"Bart's Comet" is one of those episodes that always figures somewhere near the top of my list whenever I'm playing that game, routine among Simpsons fans, of identifying episodes whose storylines could potentially have been expanded to feature length, and which might indeed have provided stronger narrative material than the movie we ultimately got in 2007. Naturally, "Bart's Comet" sticks out because it boasted what had to be, for the time, the most dramatic threat that Springfield had ever faced outside of a Halloween episode, one in which the end of the world is nigh, or at least the end of Springfield - which has, for all intents and purposes, become the entirety of the world by the third act. "Bart's Comet" also strikes me as something of a precursor to the actual Simpsons Movie, since both involve Springfield being cut off from the rest of the world and facing its own self-contained apocalypse. It already did everything The Simpsons Movie set out to do, but much more masterfully and succinctly. True, a comet perhaps makes for a less delectable antagonist than a government agent voiced by A. Brooks - you can't banter with a comet, after all - but I'd say that the rogue comet is certainly no less well-developed than Cargill when it comes to motivational profundity (the comet's being so driven to reduce Springfield to a smoking black scorch mark is at least comprehensible; just what the heck was Cargill's problem, anyway?)
What equally fascinates me about episode 2F11 is that it first aired on February 5th 1995, which puts it just slightly ahead of the curve with regard to the sudden reignited appetite for the Hollywood disaster pic that was about to take the multiplexes by storm as we entered the latter half of the 1990s. Disaster movies, once a popular cinematic staple of the 1970s (in the immediate aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the world seemed a significantly less stable place all-round), had fallen massively out of favour by the 1980s, but were about to make a huge comeback, bolstered in no small way by that all-90s' love affair with special effects ropey and computer-generated. Suddenly, audiences couldn't get enough of seeing the world going to Hell in a handbasket, be it a result of alien invaders (Independence Day), tornadoes (Twister) or Hollywood-ified visions of historical catastrophes (Titanic). The point at which asteroids were the specific threat of the month arrived in the summer of 1998, when viewers were "blessed" with duelling blockbusters about big rocks falling out of the sky - the ungodly obnoxious Armageddon and the comparatively modest Deep Impact (which, if nothing else, at least yielded a neat jump scare involving a dropped sandwich). On the DVD commentary for "Bart's Comet", showrunner David Mirkin explains that the episode was inspired by a cover story in TIME magazine about the odds that Earth might be struck by a comet; he speculates that those Hollywood blockbusters might have taken their cue from that very same article, but because a feature film takes so much longer to produce than a 20-minute cartoon, The Simpsons was able to get in there first (actually, I believe that Deep Impact was initially conceived as an adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's 1993 short story The Hammer of God, but things kind of transmuted in the development process). Long before all of them there was a film called Meteor, which arrived at the tail-end of that original run of disaster pics in 1979, but trust me when I say that it's mostly just Sean Connery and a bunch of others standing around and talking about the incoming space rock. And then whenever disaster does hit the Earth (in the form of little tearaway asteroid fragments) you end up feeling really shitty about what you see (there's a sequence where a family with a BABY and a CUTE LITTLE DOG are fleeing from a tidal wave in Hong Kong and, spoiler, none of them survive). This didn't prevent me from buying the View-Master set, mind you. Which is again, mostly just images of people standing around and talking (but at least there's nothing in there regarding the doomed baby and dog).
Disaster pics cater to two distinct and somewhat contradictory appetites. We hunger for the spectacle of seeing civilisation topple, as a sobering reminder that our puny human landmarks really are no match for the awe-inspiring forces of nature, but then we also want reassurance that humankind as a whole could overcome such obstacles and justify its place at the top of the world. When a comet is the threat in question, there's the added implication that it's not just nature we're at war with, but also fate. It was an asteroid that brought an end to the dinosaurs, after all, and there's no reason to believe that we would be any more immune if history were to repeat itself. Meteor, Deep Impact and Armageddon all pool solace from the assertion that we have one advantage the dinosaurs didn't; our highly-evolved brains have given us the foresight and the technological know-how to at least stand a fighting chance at altering our fate, but would it really be enough given the magnitude of what we're up against, and our tremendous capacity to fuck things up? The three aforementioned features all insist that it is, once enough setbacks have been overcome to fill up feature length; "Bart's Comet" deviates with a gleeful "Lol, of course not!" Midway through the episode, the people of Springfield take it as a given that the government response to send a missile to intercept the comet has lifted the problem of their impending demise off their shoulders, but it all falls victim to hubris and good old-fashioned incompetence. Like Icarus, the rocket foolishly soars too high, missing the comet and obliterating the town's only escape route, leaving the trapped residents with some six hours to live. Now it truly is every man for himself. Will civilisation hang together and support one another, offering some hope that a better world might be built should anyone emerge on the other side? Or do you think it's the insects' turn?
