I've said in the past that I don't particularly like Simpsons episodes that focus heavily on Santa's Little Helper. "Bart's Dog Gets an F" (7F14), which first aired on March 7th 1991, has long languished as my pick for the weakest of Season 2. There was a time when it might have competed for that honor with "Dancin' Homer", but that's an episode I've found to improve with each viewing, whereas "Bart's Dog" has never outgrown its status as the runt of the litter. With their first attempt a misfire, I never understood why the writers remained so intent on making these Santa's Little Helper tales a regular occurrence, with a new one cropping up every other season or so (although they seemed to drop off during the Scully era). There was, however, always one major factor that might have stood in my way of being able to fully appreciate what these episodes had to offer, and that was my wholly dog-free existence. Until a year ago, I'd never owned a dog. I grew up in a cat household. Cats are what I related to. Over time, I grew bored with all the episodes centred around Bart and Santa's Little Helper and wondered when we'd be getting one about Lisa and Snowball II (the moral there is to be careful what you wish for). So I will freely admit that at least part of my coolness toward the Simpson mutt's repertoire was informed by the seeping grudge I felt on behalf of his feline compatriot, who is the real forgotten Simpson and not Maggie. As of September 2023, I've become the owner of a wonderful Chinese Crested, and now I couldn't imagine life without him. So maybe the time has come for me to go back and give the Santa's Little Helper episodes a thorough reevaluation through the eyes of a born again dog lover?
This isn't to say that the series' unabashed favouritism for Santa's Little Helper over Snowball II doesn't remain a sticking point. Ultimately, my sympathies are still with the Simpson moggy. Fact is, she was a member of the central household, and it strikes me as only proper that she should have been included a whisker more actively in their life and dynamics. Consider that it took until a Season 8 episode, the "Thing and I" segment of "Treehouse of Horror VII", for a script to even confirm the sex of the Simpsons' cat (IIRC - sure, the original Snowball was confirmed as a female in "Stark Raving Dad" of Season 3, but did they say anything about her successor before then?). For years, I'd automatically assumed that Snowball II was male (a reasonable assumption, because most solidly black cats are, or so I've heard) and remember being surprised when Lisa referred to the cat using female pronouns. Even then, I suspect that there wasn't actually a hard consensus among the writers on this point, given that Marge describes Snowball II as a male just a few episodes later in "Bart After Dark". Some fans will argue that Snowball II had little personality compared to Santa's Little Helper, but my response to that is they never gave her much of a chance to exhibit any. I think a lot of it comes down to how Santa's Little Helper was purposely conceived as an extension of the Simpson's own beleaguered doggedness, allowing him a more privileged position within the family pecking order. In "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", Santa's Little Helper was initiated into the clan on Homer's observation that, "He's a loser, he's pathetic, he's...a Simpson." A racing greyhound who struggled even to finish his races, he was a totem of everything that made the family themselves such lovable societal misfits. Snowball II, whose very moniker is a commemoration of a tragedy in the family's past, is a silent, ominous reminder that Death Is Coming For Us All. In her way, she's every bit as a reflective of the dysfunction of the Simpsons' household (right down to the "Snowball" part of her name being a grotesque misnomer), but in a slightly less endearing, more macabre way. I've no evidence that greyhounds became a more fashionable breed off the back of Santa's Little Helper, but I'm sure that (all things considered) he was seen as a positive representation of a former racer getting a second chance as a family pet. I doubt that Snowball II did much to bolster the public image of black cats, a feline class associated with a heap of negative superstitions and a reputation for being less popular among prospective cat adopters, and maybe that's to be viewed as a missed opportunity.
My catty grievances aside, there were a number of reasons why I'd feel a sense of disappointment whenever an upcoming Simpsons episode was revealed to be Santa's Little Helper-orientated. For one, they typically don't allow for brilliant plotting. Even when overshadowing Snowball II, Santa's Little Helper really isn't that strong a character, his range basically limited to looking cheerfully oblivious whilst harbouring the destructive urge to chew up every household item in his path. Matt Groening was vocally opposed to the presence of anthropomorphism in The Simpsons, believing it would undermine the reality of the series (he made no attempt to hide his disdain for the winking catfish on the commentary for "The War of The Simpsons"). He was probably right, but it did severely curb what they could feasibly do with the dog. More fatally still, Santa's Little Helper episodes have a predilection for the hackneyed in a way that feels at odds with the rebellious spirit of The Simpsons, their resolutions often falling back on the kinds of well-worn cliches you might expect to encounter in any number of "boy and his dog" type stories. Take Santa's Little Helper defending Bart from an entire pack of hounds at the end of "Dog of Death", or being asked to choose between Bart and the blind stoner at the end of "The Canine Mutiny". As for this episode, the development that saves the day is nothing short of an eleventh-hour miracle, and it's played curiously straight for a show that, right from its opening episode, regarded the omnipresence of miracles in television with a healthy leeriness.
