture of flavours in packet sold in Europe - the US isn't so big on blackcurrants (I believe that blackcurrant cultivation has a long history of being illegal over there), so the purple Skittles you'll find stateside are grape flavour. We have no bananas in either set, however. It's not that banana flavour Skittles have never been a thing - in 1989, Banana Berry flavours were included in special "Tropical" branded Skittles, and they've occasionally popped up in other variations here and there (rarely as a singular flavour, though; they've typically tended to be part of some combo) - but in terms of the standard European composition, Benny is clearly the odd fruit out, hence why the others denounce him. Why they do so within the internal narrative is still somewhat of a puzzler to me. 

 

Unless...the implication is that he's been ingesting Skittles himself? If that were the case, I would expect there to be some telltale signs, like an empty Skittles wrapper on his desk, but it would explain why they take Benny's unspecified infraction so personally, and why they're so compelled to give him the same gun-firing treatment (presumably not to kill him, but to send him into that same state of juice-induced stupefaction as those children?). Ah well, definite cannibalistic implications there. As the closing slogan proclaims, Skittles contain "real fruit for a real hit". The presence of real fruit is equated with authenticity, and also with a full-on bolt from the blue - a pun that I'm sure would have worked its way into this ad, only blueberries aren't part of this mob either.

The Otto Show (aka That's One Palindrome You Won't Be Hearing For A While)

I like to begin each year by devising a rough plan of the Simpsons episodes I intend to cover each month. Even if I don't stick to it all the way, I find it helpful to have some idea of what I'm working toward, and of which episodes might go well with certain points in the year. It's a list that I'm constantly rethinking and revising, and there will inevitably episodes I've had it in mind to review that end up being passed over. "The Otto Show" (8F21) was one that I had strongly considered cramming in near the end of 2025, to give it proximity to the new Spinal Tap movie, and it very nearly took the spot of "The Homer They Fall" - in the end, though, it just worked out better for me to have covered that episode right before I did "When Flanders Failed" (what with that whole discussion about the sincerity of their respective endings). I figured that "The Otto Show" could wait until January - with the result that there's now a huge air of melancholy hanging over this episode that there wouldn't have been back in November. That is of course down to the tragic death of Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner on December 14th. When I went to see Spinal Tap II: The End Continues in October, I wasn't preparing myself for the possibility that this would be Reiner's last film, and certainly not under such terrible circumstances. Given that This Is Spinal Tap (1984) was the first feature that Reiner helmed, there is something hauntingly poetic in the fact that his directorial career was bookended by Spinal Tap projects. The lads in Spinal Tap might be among the most enduring comic creations in cinema history, but for the foreseeable future revisiting them is going to come with this inherent sadness, because inevitably you'll be thinking about Reiner. It's a lot like how it's been watching scenes with Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure in the years after Phil Hartman's death - those performances still feel every bit as fresh and impeccable as they did back in the day, but they are also harrowing reminders of what was lost, and in the most horrific possible way. Reiner had no direct involvement in "The Otto Show", but the episode is nevertheless an extension of his legacy, the coming together of The Simpsons and Spinal Tap being one of those marvellous pop culture intersections that speaks to the richness of both worlds. It opens with England's so-called loudest band stopping by to perform a concert in Springfield, and while it does eventually spill over into a more generic tale about Otto the bus driver losing his job and having to move in with the Simpsons, it's the Spinal Tap reunion that makes the strongest impression.