"Bart's Comet" is, in the end, about Springfield having to justify its existence after it has been deemed unworthy of survival. Not only does some higher power apparently see no issue with crushing them all horribly from above, the rest of the world exercises its own judgement when Congress finds a way of equating the evacuation of Springfield with pouring millions of dollars of taxpayer money into supporting the perverted arts. The doomed populace, uniformly unworthy in the eyes of everyone beyond it, find themselves in a climactic dilemma wherein they have to assert their personal indispensability to the world of tomorrow, and what each of them could potentially bring, post-comet, that justifies their getting a place inside a shelter with limited capacity. Krusty, for example, insists that he alone can bring laughter, Reverend Lovejoy argues that he will provide religious enlightenment (something he's starkly failing to bring right now), while Helen Lovejoy has gossip covered. What they are all conveniently overlooking is that the comet is on a path to destroy Springfield and Springfield alone. The rest of the world will be spared, there are plenty of others out there who could cover each of their proposed bases, and Springfield's eradication will be neither mourned or noticed. Every individual vying for a spot in that shelter is as pitifully insignificant as the next, and they know it.
But before we arrive at that apocalyptic horror, "Bart's Comet" begins more humbly, with the school celebrating its Science Week and Bart pranking Skinner by launching a humiliating weather balloon in his likeness. Unable to bring down the balloon, Skinner retaliates by ordering Bart to assist him in his early morning astronomy session, at an hour when the rest of the town is still asleep in their comfy, comfy beds (you've got to love the complacency of that 4:00am disc jockey who insists that "There is no news", given the magnitude of what's coming). It's a strong opening act, but ultimately a misleading one. There's actually a reason why "Bart's Comet", for all of the plot's distinctively cinematic qualities, might have been a challenging script to expand into a full-length Simpsons movie, and that's that it isn't really the Simpsons' story. What's unusual about this episode is that it has no overarching narrative focusing on any one family member in particular, or upon the family as a whole. There are long stretches of the story where the Simpsons don't feel like drivers of the narrative action so much as they do passive commentators on a situation that's obviously well beyond their control. Nominally, it's a Bart episode, but after the first nine minutes or so he just sort of fades into the scenery, at which point Homer and Lisa emerge as more prominent voices (but not so much that it ever becomes what you'd call a Homer or Lisa episode). The fact that Bart discovered the cursed comet and that it's named after him has no bearing on how anything else plays out, to the point that there's really no reason at all why Bart had to be the one to discover the comet at all - any character could have randomly looked up at the sky one day and our basic plot would be in motion. Bart's involvement is basically just a means of filling up our first act, which it accomplishes with a deceptively slice of life aplomb, allowing Bart and Skinner to play off of one another for a few unassuming minutes. Really, this could have worked as its own self-contained short, it's such a perfectly paced and structured exercise in characterisation-flexing. In the end, the episode is no more intrinsically concerned with Skinner than it is with Bart, but for as long as the spotlight stays on him he gets some wonderful moments in which to shine. "Steamed Hams" notwithstanding, Skinner is a character who I don't think gets half as much love as he deserves; he's another of those Springfieldians I've found has grown on me as I've gotten older, primarily because there's a lot more of the flagrantly unhip educator in me than I'd perhaps care to admit. There's a strange kind of purity to his character, blending the adult mindset at its most unironically square with a boyish innocence that finds honest enthusiasm in the most seemingly mundane of undertakings. Skinner might have dragged Bart into his early hour stargazing as a punishment, yet he makes a sincere attempt to sell his pint-sized nemesis on the pleasures of a scientific hobby: "There's nothing more exciting than science! You get all the fun of sitting still, being quiet, writing down numbers, paying attention...science has it all." I find myself both envying the man for his gentle earnestness and positively reeling at what an easy target this makes him for Bart and episode writer John Swartzwelder alike. Maybe he does bring a part of his humiliation on himself (if he seriously believes that Pierre Jules César Janssen "invented" helium, which is not much more enlightened than Selma's bizarre misconception that a lady goat is a sheep).