But hey, the whole point of this review is to give the first Santa's Little Helper episode a fair shake, so I want to at least start by covering those aspects of "Bart's Dog Gets an F" that I find interesting and that set it apart from other episodes. It seems noteworthy to me that this is the Simpsons episode most likely to invite comparisons with one the show's earliest rivals, Family Dog. The CBS spin-off series created in order to get aboard the Simpsons bandwagon was then still stumbling its way through Development Hell (destined to eventually become a punchline in "Treehouse of Horror III"), but the original "Family Dog" episode of Amazing Stories will forever have the honor of beating the first Simpsons Ullman short to air by about two months, and can be seen as one of the first major heralds of the dawning age for primetime animation. Like Family Dog, "Bart's Dog Gets an F" makes the stylistic choice of showing us what a stranger, all the more alienating place whitebread suburbia becomes when viewed from the eyes of a displaced wolf descendant. Scattered throughout are a series of intermittent cuts that attempt to get inside Santa's Little Helper's head, usually whenever he comes into conflict with one of the family, and give us a glimpse of the Simpson household as perceived through his vacant peepers. Happily, The Simpsons accomplishes this without indulging the long-debunked misconception that dogs only see in black and white; Santa's Little Helper's vision is more colour-limited, but whoever was responsible for the design in these sequences was clearly aware that they can see blue, with the tints of Marge's hair and Homer's pants being discernible features (having said that, I think dogs can also see yellow, so the family themselves should have appeared as normal to Santa's Little Helper). The point of these POV shots is to get across the language barrier that prevents Santa's Little Helper from being a well-behaved pet; to him, every word that spews out of the Simpsons' mouths is incomprehensible blather, much as everything they leave lying around is either food or a chew toy for letting loose with his insatiable oral urges. They also create a fine balance between the dog as a fundamental innocent (like when he steals Homer's breakfast because he can't distinguish between Homer's food and his own) and the dog as a terrible, chaotic force that seems bent on sniffing out and destroying everything the family holds dear. Nowhere is the latter more lovingly illustrated than in the sequence where he commits his most egregious act of destruction, laying waste to the cherished quilt that's formed the basis of Bouvier family tradition across six generations, and when his inhuman gaze is momentarily transmuted into that of a slasher movie villain sidling up to a prospective victim. As Santa's Little Helper closes in on the defenceless quilt, a sound chillingly reminiscent of "Ki-Ki-Ki Ma-Ma-Ma" works its way into the soundtrack, cluing us in that the Simpsons have taken into their abode nothing less than the four-legged equivalent of Jason Voorhees.
Other moments with Santa's Little Helper are less overtly menacing, but firmly establish that he's no Disneyfied critter, a point made salient in the very first scene, which incorporates a moment obviously designed to recall Lady & The Tramp. Unlike Jim Dear, when Homer peers through the dog-inflicted hole in his morning newspaper, he's greeted not by the devoted eyes of Man's best friend, but the dog's rear end as he inspects his reluctant master's breakfast. He's also a duller beast than many of his television contemporaries, neither a heroic defender a la Spike from Rugrats, or in possession of any of the strange neuroses of Eddie from Frasier. He's instead content to ramble mindlessly through life, never missing an opportunity to make a nuisance of himself while remaining plaintively oblivious to the trouble he causes. A huge chunk of the first act is taken up by the random acts of havoc Santa's Little Helper inflicts, both within the Simpsons' backyard and around the neighbourhood when he slips his tether. These include such non-cute endeavors as ingesting a ladybug, stealing jerky from the counter of the Kwik-E-Mart and harassing ducks at the park. Eventually he finds his way into the Winfields' swimming pool, paving way for Sylvia Winfield's most protracted appearance (here voiced by guest star Tracey Ullman rather than her regular voice actress Maggie Roswell), when she telephones Homer and lays down her judgement that a lawless dog is but the extension of a lawless family: "There's only one family on this block - no, on Earth, inconsiderate enough to let a monster like that roam free!"
