Grade School Confidential (aka Where Does The Time Go?)

 

I'm continuing in my mission to get more of Season 8 covered before 2023 is through - and for now, no, I won't be focussing on any of the really obvious heavy-hitters. I promise you, I'll get round to "You Only Move Twice" and "Homer's Enemy" eventually, but Season 8 being such an underrated season in general, I think it's only appropriate that I rivet my efforts upon making the case for the more underrated episodes. Hence this look at "Grade School Confidential" (episode 4F09), which debuted on April 6th 1997, Springfield's classic tale of love and licentiousness from inside the school janitor's closet. This is yet another episode that I think is all too often overlooked, in terms of its narrative richness and character building; at the same time, there is something about the resolution that frankly bugs me and that I think warrants discussion with regard to the assumptions behind it, so there's your heads-up.

"Grade School Confidential" is in some respects a very characteristic specimen of the Oakley-Weinstein era, while in others it feels like a total outlier. It continues the showrunners' interest, initiated in the previous season's "Homer The Smithers", in wanting to create stories that focused more on the private lives of peripheral characters - as with that episode, a member of the Simpsons family is caught up in the middle of the proceedings, yet his stakes are not where the narrative interest lies. It was during this period that the series seemed to have really acquired the confidence to take advantage of its diverse supporting cast, and the assorted narrative possibilities they suggested ("22 Short Films About Springfield" was structured on the premise, however facetious, that any one of the townspeople could have been the star, in their own alternate reality sitcom), with Season 8 devoting multiple episodes to exploring hitherto unknown regions of our tertiary line-up, delving into who they were and what made them tick outside of what they represented to the title clan. Not all of these were entirely successful (the backstory ascribed to Ned Flanders in "Hurricane Neddy" remains, at best, a divisive one), but others definitely left the Simpsons universe feeling like a richer, better-rounded place. We had glimpses into Kirk and Luann's troubled home life, into an especially prickly branch of Sideshow Bob's family tree, and a deluge of development for Moe following years in which he'd only had one real focal episode. And this wonderful installment, in which Skinner and Edna, two long-term card-carrying members of Springfield's Lonely Hearts Club, discover that the solution to their mutual predicament might have been right there under their noses this entire time. Here's the sense in which "Grade School Confidential" seems to break from the general mood of Season 8 - it is fundamentally an optimistic episode that celebrates the possibility of a new beginning, a quality that makes it the philosophical opposite of both "A Milhouse Divided" (which acknowledges the necessity for change, but through the breakdown of a relationship) and "Brother From Another Series" (which teases the possibility that Bob might actually escape his vicious cycle of release and relapse, only to cruelly snatch it away from him at the end). Season 8 was an intelligent and adventurous series that knew how to play around with its own formula, but a word that I don't think many would use to describe it, on the whole, is "sincere". This was a time when the series had gotten a whole lot more snarky and cynical about its own ongoing existence, and a great chunk of the episodes seemed to have been spawned from places of unrelenting sardonicism, or at least have quotation marks around them. At its most extreme, this resulted in some of the series' most notoriously dark developments ("Frank Grimes, or Grimey as he liked to be called..."), while even some of the more unassuming premises, which feel like they could have fit comfortably into earlier seasons, such as "My Sister, My Sitter", venture into considerably meaner-spirited territory than one could picture from the show's younger days. I've made it known that Season 8 is my personal favourite, but I do have to admit that it doesn't always make for great comfort viewing.

Stemming that tide is "Grade School Confidential", which has an earnestness that quite sneaks up on you. Rachel Puldio's script is sharp, but sensitive. It seems genuinely interested in exploring the essences of adult loneliness and getting us genuinely invested in how Skinner and Edna each answer a need in the other that they had all but given up hope of being fulfilled. In that sense it feels like a throwback to the earlier, more grounded seasons that tended to favour understated melancholy amid the chuckles, and to the specific episodes that established the pair as respectively lost and abandoned in their yearning for a little intimate human company - namely, Season 2's "Principal Charming" and Season 3's "Bart The Lover". And yet it opens with a distinct air of world-weariness, of the kind that hung heavily over the latter half of Oakley and Weinstein's era. The jadedness and disappointment that forms the basis of Skinner and Krabby's early rapport springs from a somewhat gentler-tempered version of the same anxieties that birthed such acts of all-out desperation as Poochie the dog and The Love-Matic Grampa. These are characters who've been stuck in the same set roles and routine for so long (and back in 1997, eight years felt like an eternity in cartoon sitcom time) that the prospect of having to keep going indefinitely seems unbearable. The beginning of "Grade School Confidential" establishes time as our preliminary antagonist, as indicated in Martin's announcement that he'll be holding a lavish birthday party this coming weekend, a reminder of both the relentless march of time and of the emptiness and inertia that seems to characterise all of his associates' lives, regardless of their age (we suspect that most of the party attendants are there not because they care about ushering in yet another trip around the sun with Martin, but because none of them have anything better to do on a Saturday). Martin has only a minor role in this episode, but it's interesting nevertheless to go back and compare it to his input in "Bart Gets an F", where he seemed to represent the one golden cause for optimism amid Edna's waning enthusiasm for her educational career. Remember how thoroughly she dug his presentation on Ernest Hemingway? Come Season 8, and Edna's allegiances seem to have shifted. Her status as an authority figure might put her at odds with Bart, but we sense that she feels more sympathy for his position than she'd perhaps let on. She's just as fed up with the system, and with the feeling that she isn't moving anywhere in life, and each day within school grounds represents another form of personal entrapment for her, Martin included. Her response to this stagnation, up until now, has been to try getting as close to her unfulfilled dreams as humanly possible, through a hobby that involves writing to glamorous night clubs and asking them nicely to send her promotional match-books. So it's a tremendous irony that her liberation should arrive not from the glitzy club lifestyle she'd aspired to be a part of, however vicariously, but from the very inertia she'd been trying to transcend. Up until Martin's party, Skinner himself was just a part of the stagnation, his intercom interjections regarding how the bake sale to raise money for the car wash had been cancelled due to confusion virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the background drone.