Debuting on April 23rd 1992, "The Otto Show" was part of a spate of third season episodes centring on the private lives of the show's peripheral characters, following on from the likes of "Like Father, Like Clown", "Flaming Moe's" and "Bart The Lover". To that end, it is easily the least successful of the four, in that it doesn't convince us that Otto has much of a private life worth writing about. He definitely works better as a tertiary character, getting the odd moment here and there but generally taking a backseat to the narrative action. This is something that the production crew are entirely upfront about on the DVD commentary, acknowledging that they never attempted a second Otto show and pointing out how revealing it is that you barely see him for the first half of a story billed as being all about him. They joke about "The Otto Show" being an episode built upon shaky decisions, which they attribute to it being written so late in the season when everyone was running out of fucks given. Truth be told, I appreciate the experimentation. When you're working with a world as vibrant and alive with possibilities as Springfield, misfires such as this are are a necessary part of figuring out where your limitations lie. Besides, it's not always obvious from the outset which characters are going to thrive or shrivel in the spotlight. Common sense ought to have dictated that the aforementioned Troy McClure was a one-trick pony who couldn't possibly have supported his own story, and yet he ended up with one of the most fleshed-out and affecting of all the series' character studies. Otto's just never takes flight; the development of him losing his job and winding up homeless happens too far along in the episode for anything substantial to come of it and runs out of steam almost instantly, once we get into the rather pedestrian plot point about him living with the Simpsons. From there, the episode feels like it's going through the motions, with Otto making a nuisance of himself in the most predictable of ways, before we've accumulated enough time for our inevitable status quo reset. The result is an entirely watchable though largely disposable slice of Simpsons life, in which we don't learn a lot about Otto beyond what was already self-explanatory.

Otto's name might be in the title, but the Taps are unquestionably the headline act - in fact, you get the impression that the writers might have come up with the idea for the Spinal Tap gig first and that everything that followed was always an afterthought. This technically wasn't the first instance of a pre-existing fictional character being incorporated into the Simpsons' reality - Gulliver Dark, the lounge singer voiced by Sam McMurray in "Homer's Night Out", was a fellow alum from The Tracey Ullman Show (where McMurray portrayed him in live action skits), but whereas Dark's appearance had the feel of a fun little Easter egg, Spinal Tap's appearance definitely had an eye toward garnering hype. What has it seeming like a totally logical merging of worlds, rather than a hollow gimmick, is of course the Harry Shearer connection - it was a fitting opportunity for the series regular to reprise his role as bassist Derek Smalls, and to be joined by guest stars Christopher Guest and Michael McKean as his bandmates Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins. As crossovers go, it certainly feels a lot less forced than the ones the series would later attempt with The Critic and The X-Files, in part because The Simpsons and Spinal Tap's respective humor styles are already on such a close wavelength, but also because it doesn't overplay its hand by having the band hang out with the family or anything - Tufnel, St. Hubbins and Smalls are incorporated in a way that feels like a plausible part of the show's broader world-building, rather than one in which the Simpsons themselves are automatically at the centre. None of which precludes the reality of there being a transparent ulterior motive in the form of cross promotion. Spinal Tap had released a new album, Break Like The Wind, only a month prior, and it's no coincidence that the song performed at the truncated Springfield concert is that album's title track, rather than one of the hits from their 1984 film. The Simpsons was, nonetheless, required to pay a hefty sum for the privileging of promoting "Break Like The Wind", with Fox complaining that for that cost they might as well have brought in a real band, so I don't doubt that this was something the series staff were really eager to see happen. You could make the argument (as Nathan Rabin does in his review on The AV Club) that there is something slightly suspect about having Bart be so enthused about the prospect of attending a Spinal Tap gig - after all, one of the major plot points of This Is Spinal Tap was the band's declining relevance in the contemporary music scene, with people widely regarding them as yesterday's news. But then I suppose that their performing in a burg as crummy as Springfield speaks volumes as to how far they've fallen in the world. Supplying promos for idiotic shock jocks Bill and Marty is somewhat of a degrading business, even if you are choosy about the material you'll recite.