Already I find myself getting into the flaws of "Bart's Dog Gets an F", the most obvious being that the first act feels particularly slow, setting up the plot point of Lisa coming down with the mumps and getting to spend her days being initiated into the art of cross stitching by Marge, but otherwise belabouring the same point about Santa's Little Helper. There's some pleasant mother-daughter bonding happening in the subplot, but those moments too are a bit uneventful, and would have benefited from having a more urgent A-story unfolding around them. An amusing narrative thread emerges involving Homer blowing $125 (about $289 in 2024 money) on a pair of Assassins sneakers, a neat bit of satire of the Air Jordans craze that had consumers gripped at the time, for no other reason than to keep up with the Flanders. And yes, to partially agree with a point made by Nathan Rabin in his review on the AV Club, this interaction does feel like a relic of Ned and Homer's earliest dynamic, when Ned's aspirations were a lot more worldly and his role in the series largely involved stoking Homer's envy with his latest flashy purchase. I'd argue, though, that Homer spending that much money on sports shoes that he blatantly has no intention of using for exercise was always the point. As for Ned, I kind of like how much more balanced he was at this stage. They didn't call it "Flanderization" for nothing, I know, but it was nice how, even with "Dead Putting Society" already establishing him as a pious Christian type, this didn't immediately define all aspects of his character and he was still allowed to be a regular guy who got excited about frivolous things like designer footwear. Naturally, as soon as Homer gets a pair of his own those shoes are doomed, but it's surprising that they don't even last out the first act, rendering them something of a pointless plot diversion. There's a subsequent sequence where Homer attempts to return the savaged sneakers for a refund, only to be told, by that spiky-haired character who served as a predecessor to the Squeaky-Voiced Teen, that the warranty doesn't cover fire, theft or acts of Dog. Right after, something new catches his eye in the form of a Macadamia nut [1] cookie from Cookie Colossus, and this ends up being the ill-fated purchase that tips us into our third act conflict. No doubt it's all meant to be part of the joke that Homer weathers the loss of his designer sneakers but reaches his breaking point over a cookie that set him back by one measly dollar, but it leaves the story feeling as rambling and unfocussed as Santa's Little Helper's attention span.
This takes us into the other really interesting thing about "Bart's Dog Gets an F", and that's that it's a rare episode in which Homer is effectively cast as the villain of the piece, with the added nasty twist that he successfully enlists Marge to his side. Even with the shorter temper that accompanied his early characterisation, there aren't many other episodes that he spends in such a perpetually grim mood - when he's not viciously at odds with Santa's Little Helper, he's mostly either stewing in resentment toward Ned, being belligerent with Mrs Winfield, or being rude to a cookie salesgirl who is seriously only doing her job in offering him free samples before telling him where he can buy them. And, for all the vapidness of the first act, when Homer lays down his ultimatum at the end of the second (that the dog has to go), it genuinely hurts. Bart's flailing cries of protest ("I'll set fire to my clothes! I'll put sugar in the gas tank!") also hurt. The cruellest axe falls when Lisa appeals to Marge for support only for her to admit that nope, she's siding with Homer on this one. It becomes a matter of the kids versus the adults, a match-up that's bitterly skewed in that one side wields all of the power. For now, anyway. Homer prefaces his bombshell with the mean-spirited declaration that "We've never had a problem
with a family member we can give away before", although that much isn't exactly true,
is it? The family already hoisted Abe off onto the retirement
home, a connection that was explicitly made in a later Santa's Little Helper episode, "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds", but here goes without comment. Lisa does, however, make Homer conscious of the likelihood that he could one day be on the receiving end of his offsprings' mercy, when she asks him if the implicit lesson being taught is that the way to solve a problem with someone you love is to get rid of them. "If they're ever going to pull the plug on me", Homer admits, "I want you in my corner." Thus, Santa's Little Helper gets a reprieve. If he can pass his course at the Canine College, he gets to remain under the Simpsons' roof.