Season 8 in general felt like the work of a creative team who'd been at this game for enough years to wonder if there were any genuine surprises still lurking on the horizon. Expended time is a theme that resonates all throughout "Grade School Confidential", most explicitly advertised in Edna's line, "Where does the time go?", but here it comes not so much from a place of arch sardonicism than a place of naked, authentically poignant regret. It plays upon a powerful sense sense of lost time, and the pained acknowledgement that things didn't work out as perhaps they should have done. This suggests a very different, more wistful side to this season's ongoing fixation on the show's mortality - that, far from scraping the barrel for fresh ideas, there was actually a whole lot more the team wished they could have accomplished with the series, but they were at the point now where things seemed to have already run their course and the window would soon be closing. What's heartening about the episode is that it actually yields a positive solution, and what feels like a genuinely sincere message about how it's never too late, no matter how far along you are in life, to embark on something new and life-changing. Skinner and Edna find love and companionship in sources that already seemed so tediously familiar they had scarcely even registered until now. Part of the episode's emphasis on lost time is rooted in the recognition that these characters spent eight whole seasons in a close proximity to one another, so why on earth didn't they attempt to make a deeper connection sooner? Was the answer to their problems really that glaringly obvious all along? Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood imply as much in I Can't Believe It's An Unofficial Simpsons Guide, when they credit the episode with "bring[ing] to fruition one of the series' longest running gags: Edna and Seymour's mutual attraction." I was inclined to question Martyn and Wood there (as often I do), because I'm not convinced this actually was one of the series' longest running gags. So far as I can tell, the only prior reference to their possibly becoming an item was in "Bart The Lover", where Bart cites Skinner as a potential suitor for Edna, only for her to shoot down the suggestion with the bitter postulation that, "Let's just say his mommy won't let him out to play!" But maybe Martyn and Wood did pick up on something legitimately there - according to the DVD commentary for "Grade School Confidential", it was an idea the series had been noodling around with since the days when Al Jean and Mike Reiss were showrunners. "Gaping unexplored plot avenue" might be a more accurate way of phrasing it. And I suspect the reason why a prospective Seymour/Edna romance never got off the ground during Jean and Reiss's run is because it was also around this time that the writers settled upon the characterisation of Skinner as a stifled mommy's boy, and this ended up taking precedent over giving the guy a love life (although Agnes was established as a character all the way back in Season 1, in "The Crepes of Wrath", she wasn't immediately cemented as having such a domineering hold on Skinner's life; in fact, she was completely absent from "Principal Charming" and Skinner's ill-fated pursuit of Patty). So Edna wasn't making excuses - it was indeed his mother who was keeping them apart.

More's the pity, because Skinner and Edna do make such a natural couple; their dynamic clicks straight off the bat, in a way that feels so honest and genuine. It's not hard to comprehend why these characters would be drawn to one another. There's a great deal they have in common; they're both intelligent, vulnerable people who've grown bored with their careers in education, and with the hands life has dealt them in general, and both of them hunger for a little human connection. They're also polar opposites right where it counts - Skinner is an innocent (how much of an innocent we will not learn until the episode's end), yet to truly discover all that he's capable of, while Edna has been around the block a few times and thinks she's seen it all. Each has a lot to bring in terms of refreshing and broadening the other's perspective. One of the episode's most heartfelt moments is when Skinner pays Edna the highest compliment he possibly can, in assuring her that she's nothing like the mother whose toxic influence he'd never imagined he could ever transcend: "I always thought I'd fall for a woman just like Mother, even though I didn't want to. And now that I haven't, I've discovered what true happiness can be."

I give additional credit to "Grade School Confidential" for being a rare episode to extend its middle finger to the status quo and have its developments stick, in spite of going through all the motions of pretending to reach for the reset button near the end. Edna and Skinner play a trick on Bart, and by extension the viewer, in the final minute when they tell him they've decided to break off their relationship. Once Bart has left the building, they return to their favourite make out spot, inside the janitor's closet, and laugh about the child's gullibility. This wasn't the first time a Season 8 episode would pull one of these fake-out "We're going to restore the status quo - PSYCH, actually, we're not!" endings - see also "A Milhouse Divided", which looks momentarily as if it might rescind Kirk and Luann's divorce, only to brusquely double down on it right before the credits. Here, though, there's an unmitigated sense of triumph in the sleight of hand. Releasing Bart from his privilege/obligation as the couple's confidante is indicative of Skinner and Edna's desire to move on from the missteps made throughout this episode, but their commitment to one another is not one of them; they come out renewed in their mutual affections. Although the viewer is initially tricked alongside Bart, they are then made complicit in the revelation that Skinner and Edna's relationship will persevere; it serves as a confirmation that Skinner and Edna have successfully taken back their privacy, but also a little knowing wink to the viewer that there is something beautifully, radically subversive in the acknowledgement that these characters make a good couple and yes, they should be allowed to keep what they've gained for the foreseeable future. And so they did. It all ended on an absolute bummer, with Edna ditching Seymour and marrying Ned Flanders, shortly before Marcia Wallace's death in 2013 necessitated her character's sudden removal from the series, off-screen. The whole Nedna thread reached a dead end before it had even started, accomplishing little more than the unfortunate feat of making Ned a widower twice over (and if Edna hadn't married Ned, then would they have gone so far as to kill her off in-universe? Could they have gotten away with having her quietly fade out of the picture, as they did with Phil Hartman's characters?). But for now, let's just focus on the relationship's hopeful beginnings. Unambiguously happy endings were seriously something of a rarity in Season 8, so we should enjoy the moment instead of dwelling excessively on what's ahead.