The first act, when Spinal Tap are in town, is a lot of fun. Writer Jeff Martin has a really good handle on the little details that made This Is Spinal Tap so delightful. The concert is plagued by an assortment of technical snafus that are enjoyably reminiscent of the things that would go wrong for the band throughout their mockumentary. The lighting is off and misses Smalls as he makes his grand entrance, forcing him to discreetly readjust his position. A giant inflatable devil that reportedly looked very impressive when it hadn't expelled half of its air is lowered onto stage, something the band handles with more aplomb than the comparable fiasco with the Stonehenge prop in the movie proper. It ends in a way that feels more befitting of the culture in Springfield, with a full-scale riot, prompting Kent Brockman to weigh in with perhaps his wittiest editorial: "Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that this sort of mayhem began with rock and roll. After all, there were riots at the premiere of Mozart's The Magic Flute. So what's the answer? Ban all music? In this reporter's opinion the answer sadly is yes." (Is that actually true about The Magic Flute? Historically, classical music audiences haven't been the best-behaved bunch - there were riots at the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring - so Brockman's basic point stands, but I can't find any reference to The Magic Flute specifically.) Ultimately the chaos of Springfield puts the band themselves in the shade. The movie's most morbid joke - the running gag about the long line of ill-fated drummers that have worked with Spinal Tap - is not evoked, but the episode turns out to have far more cut-throat aspirations in mind. In an epilogue to the disastrous concert it's implied that the entire band might have been killed, when Otto runs their tour bus off the road, causing it to crash and burst into flames - although I note that Skinner does later say, "It's a miracle no one was hurt", so maybe they all survived unscathed, the drummer included. I mean, being driven off the road by a speeding school bus almost sounds too mundane a way for a Spinal Tap drummer to go (a bus driven by a dog, maybe).

The most fabulous moment in the concert's downfall is of course when Homer is waiting for Bart outside the stadium while singing along to "Spanish Flea" on his car radio, so engrossed in his private karaoke session that he doesn't even notice the bloodshed unfolding behind him. It's a sequence that treads such a fine line between Homer's innocence and his negligence. Acquiring the rights to use "Spanish Flea" was even more of an uphill battle than getting "Break Like The Wind", so much so that the sequence was very nearly jettisoned, but prevailed in the end thanks to a) Dan Castellaneta's exquisite performance, which charmed everyone at the table read and b) Jay Kogan having a personal connection that enabled him to pull strings with somebody involved with Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass.

Otto is glimpsed early on, in attendance at the Spinal Tap concert alongside Snake (Snake having been introduced as a friend of Otto's in "The War of The Simpsons", although that connection was basically dropped from here on in). In fact, he and Snake are the characters who incite the riot, but we do have to get through a whole other plot development before we eventually circle back to our nominal star. The ever-impressionable Bart, unfazed by his brush with the uglier side of rock and roll, gets it into his head that he too could be a heavy metal musician. At this point the episode looks as if it might be going a similar route to "Bart The Daredevil", the key difference being that Marge and Homer are only too happy to nurture this particular aspiration by investing in a guitar. Bart discovers that, compared to leaping over vehicles on his skateboard, strumming does not come quite so easily to him and is quickly discouraged. This eventually leads to him showing the guitar to Otto, insisting that it's broken, and Otto dazzling his young passengers by playing it like a boss. Otto gets so carried away with his performance that he loses track of the time, causing him to make a dash for the school at breakneck speed, driving Spinal Tap off the road, disrupting the annual police picnic and finally crashing the bus. Skinner uncovers the scandalous truth, that Otto has no driving license, and suspends him without pay, reasoning that since he drove an all-terrain vehicle in Vietnam, he can shoulder the bus driving duties in his absence. Shorn of his status and source of income, Otto rapidly hits rock bottom, failing to pass a driving test and facing eviction from his apartment, until Bart finds him sheltering in a dumpster and invites him to bed down in his family's garage. In the meantime, the entire narrative thread about Bart wanting to become a rock musician is simply left to fizzle. I will give the episode this - it at least fizzles out in a way that feels realistic in terms of a child's expectations, with Bart admitting to Homer that he gave up the guitar because he wasn't good at it right away. Obviously, playing the guitar isn't the kind of thing that you should expect to be good at right away, but when you're a kid you often don't have the patience to see these things in the longer term, and not getting that instant gratification can be enough to severely dampen your interest. We immediately trade in realism for a window into Homer's well-intentioned but totally warped parenting, when in lieu of impressing the responsible teaching about the value of hard graft and perseverance, he praises Bart for having reached one of life's great epiphanies, namely that if something is hard to do, it's not worth doing. Why waste time with demanding interests like guitars, karate lessons (nice nod to the subplot of "When Flanders Failed" there) and unicycles when you can partake in the totally passive alternative of reclining in front of the chattering cyclops, irrespective of what's on? What's on was never the point.