The second act makes a preliminary effort to pick up where the first
left off, and for a minute or so it looks as though the episode might
deal with Bart's newfound (and not entirely welcome) infamy within the
scientific community for his having discovered the comet; the Super
Friends are introduced, and they get quite an extensive build-up for
characters who immediately drop off into a narrative black hole (then again, the series had previously toyed with the idea of Bart finding himself inadvertently aligned with nerds, and they didn't know where to take it then either). They
play conspicuously like the vestige of an earlier outline in which the
story managed to remain more Bart-focussed, yet their lone sequence is still inspired, primarily on account of that subdued smirk radiating from Lisa
all the while. It's not altogether clear if she's unironically bouncing
off the Super Friends' energy, or if she's getting a knowing kick out of
how incredibly awkward this all must be for Bart. No matter - once it's
established that the comet is heading toward Springfield, the episode
changes course entirely, and Bart's contributions to the scientific community are all but forgotten. Still, given that the episode insists on emphasising the comet's connection to Bart through its title, I'm inclined to go on linking them, if in more of a thematic sense. Would it be too much of a stretch to suppose that Bart's act of insubordination, in touching the telescope after Skinner expressly forbade it, is what summons the comet onto its catastrophic collision course with Springfield in the first place? By that, I'm not suggesting that this entire ordeal was single-handedly Bart's doing, just that his unruly behaviour is emblematic of the broader failings that brings this wrath from above raining down upon the townspeople's heads? Perhaps there is some karmic significance in the appearance of the comet, initially framed as a hotly-sought after prize, taking precious little time in transforming into a horrifying curse; it would be Skinner who'd have the last laugh, if he weren't mired in the exact same sinking vessel.
Mirkin describes "Bart's Comet" as his idea of the perfect Simpsons episode, and despite the somewhat disjointed narrative structure, I am not disposed to dispute that. Not only does it have a wonderfully engrossing plot (tense in just the right places, deliciously absurd in others), it manages to squeeze in a few notes of well-earned sentiment toward the end. "Bart's Comet" is an episode that I find more emotionally impactful than perhaps I should; we've seen our share of episodes illustrating how Springfield functions as a community, and what an intensely unpleasant collective they are, and "Bart's Comet" bucks the trend by having them do something surprisingly noble for a change. Then again, it's not as though that mob mentality can't manifest in ways that are ostensibly benevolent, should the winds happen to be blowing in that direction. Is the townspeople's profound final gesture, in choosing to go out into the open and join Ned on that hilltop, to be perceived as substantially different to their supposed goodwill toward little trapped Timmy O'Toole in "Radio Bart", or their markedly conditional generosity toward the Simpsons in "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace"? The ending keeps things a little ambiguous as to whether they vacate the shelter on recognition of a common principle or simply because everyone else was doing it; nevertheless, it manages to sell their decision as a legitimately touching moment. That culminating image showing flock of Springfieldians running up that hill while singing "Que Sera, Sera", a song performed by Doris Day in Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 film The Man Who Knew Too Much, with its lyrics about the necessity of accepting fate, is legitimate lump-in-the-throat material. It also manages to have its subversive, cake-guzzling moment, with Quimby's abrupt undercutting of the touchy-feely outpouring, through the reminder that, oh yeah, we've all gone outside to meet with our imminent destruction. But even short of its indelible finale, "Bart's Comet" would still be one of the stand-outs of Season 6 for me, by virtue of just how gorgeously atmospheric it is. I give it similar marks as "Bart of Darkness", in that it is one heck of a good-looking episode - of particular note is the closing shot of act two, which shows us the climactic problem from the perspective of the trapped denizens, panning upward from the charred remains of the torpedoed bridge and through a beautifully starlit night sky, until we reach the blazing ball of reckoning bearing down upon them. It is both awe-inspiring and gut-wrenching. One reason why "Bart's Comet" boasts a more epic, cinematic feel than most others is because it really takes the time to allow its apocalyptic threat to fester, and for us to soak in the scope of the town and the populace united under its looming shadow. Even the very silliest of sight gags, such as the penguins taking flight, feed into that escalating tension. As a bonus, "Bart's Comet" also contains quite possibly my favourite Simpsons moment involving only incidental extras - when one of the scientists at the observatory notices the incoming comet and gasps in horror, only to be accosted by his colleague: "Warren, we've talked about you hogging the eye-piece!" For characters who only a get a couple of fleeting snippets of screen time, I love what a perfect little snapshot we get into their working dynamic. It's a testament to what was always one of the series' greatest strengths - its ability to create the sense of a thriving community that, as intrinsically rotten as Springfield might be, feels so rich and alive at every corner. It would, honestly, be terribly unfair to suggest that nothing of value would be lost if that comet were to exercise its destructive energies to the full.