At first, Skinner and Edna feel bound by the obligation to keep their relationship a secret. Despite being previously cited as the single biggest obstacle to a relationship with Skinner, Agnes is actually less of a factor in this than you might expect. She interferes with Skinner's early attempts to strike up a conversation with Edna, and Skinner later has Bart distract her as he goes on a date with Edna, but she has no role at all to play in the third act conflict - whether Skinner would be able to stand up to his mother specifically for Edna is not tested. The bigger issue is Skinner and Edna's fear that the outside world would judge their workplace-based romance as a conflict of interest (the complication being that Skinner is technically Edna's superior). The first hurdle they encounter is in the discovery that Bart witnessed them kissing at Martin's party, and is only too gleeful to have dirt on two of his regular adversaries; they convince him to keep his mouth shut in exchange for switching his permanent record with Milhouse's, and use him as a go-between in facilitating their assorted liaisons. As the romance between our two love birds blossoms, they become so wrapped up in themselves that they begin to take advantage of Bart's complicity, eventually prompting him to expose their secret to the entire school. From there, things spiral into the territory of the uncontrollable scandal; several children return home with stories implying the teacher and principal were outright fucking in the janitor's closet, resulting in such furore that Chalmers moves to fire them both. Bart, regretting his part in this outcome, reaffirms himself as an ally to Skinner and Edna, convincing them to barricade themselves inside the school in protest of both the loss of their jobs and the town's negative reaction to their relationship. Other than cooking up sufficient media interest in the matter, Bart doesn't prove massively essential in how the resolution plays out, but it's nice that he stands beside Skinner and Edna throughout their protest, in a show of solidarity. Mostly, though, it's the solidarity Skinner has found in Edna that gives him the backbone to rebel against the judgement of Springfield at large. This does not come naturally to Skinner, something he highlights early on when he comments that if there's one lesson life has taught him repeatedly, it's to know when he's beaten. The problem, as Bart explicitly points out, is that Skinner has grown accustomed to the idea that he's only capable of following orders, be it from his mother, the army or Chalmers. His devotion to Edna is what unlocks his greatest untapped potential of all, in revealing to him that he does have it in him to be defiant. It builds to an ending that is both tender and heartfelt and also a little questionable. And by "a little questionable", I of course mean that it might be considered aphobic AF.

I'm referring to the fact that Skinner is ultimately able to dispel the angry mob by publicly revealing himself to be a virgin in his mid-40s; the townspeople find this so shockingly embarrassing that they agree Skinner wouldn't own up to it falsely and beat an awkward retreat. In narrative terms, it's an elegant way of resolving our conflict and setting Skinner and Edna free from the glare of public salacity. Outside of universe, the implications of this ending do leave us with a lot to unpack - the main point of contention being that it rests on an assumption that's honestly degrading to asexuals; this idea that if you haven't taken an active interest in sex by a certain age, then there's something wrong with you (I am not suggesting that asexuals are invariably virgins, mind, just that the ending positions sex as something that adults should be invariably into). I think Erik Adams does a wonderfully succinct job, in his review on The AV Club, of encapsulating both what's lovely and what's potentially problematic about the ending when he observes that, "It quells the furor of the Helen Lovejoys in the crowd, but it also displays Seymour’s devotion to Edna. He cares so much about her, he’s willing to sacrifice whatever remains of his dignity." My question here is why, exactly, is Skinner's dignity being sacrificed? Is it because he was forced to go public with information about his personal life that was frankly never the townspeople's business, and that would naturally be degrading to anyone's privacy? Or are we expected to agree with Chalmers' assessment that virginity is not a quality any self-respecting adult would consider acceptable or aspirational? (I mean, Chalmers is obviously wrong - even putting aside asexuality, there are also people for whom sexual abstinence would be a requirement for religious/vocational reasons.) On the one hand, the revelation that Skinner is a virgin doesn't feel like a cheat, nor a betrayal of his character (which, you know, is more than we can say for a certain other Skinny revelation that wasn't far on the horizon). It fits in perfectly with the observation made by Edna at the start of the episode, when she notes that there's an innocence about the man that's rather charming. At his heart, Skinner is fundamentally a child; his adult life has been so dominated by his mother that he's never had the opportunity for physical intimacy with another individual. It is, nevertheless, perhaps a little disappointing that Pulido's script, for all of its intelligence and sensitivity, would boil down to an assumption as narrow-minded as that of the middle-aged virgin as a figure immediately inviting judgement and derision, as opposed to someone who might just never have been interested in sex in the first place. The obvious counterpoint is that Skinner's sexual preferences are not intended to be representative of asexuality, that he clearly does feel sexual attraction to Edna and that "Grade School Confidential" is all about his journey in slowly being able to open up and discover a part of himself that, up until now, he hasn't had the space or confidence to explore. That, on its own terms, is a beautiful bit of character progression for Skinner. But arguably, it also reinforces another common prejudice against asexuals - that they are repressed individuals who could be brought around to sexual attraction if they simply met the "right" person. Whichever way you slice it, sex is upheld as the ultimate end-goal of adult development - we are given reason to believe that Skinner will lose his virginity that very night (the sound of the champagne bottle popping is about as subtle a metaphor as the tunnel-bound train at the end of North By Northwest), and while that's great in terms of his relationship with Edna, it also eradicates his laudable non-conformity in being an adult virgin, and willing to admit to it.