Fair play to Martin's script for tying such an upfront bow on its own listlessness, although I suspect that a narrative where Bart got to do something with his guitar-playing aspirations before inevitably packing it in would have been a notch more interesting than the one we get with Otto. Having him move in with the Simpsons feels, as I say, like somewhat of a stock development, one we'd be seeing a lot more of throughout the course of the series, where stories about down and out characters seeking refuge under the Simpsons' roof have happened with more frequency than you might first think - heck, this wasn't even the only example from the back-end of Season 3, with Herb Powell showing up on the family's doorstep just two episodes along in "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?". Elsewhere, we had Krusty move in during the events of "Krusty Gets Kancelled", Apu in "Homer and Apu", Lampwick in "The Day The Violence Died", Cooder and Spud in "Bart Carny", and I think that Artie Ziff might even have lived with them at one point. Some of these scenarios have the ring of plausibility more than others. I certainly find the prospect of the Simpsons accommodating Herb a lot more believable than I do Otto - Herb's family, and he had a grievance the Simpsons were anxious to atone for, whereas Otto isn't even someone they know particularly well outside of his profession as a school bus driver. Wanting to help him is one thing, but I'm not sure that I buy Homer and Marge allowing him to stay with them indefinitely, even with Marge justifying it as an act of Christian charity (Marge: "Doesn't the Bible say, whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me?" Homer: "Yeah, but doesn't the Bible also say thou shalt not take...moochers into thy...hut?"). Arguably, it's an example of a problem that episodes looking to focus on the supporting characters tend to run into, in that their hands are often tied by the obligation to keep the Simpsons at the centre of events, even in situations that shouldn't be logically their business. One of the reasons why the Troy McClure episode worked as well as it did is because it didn't try to shoehorn the Simpsons in any more than was necessary (being a Selma-centric installment, it perhaps wasn't perceived as so disconnected from the main family). But then it's not as though there were a wealth of possibilities for where Otto's arc might otherwise have gone; the staff are clear in the commentary that they didn't have the same passion for crafting an episode around him as they did one involving Spinal Tap and Homer's rendition of "Spanish Flea". What else could Otto have done if he didn't have the Simpsons to turn to? Move in with Snake? 

Otto is in some ways comparable to Moe, in that both are bereft of basic dignity and nearing the bottommost rungs of Springfield's social ladder - Otto, though, doesn't share Moe's bitter misanthropy or his desperation for acceptance, being so laid-back and oblivious that his lowliness barely registers. He has the air of a perpetual teenager in the body of a grown man, with little impetus for joining the adult world. I'd say he was a take on the Gen-X slacker archetype that was being sent up a lot at the time, except that Otto's year of birth is given in this episode as 1963, so he is technically a Boomer (albeit almost as young as a Boomer can possibly be). For the most part, Otto even seems happy with his lot in life, so he doesn't invite quite the same opportunities for pathos as Moe. "The Otto Show" only allows him to reveal one hidden depth and, unfortunately, it's a variation on the one Krusty just did - his father, a naval commander, disapproved of the lifestyle he chose and now wants nothing to do with him. This is brought up at two separate intervals to give context for Otto's predicament, but isn't developed in any way as a plot point (presumably because it would be too reminiscent of "Like Father, Like Clown"). At most, when Otto takes a disliking to Homer during the episode's climax, it's possible to project a subtext about Otto using his friction with the Simpson patriarch to gain catharsis for his own daddy issues, but this isn't explicitly stated. Another possible avenue might have been to have centred on Bart's relationship with Otto, something that was explored more insightfully in their brief interaction in "Bart Gets an F", when Bart confides in Otto his fear about the possibility of being held back a grade. Bart finds it easier to relate to Otto than to most adults because he behaves less like an authority figure and more like an overgrown school kid, but given his blank-eyed reaction to Otto's response - that being held back isn't a big deal, because it happened to him twice, and now he drives the school bus - it seems that Bart has, in that moment, seen through him. There is a clear discrepancy between the message Otto thinks he's conveying and the one Bart is receiving; Otto sees himself as someone who mastered his situation and ascended to the top of the elementary school ladder, whereas Bart sees him as someone who never transcended the cycle and is now permanently stuck in the mentality of a fourth-grader. Bart respects Otto for the subversive mayhem he brings to the otherwise monotonous school routine, but deep down inside recognises that he isn't looking to emulate him; even at this point in life, he senses that he has greater ambition than Otto. Here, Bart gives Otto encouragement by assuring him he's the coolest adult he knows, with no such complexity.