Come the final dilemma, there's an obvious allusion to be drawn to the
Biblical story of Noah's Ark. When apocalyptic calamity looms, the one
character who's taken all the right measures to protect himself and his
family is the ultra-pious Ned Flanders. Ned, though, goes a step further than Noah, in
that he doesn't have the heart to turn away the unrighteous masses who
gather outside, pleading to reap the benefits of the Flanders' prudence.
This leads to a particularly cruel twist, when one person too many attempts to climb inside the shelter, making it impossible to close the door, and the
townspeople deem Ned the unrighteous one who must step outside to
save the others - or, more accurately, Homer does, and nobody objects, not even Ned himself. But it's also a twist that enables Ned to make the definitive demonstration of his worthiness. He's the only one who's willing to die so that his friends and neighbours may have a chance at living. In the end, even Homer is unable to ignore this simple truth.
In his review on the AV Club, David Sims observes that "Flanders’ good-neighbor attitude gets the better of him, of course, as
he invites everyone in town into the shelter, which can apparently fit
everyone in town minus one person." There is a small correction I would like to make to Sims' review - at no point is it ever stated that Ned has the entire population of Springfield inside his bomb shelter, just a significant part of it. Those involved in the episode's climax are to be regarded more as representatives of the town than its be-all and end-all, and if you hit the pause button and study the shelter's interior you're going to notice that certain faces are missing. Characters definitely NOT inside the shelter: Abe and Jasper (their absence is explained in a deleted scene, where they hear a radio broadcast about the comet and laugh that "young Orson Welles is at it again!"), Jacques (as the comet closed in on Springfield, he ran and took cover under a bench), Burns and Smithers (they seem like strangely prominent characters to leave out, but then Burns is rich, so maybe he has his own personal shelter he allowed Smithers to share). I also note that no attempt was made to save Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II, even when the Simpsons and Flanders thought they'd have ample room inside the shelter. Given the dilemma we end up in, I understand why it was more straightforward to keep the final debate to one regarding only human lives, but still, were the Simpsons really that relaxed about just up and abandoning their pets? Apparently they were. I see that somebody brought their Chihuahua along, however. Fun fact: according to The Simpsons: A Complete Guide To Our Favorite Family, this is the same Chihuahua that would later appear alongside Bart in "Radioactive Man", and under the ownership of Bumblebee Man in "22 Short Films About Springfield". Is the implication that this Chihuahua goes about flitting from abode to abode (kind of like the Littlest Hobo)?
On The DVD commentary, Mirkin states that the third act was inspired by the old Twilight Zone classic, "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street". Personally, I think Mirkin was getting his Zone encounters muddled, and that the episode he actually had in mind was "The Shelter", which the final conflict of "Bart's Comet" much more closely resembles. Still, it's easy to see why he would get them confused, since both episodes deal with markedly similar themes - the total disintegration of a community, when it comes more naturally to its members to turn on one another than to stand united against an external threat. In the case of "The Shelter", the denizens of a suburban neighbourhood viciously mob the only resident with a fall-out shelter upon fearing that nuclear attack is imminent; this transpires to be a false alarm, but even so, there is a sense at the end that things can never go back to how they were. Trust within the community has been obliterated, its occupants having exposed themselves, as one character in puts it, as "a lot of naked, wild animals who put such a price on staying alive that they'll claw their neighbors to death just for the privilege." We like to think we'd remain civilised under pressure, but our fight or flight response doth make beasts of us all. In "Bart's Comet", part of the joke is that the townspeople actually do remain (relatively) civilised throughout the ordeal. The angry mob shows up at the door of Ned's shelter brandishing weapons, and yet when Ned initially tells them that the shelter is full, they somehow avoid descending into all-out violence and instead seem sadly resigned to their destruction. What later threatens to destroy societal obligations inside the shelter is something as ridiculous as a barnyard guessing game, in which the occupants are required to guess exactly which domesticated animal Moe is attempting to imitate (Moe produces a noise so impossibly generic it could be just about anything, but my guess would have been a hinny). The seemingly inane game and the subsequent squabbling all serve a useful purpose, however, as a smokescreen to prevent the townspeople from having to contemplate the terrible situation they've just forced Ned into (although Ned has accepted his fate, he still insists on asserting his presence by singing "Que Sera, Sera"). It is, after all, the definitive proof of their own unrighteousness, and casts immediate doubt on whether they could actually live with themselves in the world of tomorrow. Even Marge, on attempting to put a stop to the dissension, weighs it up against the alternative and chooses to keep the squabbling going. Where our mob remains firmly united is in the recognition that they have done a lousy thing and their desire to suppress all acknowledgement.