Don't get me wrong, though. "Grade School Confidential" is still one of my favourite episodes of Season 8, and I want to be very clear that my talk of the possible aphobic assumptions therein do not represent any efforts on my part to get the episode cancelled or whatnot. I should also emphasise that I don't believe The Simpsons to be any worse than most other media when it comes to a lack of acknowledgement or validation given to asexuality. It's simply a discussion I've been wanting to have for a while now, particularly since I think there is a broader debate to be had specifically regarding the Simpsons' relationship with the issue. There is at least one other Simpsons episode that could be seen as harboring aphobic undertones, albeit mostly retroactively in its case, and that would be "Principal Charming", the episode that first explored Skinner's non-existent love life. Here, it isn't Skinner's sexual leanings that are the point of interest, but Patty Bouvier's - this episode revolves around her considering a possible long-term relationship with Skinner, but ultimately rejecting him out of loyalty to her twin sister. Patty would later come out as a lesbian, in Season 16's "There's Something About Marrying", and fans often credit "Principal Charming" with being the first episode to properly hint at this, by establishing her lack of sexual interest in men. The thing is, "Principal Charming" doesn't actually indicate that Patty has any sexual interest in women, either - in Homer's words, she "doesn't like to be...touched", which on its own terms would strike me as more suggestive of asexuality - and this is where the retroactive aphobia enters in. The absence of interest in the opposite sex is automatically taken to be indicative of interest in the same sex, as opposed to the possibility of a lack of sexual interest, period. And since this outlook was verified in subsequent episodes, it reinforces the prejudice that asexuality should be seen as a sign of repression, as opposed to being a valid sexual preference and identity in itself. There were certainly a number of positives in Patty's lesbianism becoming canon, not least that lesbians gained additional representation through the character (of course, the specific episode in which she explicitly outs herself does have its own particular problem with transphobia, but I won't be getting into that today). But there is also a negative side, in that asexuals lost out on some potential representation, particularly given that asexuality is still so poorly represented in media in general. If you asked me to name a fictional character who was unequivocally asexual, I would honestly struggle - I had the titular character from the 1984 film Birdy pegged as a possible asexual, but it took some headcannoning on my part (and besides, I'm not sure you could describe him as as such, based on some of the things he gets up to in William Wharton's novel). Otherwise, I don't have much else I can offer.

But I digress. On balance, I come away with the feeling that "Grade School Confidential" is actually the less aphobic of the two, despite being the episode in which aphobic sentiments play an explicit role in the story's resolution. It comes down to the fact that, fundamentally, the story is on Skinner's side. Although Skinner is initially hesitant to admit to his virginity, when he does, he does so with total confidence, and with no visible shame on his part. He's aware that the townspeople are going to form their own judgements, but he's decided he can rise above it. Afterwards (Nelson's reaction notwithstanding), the embarrassment is entirely with the townspeople, who are basically getting their own salacious hypocrisies directed back at them. Their moral outcry against the scandal is, plainly, rooted in fascination - the discovery that there was never, in fact, any salacious detail to be had exposes their outrage for the voyeuristic lechery that it was. "That was more than I wanted to know" grumbles Lenny as he walks away - the implication that he finds Skinner's profession of virginity to be more distasteful than those allegations of "making babies" really speaks more of his licentious mindset, and all of Springfield's, than it does any actual indignity in Skinner being a virgin. The townspeople are the ones at fault, and they are left to stew in their own discomfort while Skinner and Edna are left in peace, and with the freedom to truly be themselves. We do still need to weigh this up against the fact that Skinner is implied to lose his virginity at the end, thus upholding the assumption that it is inherently something an adult should aspire to leave behind eventually. But the one thing Skinner does retain is his dignity - he simply forces the mob to confront its own messed-up thinking, and banishes them from the school grounds.

As a side-note, it's a bit odd that Homer and Marge just walk away with the crowd at the end. You'd think they would have hung around to get their son back. Instead, they leave Bart to find his own way home, the deadbeats.

Sky 1 edit alert!: Another victim of Sky 1's editing practices in the 90s was the moment where the townspeople hysterically pile on their accusations before Edna and Skinner (Dr Hibbert: "My child told me you two were having sex in the school janitor's closet!" Chief Wiggum: "You know, making babies?" Mr Prince: "Yes, illicit sex!" Helen Lovejoy: "Doing IT! IT! IT!" Sideshow Mel: "Sordid public sexual congress!"). Santa's Little Helper is also seen making off with Skinner's hot dog bomb, in what I presume is intended to be yet another highly conspicuous sexual metaphor. To be totally fair to Sky, this moment wasn't strictly necessary from a narrative standpoint - Maude Flanders' accusation about S-E-X in front of the C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N, which was retained (presumably because it was a little less blunt than the others), is all that's needed to coherently establish, to Skinner and Edna, what the town presumes to have been going on. But from a thematic standpoint, it is a bit of a loss, since it drives home the point about the townspeople being the truly salacious and sex-obsessed ones, and their outcry being so mindless and hollow. I am somewhat sorry that the 12-year-old me missed out on Mel's sexual congress tirade, but mainly just relieved that Krusty's "Sex Cauldron" bit survived the cut. Krusty and Maude make such a fabulous comedic dyad, who knew?

Oh, and here seems as good a place as any for a disclaimer about a piece I wrote nearly six years ago (where does the time go?), regarding a throwaway gag from this very episode. Remember this one, when I was trying to figure out if there was any deeper meaning to Chalmers' query about whether they actually filmed that movie in Atlanta? A while ago, in 2020, Bill Oakley told me on Twitter that the movie in question "definitely wasn't The Big Chill" - I wasn't inclined to save the tweet at the time, and besides I think that Oakley got his Twitter account nuked anyway amid some of the recent insanity (I'm finding it kind of hard to keep a pace of what's going on over there), but I thought it only right and proper that I acknowledge that he did indeed say that. That piece can continue to stand, however, as a testament to the absolute rabbit holes I can send myself down sometimes.