Otto's cohabiting with the Simpsons, however questionable, doesn't come without its share of laughs. I like the scene where he terrifies Lisa with his overly intense retelling of the urban legend about the killer in the backseat, and his request for reading material "from the vampire's point of view" (er, you mean like Anne Rice?). The most interesting thing to arise is Homer insisting that, "This is not Happy Days, and [Otto] is not the Fonz", only for Otto to walk in and casually address him as "Mr S". I'm not massively well-versed in Happy Days lore, but as I understand it that's a reference to Fonzie's practice of addressing his host Howard Cunningham as "Mr C". What's curious about this moment, with hindsight, is how it foreshadows the appearance of Roy, the radical young man who was inexplicably living with the Simpsons in the Season 8 episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", and who also referred to Homer as "Mr S". We sense, fleetingly, that there is some intention to playfully mock the sitcom tendency toward contrived co-living situations in which contrasting characters get on one another's nerves, with Otto's addition suggesting a certain hackneying of dynamics in the Simpsons household. Overall, though, "The Otto Show" ends up not quite being the sum of its parts. Perhaps befitting for a program about Otto, it feels hampered by a fundamental lack of ambition. There is a clear enough narrative vision in the sense that everything flows fluidly from one point to the next, but it is largely a matter of "this happened...and then this happened...soon followed by this". What it doesn't do is to stop to unpick a great many of the possible characterisations lurking beneath each of these story decisions, to the extent that the episode never quite settles on what it's even about until literally the closing few seconds. It isn't about Bart's fleeting ambition to become a rock star, or his relationship with Otto. It isn't about Otto's relationship with his estranged father, his conflict with Homer or even his desire to salvage his barely existent self-esteem. What it is about, in the end, is Skinner's perception of Otto. Skinner has only a minor role in "The Otto Show", but he is very much where the heart of the story lies. It's thanks to Skinner that everything does eventually come together in the end.

In many ways Skinner can be seen as the antithesis of Otto. If Otto is an unusually cool adult, then Skinner is the absolute epitome of how Bart perceives the adult world, being an uptight, no-nonsense stickler for model behaviour, overly occupied with tedious duties and with little room for fun in his life (ironically, Skinner is even more of an overgrown schoolboy than Otto). It's no surprise that he would feel disdain for Otto, a grown man so disorganised and devoid of pride that he can't even show up to work wearing his own underwear. After suspending Otto, Skinner initially seems to vibe well with his stopgap transportation responsibilities, as the children welcome him with a collective rendition of "Hail To The Bus Driver", a spirited song sung to the tune of "O du lieber Augustin". Skinner, though, has a harder time navigating the route than Otto, not being assertive enough with his fellow motorist and becoming frustrated with the lack of consideration he receives in return. He struggles to make a turning because nobody will let him in and ends up a complete nervous wreck. By the end of the episode, when Otto has been restored to his position and the children are celebrating his return with a reprise of "Hail To The Bus Driver", it's Skinner who gets in the final word, watching from his office as Otto drives off into the distance, and reciting the lyrics of the song with a thoroughgoing reverence. Having had a first-hand taste of how difficult Otto's job is, he's come to see the value in what Otto does and is thankful to have him. That's why I consider Skinner to be the heart of this episode - he's the only character who undergoes any real growth as a result of his experiences in "The Otto Show". Bart misses the opportunity to develop a new skill and is potentially set back further by Homer's false pearl of wisdom. We're given no indication that Homer's opinion on Otto ever softens. As for Otto, while he eventually summons the resolve to retake his driving test and regains his job, he doesn't do so because he made any improvements as a bus driver, but because of who had chosen to like him on a given day. Although Patty was thoroughly unimpressed by Otto on his initial visit to the DMV, on his second visit he and Patty build a rapport over their shared dislike of Homer, and she's willing to overlook his many failings. (Incidentally, I don't know how people feel nowadays about that part where he offends Patty straight out the gate by asking if she's a transwoman - it's hard to dispute that a joke is being made about Patty's perceived lack of feminity, but there's an extent to which it feels also partly at Otto's expense for his presumptions of good allyship: "You can tell me, I'm open-minded".)