Which takes us into our surprisingly poignant conclusion - Homer has a change of heart and rejects the wilful obliviousness of the mob in favour of going outside and ensuring that Ned will not face the comet alone, whereupon all of the occupants see the sense in what he's saying and follow suit. It's as if they've decided that they are all equally unrighteous; they've been judged as a collective, thus the logical course of action would be to accept their fate and to perish together. What we have here is a more expansive variation on what I like to call Simpsons solidarity, through which the family will demonstrate, time and time again, that they'll always have one another's backs when up against some external judgement. In this case, it's more a matter of Springfield solidarity, whereby the townspeople discover that they would sooner stand together and face the wrath of a higher power than allow even one of their number to die alone. Even if it is fuelled that familiar mob mentality, it remains one hell of a gesture. It's through this acceptance of their mutual unworthiness that they manage to avoid descending into the all-out barbarism of the communities in "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" and "The Shelter". It might even be what facilitates their redemption, and convinces that higher power to spare them. As the comet enters the Earth's atmosphere and hurtles into Springfield, it rapidly disintegrates, becoming a tiny rock; the most damage it dishes out on the way down is in colliding with the Skinner-shaped weather balloon and causing it to deflate and crash into Ned's shelter which, in another beautifully-executed ironic turn, becomes the single item on the ground below to topple (there's also a nice nod to the episode's more humble beginnings, in which Bart grabs and pockets the diminished comet, reasserting his ownership over it). Even then, there is an additional layer of bitter irony to Springfield's survival - the comet's breaking up is attributed to the extra-thick pollution that engulfs the town, as good an indicator of their wretchedness if ever there was one. Springfield is apparently so slovenly a burg that the rock from above was no match for its squalor. A bit of a hollow victory, in other words? The town might have saved itself from instant extinction, but at the expense that it will slowly suffocate in the smog it has rendered omnipresent (Patty and Selma aren't the only ones whose accustomization to toxic chemicals undermines their supposed appreciation for the preciousness of life). This intrinsic unwholesomeness persists on a social level too - having survived divine reckoning, the town expresses its gratitude by embracing the same violent impulses that took Maple Street by storm, resolving to burn down the observatory on the mindless assertion that it will prevent anything like this from happening again. The mob has spoken, and has equated ignorance with safety.
That leaves us with only the Simpsons on the hilltop, contemplating how close they came to complete destruction, and how arbitrary the solution that got them out of their jam. In the past, if I'd had one longstanding criticism of "Bart's Comet", it would be that the final punchline, while not necessarily a bad one, did always strike me as something of a stock one, which you could theoretically tag onto any episode where Homer demonstrated a degree of savviness with regard to how narrative trajectory tends to work in his universe. It feels less incidental, however, if we view Homer's stance as springing less from any innate understanding that the Powers That Be will obviously not allow Springfield to be destroyed and that some bullshit deus ex machina will save the day, than from his assuming the role of the idiotic boor who refuses to take the patently real crisis seriously (his disregard for the continuing rainforest problem is a dead giveaway). That Homer's senseless dismissals are actually borne out by the end only adds to the hollowness of that final victory - naturally, everybody wanted to get through this in one piece, but for Homer's mindset to be upheld as the voice of reason casts a pall over the town's deliverance. It's a cosmic joke in such inescapably bad taste that even Homer himself is compelled to acknowledge it. We are indeed all doomed.
Sky 1 edit alert!: Back in the 90s, Sky 1 always used to cut the part where Ned hands Todd a shotgun and instructs him to shoot him should he attempt to get back inside the shelter. Naturally, it was always a bit dark of Ned to entrust this responsibility to his own child instead of one of the many adults inside the shelter, but perhaps the startling proficiency with which Todd cocks that gun, while weeping bitterly, tells a story in of itself.
Also, a somewhat embarrassing admission. When I was a kid and first saw this episode, I had no idea who the Three Stooges were (in my defence, they're not amazingly popular in the UK) and assumed that Larry was meant to be Albert Einstein, and that the two other figures depicted in the Three Wise Men constellation were also renowned physicists. I was beginning to have questions by the time I saw "This Little Wiggy".