Two Weeks Vacation (aka Do Ya Need A Break From Modern Livin'?)

Somewhere within my family's vast collection of abysmal-quality VHS recordings from the late 1980s, there lurked a broadcast of the 1952 Disney short Two Weeks Vacation. As a child, I found myself drawn to this recording over and over, in part because the narrative cut-off point, where Goofy, in the midst of his quest for a fortnight's respite from the demands of the 9 to 5, settles down into a secluded motel bed, only to have the headlights of an approaching train blaring directly into his eyeballs, seemed such a baffling and arbitrary place to wrap things up. The appearance of the train, never explicitly explained with the dialogue, unnerved me, but what unnerved me still was the realisation that Goofy had never gotten anywhere with his travels. He had clearly taken the wrong turning somewhere or other, and having wandered too far down his precarious path, the film seemed content to leave him there. You see, the title of the short is actually a lie. The time frame is a little nebulous, but the bulk of the story appears to take place across a period of roughly 24 hours, not the promised two weeks. More crucially still, no vacation ever materialises. The effect of the short very much hinges on the discrepancy between what you're sold and what you're actually stuck with.

I later discovered that I had been deceived in quite another way. Unbeknownst to me as a child, the broadcast I had on tape had severely truncated the short, shaving off the entire last minute of the narrative (which I'm going to assume happened out of time constraints as opposed to anything within that final minute being considered objectionable). I never caught another TV broadcast of this short, so for years I was none the wiser. It wasn't until The Complete Goofy was released on DVD in the early 00s that I had the opportunity to see how it actually ended; it came as something of a revelation to discover that the scenario ran on for an additional 60 seconds, rounding things off on what felt like a more obvious punchline, but offering little additional closure in narrative terms. Still Goofy did not get his vacation. Not really. The title of the short remained as vexing as ever.

Directed by Jack Kinney, Two Weeks Vacation occurred toward the end of Goofy's initial run of theatrical outings, at the point where he had long abandoned his role as a comic foil to Mickey and/or Donald, and was living under the assumed identity of "George Geef", an everyman (everydog?) having to navigate his way through the trails and tribulation of mid-century suburbia (with those shorts touching on Geef's misadventures in parenting providing the basis for the character's redefining as a modern single father some four decades later, with the arrival of Goof Troop and its feature-length sequel A Goofy Movie). Two Weeks Vacation follows the familiar formula, the humor dependent on the contrast between the string of physical mishaps Goofy endures and the voice-over narration (here supplied by Alan Reed), which puts an incongruously buoyant spin on each and every calamity. It envisions Goofy (aka George, voice of Pinto Colvig) as an office worker, contributing fifty weeks per year to the capitalist grind in the beholden knowledge that he's been allocated two weeks in which to ditch the office walls and get back to nature. The central gag being that the vacation itself never gets underway, as Goofy gets bogged down with the insurmountable task of getting there; once he's traded in civilisation for the lure of the open road, he finds himself upon the fast-track to nowhere. There isn't a scrap of vacation to be had out there for the put upon everydog.

I'd dare suggest that Two Weeks Vacation would make ideal companion viewing to Steven Spielberg's Duel, in that it also deals with the perils of leaving the (relative) order of the urban world and venturing out into the vast unknown, which operates according to a vastly different set of rules. Naturally, the results are more comic in tone than in Spielberg's film; in place of a hulking great truck, Goofy finds a recurring nemesis in the form of a motorist with a camper trailer hitched to their vehicle, who seems entirely indifferent to everything going on around them and unleashes a deluge of unending inconsiderateness Goofy's way. The trailer becomes an omnipresent menace, its obstructive form effectively indistinct from the hands that keep it in motion (we see the driver, but never get as up close and personal with him as we do the great hindrance at his rear). Compared to Duel, where the truck, with its mostly invisible driver and their seeming lack of a motive for the all-out war they declare on Dennis Weaver's character, embodies the nature of the open landscape at its most frighteningly unknowable (at least to the city dweller who has wandered too far outside their comfort zone), the trailer's owners (it becomes apparent that, in addition the driver, there's actually a whole multitude of them hanging out within the trailer itself) potentially serve as a warped shadow to Goofy's own intentions. They are, presumably, fellow holiday-makers, their fault being that they are inclined to make themselves a little too at home in a land that they are merely passing through. It is unclear if their ill-mannered habits constitute an overspilling of the city's excesses, as the landscape is swallowed up by crass tourists for their own recreational use, or a reflection of the looser morals of the road. At any rate, we're given no reason to believe that the archetypes who regularly reside there are any more benevolent. The roadside is populated by types who range from the exploitative (the mechanic who fleeces Goofy for a new motor, before abandoning him to take a vacation of his own, although it is hard to say if this is done out of crookedness or incompetence) to the hostile (the eloquently-spoken drifter who curtly refuses Goofy's offer of a ride when his vehicle fails to meet his exacting standards) to the downright sinister (the unseen motel owner, who arguably makes the short as pertinent companion viewing to Psycho as it to Duel). Even nature itself appears to conspire against Goofy in one scene, a rain cloud parking itself directly above his vehicle so as to ensure that our hero can't enjoy even a little time basking in the sun while immobilised by a stop sign.