What makes Skinner's final expression of admiration for Otto particularly resonant is that he, perhaps more so than Homer, serves as a proxy for Otto's unseen father - he's also from a military background, and he's the one who banishes Otto in disgrace from familiar turf. It means that he is, at least on a subliminal level, able to bring some resolution to this otherwise untouched on narrative detail. Unlike Krusty, Otto doesn't go into depth about his father, so we don't learn the full story of what caused their relationship breakdown, but we're left to presume that it was likely influenced by their differences in values. There is a telling moment where Otto, boasting to the busload of kids about how playing the guitar was all he did back in high school, lets it slip that his father told him he was wasting his time and would never amount to anything, followed by a pause and a dissatisfied murmur. Otto has, for a second, inadvertently cut through his own obliviousness and is left contemplating if maybe his old man was onto something after all. Unlike Bart, he had the dedication to master the guitar, but otherwise lacked the gumption or discipline to make anything of himself, at least according to his father's standards, and deep down Otto is perhaps no more immune to life's disappointments than anybody else. It's no surprise that he'd want to savour the opportunity to show off his guitar skills before the kids on board the bus, and to soak up that meagre drop of personal glory. But really, in spite of Otto's momentary insecurities, there is intrinsic worth in what he does, which is to be a dependable source of conviviality for the community's children whilst taking them to and from their education. And Skinner, in lieu of Otto's father, is able to extend him the respect that he's due, now that he understands that it's not a role that just anyone can fulfil. There might not be a ton of prestige attached, but he's clearly appreciated by the people for whom it matters the most. Maybe there's not such a massive gulf between the stadium's applause for Spinal Tap and the enthusiastic response Otto receives when he returns to his young charges at the end. 

There's not much left to say, other than to dedicate this review to the memory of Rob and Michele Reiner. As much as I love Spinal Tap, my favourite Reiner film is actually When Harry Met Sally. Word has it that we got the version we did because Rob and Michele happened to fall in love during its production. What a beautiful legacy for them both.

Safeway: Little Harry Goes Shopping

Shopping at Safeway is an undertaking I never got round to in this lifetime. Growing up, they were this inoffensive brand that was always there somewhere in the backdrop, but I don't think I ever so much as set foot in one of their stores (same deal with Somerfield). My parents were long-term Sainsbury's devotees, and by the time I was old enough to manage my own food acquisition they were already disappearing, in the process of being swallowed up by Morrisons (an unfortunate fate, since Morrisons is the UK supermarket chain I'm dead-set on avoiding). The Safeway experience is one that I'll forever have to partake in vicariously, through the televised adventures of Little Harry and chums, the array of highly articulate tots who promoted the chain through the mid to latter half of the 1990s. What better way to establish your chain as a warm and family-friendly place to hang than to show small children having the time of their lives while on their weekly shop with their parents? Meanwhile, the accompanying tagline, "Lightening The Load", asked that we equate not just convenience and efficiency, but also wholesome good fun with the brand.