The kids versus adults conflict is an interesting and relatable one, but the unmistakably sour tone of the parents' position is a major reason why I find this episode so difficult to warm to. I think it shows a very mean and petty side to not only Homer, but to Marge as well. I understand Marge being upset about the loss of the Bouvier quilt, but let's be real here - it wasn't Santa's Little Helper's fault. He's just a dumb dog, and he didn't know what the quilt was or why it mattered to Marge, any more than he could read Homer's stupid cookie missive. If you've got a pet with destructive tendencies, the onus is on you to implement a little basic damage control by not leaving precious items where the pet might get to them. Marge could have avoided the entire outcome if she'd just had the foresight to close the bedroom door before leaving the quilt unsupervised and within the dog's reach. She insists that it's not just the quilt, and gives a list of the various transgressions that make Santa's Little Helper an undesirable pet, but that all just makes me wonder how well the Simpsons are meeting the needs of their dog in general (the more unfortunate way in which this episode reminds me of Family Dog). Something that isn't brought up in the script but weighs heavily on my mind throughout is that Santa's Little Helper is an ex-racing dog, and as such he wouldn't have been raised to be a family pet. The Simpsons strike me as the kind of family who wouldn't necessarily do the research and take into consideration that a former racer is going to have had a very different background to a regular house dog (in light of the fact that this was an impulse adoption on their part), and that special attention might be needed to ensure that it can make the transition. Marge observes that Santa's Little Helper is "not even housebroken", which isn't so unusual for an ex-racer that hasn't before lived in a home environment. Factor in that Santa's Little Helper was very clearly mistreated by his original owner, and it's hardly surprising that the dog is going to have some behavioural problems. When Marge is scanning the telephone directory for a reputable obedience school, she passes over one run by Dr Marvin Monroe, with the philosophy that "Your dog isn't the problem, you are!", and let's face it, there are some uncomfortable truths in that.
Instead, the family enlists the services of starchy dog trainer Emily Winthrop, a parody of Barbara Woodhouse by way of a parody of Margaret Thatcher. She (like Mrs Winfield) is voiced by Tracey Ullman, the TV comedian who, to use her own analogy, had breast-fed The Simpsons during its germinal years (funnily enough, I think they were undergoing a messy divorce at around this time, with Ullman unsuccessfully suing the network for a cut of the series' profits in 1992...which didn't seem to interfere with her working relationship with James L. Brooks, given that she was later in I'll Do Anything). Ullman's bristly performance is by and far the highlight of the episode. Winthrop is not a particularly likeable character - she advocates flagrantly cruel methods for bringing dogs to order, instructing her students to yank on their choke chain whenever their mutt shows any inkling of disobedience (and there's a line of dialogue indicating that she would use comparable methods on a child) - but her vocal liveliness gives the torpid narrative a much-needed shot in the arm.
Oh hello Jacques. A random Jacques cameo is always good for a few extra points in my book, and naturally I appreciate the confirmation that he's also a dog lover (being the archetypal Frenchman that he is, of course he would have a poodle), but this is all we see of him at the Canine College. I've checked the other obedience school scenes thoroughly, and he isn't featured anywhere else (although his poodle's design is reused here and there). Just so we're clear, that's a GOOD thing. If Jacques doesn't reappear in any subsequent classes then it can be assumed that he dropped out after the first session since he didn't approve of Winthrop's training methods. Mind you, I don't think consistency amongst the background extras was ever a top priority during production. Martin is always seen with a Shar Pei, but pay close attention and you'll notice that Sam the barfly's dog changes with every scene he's in - first he has a large grey mutt, then a smaller terrier-type, and finally a bloodhound at the graduation scene.
Even with the stakes raised in its third act, "Bart's Dog Gets an F" never quite settles on what it's supposed to be about; again, it's that meandering focus that keeps it from attaining greatness. The title betrays what it perhaps set out to be, but didn't completely realise, implying as it does that it's intended as a companion episode to "Bart Gets an F", which dealt with Bart's struggles within a similarly indifferent educational system. Until Santa's Little Helper enrols at Canine College, Bart himself has a fairly minimal role in the narrative, seeming more interested in Lisa's mumps than in anything Santa's Little Helper is up to, but as soon as schooling enters the picture, suddenly he's the one on the firing line on with the dog. Sole responsibility for getting Santa's Little Helper into order apparently falls to Bart, who is the only family member seen working with him at the training sessions, and that's kind of messed up when you think about it. Bart's only 10; shouldn't he be due some parental oversight in all of this? Presumably, the underlying idea is that Bart feels a particular empathy for Santa's Little Helper because he's able to project his own feelings of academic inadequacy onto the dog; his telling Santa's Little Helper, "Sorry boy, you can't help being dumb", seems reminiscent of his despairing cry of, "I am dumb! Dumb as a post! Think I'm happy about it?", from earlier that season. Once again, it's insinuated that this lack of progress might have less to do with dumbness on the dog's part than with Bart's inability to work within another rote learning institution with little sympathy for individual difference. He gets nowhere because he's not willing to fall in line with Winthrop's vile methods, the use of which hurts him as much as it hurts Santa's Little Helper, and no doubt strikes him as redolent of the kind of daily chastisement he experiences at Springfield Elementary. It makes good sense to present the struggle to turn Santa's Little Helper around as a particularly personal one for Bart; he sees so much of himself in the dog.