The interlude at the motel was always the segment of the short I found most fascinating, since it's here that Two Weeks Vacation veers closest toward the territory of horror and we get our clearest glimpse of the haunted underbelly of the ostensibly carefree road. As darkness sets in, Goofy faces a fresh challenge in locating a refuge for the night, and his status as an outside attempting to fit into an unwelcoming and treacherous domain becomes all the more pronounced. Goofy is now alone on an all-lit and abandoned road, where nary a sign of life is stirring, except for - at the most inopportune moment - his old nemesis the trailer owner. By sheer fluke, he ends up outside a motel, just slightly off the beaten track, with a vacant cabin, but soon discovers that it conceals an unpalatable secret...one that, in practice, amounts to little more than yet another mundane travel inconvenience, but that plays out as its own miniature nightmare. As Goofy attempts to settle, he discovers that the motel is situated right beside a railroad track - apparently at a turning, so that the train initially appears to be headed directly for him, before swerving and causing the cabin to vibrate so violently that Goofy is given no choice but to bail out. (Here, a small plot hole - Goofy had run out of gas before arriving at the motel, so it's never explained how he manages to get out.) There is something unsettling about this whole set-up - the inspired sight gag in which the cabin's picturesque front is revealed to be a fake, obscuring the more decrepit building right behind it, works on two levels, comically puncturing through the assumption of the roadside venue as a place of hospitality for the traveller, and having the distinct aura of a trap, of something more sinister stirring behind the romance. When Goofy arrives at the motel, nobody answers the door, with Goofy finding his own way into the cabin; the motel seems utterly deserted, the powers that operate it non-existent. The looming train that immediately shatters Goofy's prospects of a peaceful night's sleep is a nocturnal force that reveals itself only when the world is at its darkest and Goofy at his most isolated and vulnerable. Like the truck from Duel it is a raging beast stalking across its natural habitat, as seemingly devoid of human (or anthropomorphic canine) agency. Itself a mode of transport, the train represents an ostensible connection between two ports of call, yet once we've slipped into that ominous void in between there is an overwhelming sense of detachment from wherever we came from and wherever we thought we were going (at this point, Goofy's intended destination barely seems to matter any more, as his journey devolves into a case of navigating from one horror to the next). The train, much like everything else out here, is another force chugging aggressively onward, relentless in its opposition to us ever finding our way back out from the void.

As to whether Goofy ever finds his way back out from the void, I would say that he only marginally succeeds. Two Weeks Vacation does not resolve with the ending we'd be primed to expect, ie: a cyclic one, in which Goofy makes it back to the office with a newfound appreciation for the order and formality of the fifty working weeks ahead. Instead, much like Weaver's character from Duel, Goofy is left stranded in the hostile beyond, the restoration of the familiar never coming, although perhaps by the end he has (somewhat) made his peace with this. Following his stopover at the motel, Goofy gets in one last showdown with the trailer; its occupants are indulging in some kind of wild party, and nearly get Goofy killed in a manner reminiscent of one of the truck driver's tactics in Duel. When Goofy manages to overtake the trailer, he discovers that the driver has absconded (although how is not exactly clear, given that he was glimpsed in a preceding overhead shot), allowing the trailer to completely subsume his identity. Through another sheer accident, Goofy ends up taking a hold of the absent driver's wheel, giving him the chance to grapple physically with the omnipresent and exert some degree of personal control over the all-out chaos around him - at which point the law, whose presence seems immediately out of place in this domain, chooses to rear its head. For Goofy, this represents a victory of sorts - up until now, a lawlessness has pervaded the open road, and just to reconnect with law and order comes as a relief, even if he finds himself on the wrong side of it. Last seen in a police cell, Goofy becomes boxed in once more, and he accepts this as as close as he's ever going to get to a proper vacation. Enclosure is equated with security, and maybe that's substitute enough for the office building from whence we strayed. The message that the real refuge is to be found in containment is present after all.

Bart's Comet (aka May We All Be Horribly Crushed From Above Somehow)

"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".

Lick It and Stick It: Stuff Not Appearing In This Factory

 

Let's talk about one of the most beguiling mysteries of the 2005 adaptation of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory - a small moment, excised from the theatrical cut, where Mike Teavee apparently succumbs to the temptation to indulge a sweet tooth that, so far as the rest of the film is concerned, he doesn't actually have. This would have occurred during the boat ride down the chocolate river, which carries the tour (minus the Gloops) from the Chocolate Room to the Inventing Room. The equivalent sequence in the 1971 adaptation is, indisputably, that picture's most infamous, for the real WTF moment where they go through the tunnel and the group is bombarded with a barrage of unsettling visual non-sequiturs - including, most disturbingly, footage of a chicken being decapitated. Minus this particular detail (not present in Dahl's novel), the 2005 film was always destined to seem a trifle tame by comparison (although it is still a discomforting sequence to watch, by virtue of just how genuinely stressed out most of the passengers look during the ride's more turbulent stretches) but it did offer up something that was, in its own way, just as baffling, albeit much lower-key in nature. It seems that originally, as the Buckets were taking their seats, there was a moment where Wonka catches Mike licking the side of the boat and tells him to stop on the grounds that he'll make it sticky. While this didn't see the light of day in the cut that ultimately made it to cinemas, it was included in one of the film's TV spots, preserving Mike's moment of personal compromise for all eternity. He got down on his hands and put his tongue to the sugar-coated enticements that surrounded him. No, Mike '05, no, you're better than that. After I exalted you for your steadfast non-comformity in not buying into this entire notion that the consumption of candy is the one and only path to righteousness, you just had to sneakily submit and see what all the fuss was about? One solitary instance of ephemeral capitulation - alright, I guess we can overlook that.