The child star who originally fronted this campaign was known as Little Harry. He was played by a boy named Jack Hanford, who was reportedly chosen from more than 1500 prospective young actors, although his innermost thoughts were delivered in the droll tones of Martin Clunes, best known for playing Gary in the contemporary sitcom Men Behaving Badly. The campaign owed an obvious debt to the then-recent Look Who's Talking films, which used a similar gimmick in pairing grown-up voiceovers with footage of ankle-biters. Harry would experience the various perks of shopping at Safeway with the fascination and naivety of a young child, but expressed through the sardonic musings of an adult, an approach that allowed for an easygoing mix of endearment and absurdism. The idea was to emphasise that Safeway was a particularly ideal choice for shoppers with little kids in tow, but even if you didn't fall into that demographic, you could perhaps still see a bit of yourself in Harry's wry observations. No matter what your age, your weekly excursion around your supermarket of choice was such a major part of your routine that there was something infinitely relatable and charming about following a single family and how their lives revolved around the contents of their grocery bags. Somerfield had a similar premise going (under the banner of "Shopping In The Real World"), but in their case the ads centred on an adult woman played by Suzanne Forster, and her slightly drippy husband with the tendency to misinterpret shopping lists ("I meant mincemeat for mince pies!"). 

In 1996 Harry was joined by a new co-star in the form of Molly, who was played by Rosie Purkiss-McEndoo and voiced by actress Lesley Sharpe, and was initially introduced as a romantic interest for Harry. Molly's encounter with Harry was treated by Safeway as a major event (it even came with its own line of tie-in merchandising), although it attracted its share of controversy at the time, from those who felt uneasy about the amorous overtones given to the tykes' interactions. Still, the outcome was ultimately not a pre-school recreation of the Gold Blend couple, with Safeway likely having broader motivations for adding new blood to the cast than to sell a few themed tea towels. The disadvantage in using children as the long-term faces of brands is that they'll grow up significantly within the space of a few years, so unless you're willing to build that into your campaign narrative, you might have to accept that they'll only have a limited shelf-life. I would hazard a guess that this is why Harry was all but phased out in later stages of the campaign, with ads shifting their focus toward Molly and her Paul Whitehouse-voiced brother, as well as a few additional "guest" faces, including a Northern Irish kid voiced by Frank Carson, an American girl voiced by Ruby Wax and a Scouser voiced by Cilla Black, although Harry did eventually return for a 1999 installment set at a millennium party. It served as a neat send-off for the campaign as a whole, as going into the Y2K Safeway made the decision to move away from television marketing altogether, and didn't have much longer to go as a brand. But of course the memories live on in our VHS recordings.

The first of the ads, from late 1994, saw Harry making his introductory visit to Safeway. He'd dared hope that his mother (Michèle Winstanley) was taking him to Toys R Us (the shopping locale where every child wanted to be be in the 1990s) and was initially disappointed to discover that they were headed for a supermarket, but was swiftly won over by the ease of the Parent & Child parking, and by the opportunities to comment on his fellow patrons from the vantage point of a trolley seat (including two sisters in a trolley with handy double seating). He was less sure about the bag-packing and carry-out service, since he could only interpret the helpful clerk as a stranger tampering with their goods before following them out of the building - the underlying narrative being that Harry was not accustomed to seeing such convenience from wherever he and his mother had shopped previously, so it was all new and alarming to him. (The ads often included shots of the Safeway employees smiling at the children, thus emphasising the genial service you could expect to receive within, although in this guy's case he cracks a curiously half-hearted smile, causing him to come off as being just as wary of Harry; not sure what the intended narrative is there.) Safeway's infinite friendliness to the young family crowd came to our hero's aid, when he and his mother were able to "hide" from the perceived stalker in a baby changing room (presumably helping his mother to deal with an entirely different kind of predicament), with the subsequent dissolve into the Safeway logo imparting the implicit message that parents would do well to view Safeway as a refuge from less accommodating venues. The ad went out of its way to cram in as many perks as possible - the option of gifting your loved ones with a Safeway voucher was not explicitly cited by the narrator, but was cunningly slipped into the mise-en-scene, when Harry and his mother walk past a poster promoting this very service.

Clunes' voiceovers naturally did a lot of the heavy-lifting humor-wise (slickly matched with Hanford's expressions), but for me the real high point of this ad is a moment where Harry has no words, and is instead having a grand time pretending to wield a sword - amid all the witticisms, it is heartening to see glimpses of the kid just being a kid.