This feels like it should have been the emotional hook of the episode, yet the script doesn't delve too deeply into it. For one, the connection is never explicitly raised; the single reference to Bart's own academic troubles comes when he attempts to sneak his remedial reading assignment into the pile of homework Lisa had specially requested for her sick leave. In "Bart Gets an F", there was also a sense that Homer and Marge weren't exactly doing a great deal to help Bart, which existed largely in the subtext of that episode, through a small moment where, after failing to ensure that Bart devoted an evening to studying (and in Homer's case, actively dragging him away from it), they wonder why he keeps on failing despite his good intentions. Their apparent disinterest in getting their hands dirty with Santa's Little Helper creates a similarly stark impression of it being Bart against the world, but comes with the added sting that, on this occasion, Homer and Marge are the final authority. Winthrop might be uncompromising when Bart implores her to go easy on them during the upcoming examination, but she isn't the one laying down the condition that Santa's Little Helper either passes or gets booted. While Bart is making his last-ditch effort to save his chum, there are a bunch of scenes with Homer already advertising the dog and showing him to a prospective new owner (although purposely concealing that this is a problem dog, which raises questions about how long Santa's Little Helper would have lasted in his new home). I suppose it makes the threat of losing Santa's Little Helper feel more real and urgent, but it adds an extra dash of mean-spiritedness to Homer's actions, as though he has a vested interest in seeing the dog fail.
Of course, in the end the dog doesn't, but it takes a remarkably convenient bit of plot development to facilitate that ending, with Santa's Little Helper suddenly becoming capable of discerning commands amid the usual human blather, but only after Bart has delivered a heartfelt speech about how much he's going to miss his friend. So what made the difference? Is the implication that Santa's Little Helper, sensing from Bart's tone that something is wrong, is finally giving his master enough focus to overcome their communication barrier? Is Bart's persistence in attempting to train the dog humanely getting a delayed payoff? Or are we merely seeing a last-minute miracle plucked out of thin air because hey, we've only got 30 seconds left, and obviously we're not interfering with the status quo, so let's just wrap this up happily (the B-story's solution, with Lisa taking it upon herself to start a new family quilt, lands a notch more naturally). An out and out miracle also played a significant role in the resolution to "Bart Gets an F" (as Bart said, at least part of his C- belonged to God), but there it came with a much more subversive double-edge, the snow day he was apparently granted via divine intervention becoming less a reprieve than another temptation - at best, he was being tested by the Powers That Be, and at worst, toyed with. Bart learned repeatedly that there was no easy way out of his predicament, and that's what made his success at the end feel so well-earned. Here, I suspect that hearing intelligible words come through on Santa's Little Helper's end was meant to be the payoff in of itself; how we got there is regarded as secondary.
Still, the graduation ceremony has room for a classic Homer moment, with his slow, grudging clap gradually giving way into a genuinely rapturous one, as he comes to terms with the fact that, deep down, he's glad to see the dog succeed. The part with the dogs casting off their chains like mortarboards is an equally nice touch. And then, the really subversive element comes with the Animal House-inspired epilogue, as a series of onscreen titles fill us in on what later became of the Canine College graduates. As it turns out, their futures weren't so rosy - Buddy the terrier (one of the three dogs seen with Sam) ran away from home, Martin's Shar Pei Lao-Tzu possibly died after eating a poisonous toad, and Santa's Little Helper continued his anti-social streak by biting the one hand that helped him through this entire ordeal. It's an admittedly unsettling note on which to end our story, with its insinuation that none of these dogs really benefited from that rigorous training, and that their feral leanings, possibly augmented by the hardships they endured at the Canine College, still found ways of acting itself out. That feel-good sentiment of overcoming the odds doesn't quite make it past the final hurdle, and it's in effect Homer who has the last laugh.
[1] Those are toxic to dogs! Seriously, since becoming a dog owner, I'm shocked to discover just how many things are.
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