Mike's boat-licking practices might not seem quite so perplexing when you consider that this specific action was lifted directly from Dahl's novel, as was Wonka's response. But then book Mike never assumed such an outspoken stance against Wonka's product, and he had more of an impulsive, hyperactive personality all-round, something that Mike '05 typically only demonstrates when he gets really heated. Here, it seems an oddly out of character moment to have ever incorporated. On the one hand, it is but another manifestation of the ongoing animosity between Mike and Wonka, and on that level it's appropriate. On the other hand, doesn't it kind of fly in the face of Mike's entire deal about not liking candy? To be totally fair, chocolate is the only candy product for which Mike explicitly professes to feel aversion; he technically never says anything about disliking boiled sweets, which (as per the novel) the boat was sculpted from. But the film makes it clear enough that he doesn't think much of Wonka's tooth-rotting junk in general - he calls candy a waste of time, and he doesn't find anything he's inclined to sample in the Chocolate Room, preferring to stomp repeatedly on a syrup-filled pumpkin. Despite surface impressions, it's really not the case that Mike '05 spends the entirety of the tour in a state of perpetual emotional detachment, refusing to get into the spirit of things; very occasionally, he does show flashes of awe and curiosity (such as when the tour passes over Fudge Mountain). He just isn't won over in the long-term. The bottom line with Mike is that he fundamentally doesn't see any use for candy, and that's how you can tell that his childhood essence is all broken and corrupted to the core. Or you know, maybe Mike is just wired differently, and there was seriously never anything wrong with that.

Nonetheless, he apparently couldn't resist the urge to lean over and put his tongue to the factory boat. So what are we to make of that? Is it some lingering, repressed sliver of childhood purity (as the film would have it) momentarily bubbling its way to the surface? Or was he just testing to see if the boat was, like most other items encountered in the Chocolate Room, a meticulously crafted sugar product? It's hard to say, without knowing if there was ever any additional context given. For all we know, the moment was cut because it was deemed inconsistent with Mike's characterisation elsewhere in the narrative. In addition, I would note that there's never any dialogue in the 2005 film explicitly establishing that the boat is made of candy - so unless this was also cut, it possibly just looked like Mike decided to randomly taste-test the side of a regular (if unusually pink) vessel.

Actually, this isn't the only thing going on in that TV spot that puzzles me. There's quite a bit of emphasis on the rivalry between Violet and Veruca, and while most of this was cobbled together from the scene where they ostensibly agree to become the best of friends, also included is a moment where Veruca appears to jerk Violet's hand into...something or other (admittedly, I can't find a high quality upload of this spot, so I can't say with absolute certainty what's happening there). This wasn't derived from anything in the final cut, where things never got any cattier than the distinct air of schadenfreude emitting from Veruca during Violet's blueberry experience. (The Violet/Veruca rivalry is, incidentally, one of these interesting adaptational traditions that wasn't even hinted at in the book but has been incorporated into just about every interpretation going forward - we see it in the 1971 film, the 2005 film and the 2013 stage musical. As with the specific nationalities ascribed the ticket winners, it's hard to say if that's a testament to the influence of the 1971 film or because it just seems so perfectly logical that these two girls would be unable to stand one another the instant they make eye contact.) I note that likewise, in the theatrical cut, they don't hold hands during their feigned profession of friendship (rather, they link arms), implying that this particular footage came from an alternate version or a separate moment of interaction that was excised altogether. And while Violet and Veruca basically ignore one another during the entire episode in Chocolate Room, there suddenly seems to be renewed tension brewing between them in the Inventing Room, making me wonder if something more happened that we didn't get to see. If so, then I have a hunch it would have occurred right after the moment where Violet likens the gobstoppers to chewing gum and Wonka rebuffs her comparison, prompting Ms Beauregarde to give Violet this disapproving look indicating that she may have damaged her prospects of winning the grand prize. All the while, Veruca is seen shooting Violet these intent sideways glances, as though she's planning something, before she and Violet walk off together. The two of them are then seen regarding one another with mutual leeriness, as Wonka is weirding Mike out with his cringy attempt at beatnik speak. I can certainly buy that there was some additional nastiness that went down in between.

Alas, to my knowledge, no home media release to date has brought clarity to either one of these mysteries. There were a small number of scenes (emphasis on small) deleted from the theatrical version that were later restored for the Blu-ray release, giving us an extended cut of sorts (clocking in at about 30 seconds longer than the original), but Mike's boat-licking and Vercua and Violet's physical altercation were forced to remain on the cutting room floor. Here's what the Blu-ray did see fit to dredge up from obscurity-ville:

• An exchange between Mr Teavee and Mr Salt as the tour is commencing ("Is it just me or does Wonka seem a few quarters short of a buck?" "I'm sorry, I don't speak American."). No idea why this was ever removed - it's a funny snippet of dialogue, Godley and Fox's delivery is great and it's nice to have some proper verbal interaction between the parents, something the film could have made a whole lot more of. I've previously accused the Burton film of lacking fun, and while that's true for a lot of the pivotal set-pieces, where I reckon it does succeed is in the smaller moments of character interaction and unspoken tensions between its supporting cast - something you really want to play into in a story such this, which hinges on bringing together this motley ensemble of archetypes (for my money, the most authentically humorous moment is when the winners are waiting outside the factory gates and the bad nut clans are all uneasily sizing one another up). Mr Salt being a highly successful businessman, I find it hard to believe that he doesn't have some basic understanding of international currency (unless he's just unfamiliar with that metaphor in general?), so I guess the implication is that he's brushing Mr Teavee off because he considers himself above the Coloradan geography teacher. Appropriate, since it foreshadows how Mr Teavee's offspring will be regarded by Wonka for the upcoming 50 minutes.
  
• Mike telling the Oompa Loompas to "Back off, you little freaks!" as they advance on the group in the Chocolate Room. Actually, I could've sworn this moment was in the theatrical cut I saw back in 2005, but maybe I'm getting confused because it was in the trailer, which I must have seen a hundred times in the day.
• The Oompa Loompas' song about Augustus has a few additional lines.
• One of the Oompa Loompas plays a keyboard during the song about Violet.
   

That's it, but blatantly there was more they could have put in. C'mon Burton, what are you hiding here?

Finally, a remnant of Mike's boat-licking actually DOES survive in the finished cut, but you'll have to look closely to see it. During the shot where Charlie his helping Grandpa Joe climb aboard, Mike is initially obscured, but when Joe steps downward, if you look between him and Charlie (and behind Ms Beauregarde), you'll catch a brief glimpse of Mike with his face down against the side of the boat. For reference, it's at 1:12 in the video below.

The Garden of Écos (aka After The Gold Rush)

The hardest thing about entering into Co Hoedeman's 1997 film The Garden of Écos is the intuitive understanding, straight off the bat, that the titular paradise is not fated to last. The title, recalling the Garden of Eden, already seems telling enough, but there is something so intricate, so beautifully-realised and, above all, so guileless about Hoedeman's paper-crafted world that makes it instantly ripe for destruction. The Dutch-Canadian animator, who is best known for his Academy Award-winning 1977 short The Sand Castle, has here created something that seems at once vibrant and deeply nostalgic. The colours, the lighting and the movements of the characters are beyond resplendent; the garden feels alive and meticulously constructed as a functional ecosystem, while also being evocative of some bygone childhood dreamland, one that was always destined to fade into the stuff of faint memory the second the outside world crept in. The Garden of Écos is on one level an ecological parable, dealing with the mismanagement of natural resources and illustrating how the breakdown of one thread of the web of life can have catastrophic consequences all over. On another level it is an anti-warfare narrative, showing what happens when co-operation is displaced by conflict as an overriding value. The common teaching is that, without recognition of the interconnectivity of all things, and our dependency on a shared environment, none of us can hope to survive.

The opening two minutes depict how a typical diurnal cycle plays out in the titular garden, focussing on the various animal lifeforms that populate it and the niches they've carved out within. Many are visibly based on real-world animals, the most prominent being a family of sheep-like quadropeds, including a parent and child who function as the emotional nexus of the narrative. Other lifeforms have a surreal or fantastical twist that reinforces the intersection between familiar ecology and playful fantasy. One critter looks like a mishmash between a flightless owl and an animate cloak; another is spherical, resembling a kind of terrestrial sea urchin with a brood of sprightly golf balls constantly in tow. Hoedeman takes time to carefully establish the distinctive ways in which each of these species interacts with their environs and with one another, imbuing them with a character and vitality that is immediately endearing. Even the ones that lack obvious facial features, such as the spherical beings, are able to convey such life and personality as to engender the viewer's empathy, eg: when we see two of the smaller spheres hesitating before travelling down a ledge.

Even at its most pristine, Écos is not exactly symmetrical with Eden. Death is never entirely absent from the garden, it being a daily reality that some of its inhabitants prey on others. The buzzing yellow insects that emerge from their hive every dusk form a vital food source for a species of winged nocturnal beings that behave like bats but make distinctive bird-like calls. Meanwhile, the baby spheres are picked off by green snakes that camouflage themselves in the grasses, yet even the presence of animals who survive by devouring another's young do little to negate the overwhelming sense of peaceful equilibrium that characterises those earlier moments. There is, above all, an overarching cooperative spirit that seems to permeate the garden at all corners, even among those predatory beings - one of the snakes, upon catching a young sphere, is seen to feed it to its companion. From the start, we are primed to feel an intuitive respect for each creature's role within the scheme of things.

The inevitable upset to this balance arrives in the form of a swarm of creatures resembling something between a caterpillar and a crustacean (for simplicity's sake I'll just refer to them as "shrimps"), who raid the garden while most of its residents are sleeping and ravage the flowers on which the sheep depend. What immediately marks the shrimps out as outsiders to the garden's ethos is that they do not share in its community spirit; their tendency toward coaction does not extend beyond their own kind, and they exhibit no awareness of the bigger picture. In contrast to the sheep, who take only as much from the flowers as they need, the shrimps pick massive quantities and hoard the buds away inside a cave - the same cave in which the nocturnal avians roost during the daylight hours - for purely their own usage. Their wastefulness wreaks grisly consequences when the stockpile of picked buds begins to decompose en masse, unleashing lethal gases into the cave and poisoning the nocturnal birds. Obviously, these shrimps are a swarming disaster zone. Yet Hoedeman makes the curious but effective choice of choosing to portray the intruders, who on paper should represent the absolute worst of an unchecked culture of excess and consumption at its most rapaciously catastrophic, seem less malevolent than they do incompetent and out of their depth in a world that's clearly much bigger than their comprehension. For the purposes of this story, it is important that they come across as as fundamentally little and vulnerable as everything else in Hoedeman's world and that, much like the garden residents, all that they basically want to do is to survive (honestly, they're probably the cutest lifeforms in the picture). When the locals finally resolve to get violent with the raiders, the results are harrowing and in no way cathartic. The most disturbing aspect of the narrative trajectory is that the cooperative spirit that defines Écos, while in some respects fortified by the shrimps' invasion, does not, ultimately, prove redemptive. As a team, they remain united to the finish, yet it is their willingness to cast the shrimps as enemies and make the us and them division that proves most lethal to their garden's vitality. Écos is a tale of poisoning and how it pervades and corrupts a formerly pristine paradise, and that poisoning takes multiple different forms.

The native critters attempt to weather the hardship as a community, by gathering together the ravaged flowers, while one of the owls tries (unsuccessfully) to carry some of the poisoned birds to safety. And yet even they are not immune to the same kind of short-sightedness that facilitates the shrimps' ravenous consumption, by not considering the wider-ranging impacts of some of their own actions. Without the nocturnal birds to control their population, the buzzing insects multiply and become a nuisance to the other creatures. One of the owls discovers that squeezing a type of flower will disperse toxins into the atmosphere that kill the bugs, a seemingly resourceful innovation it shares with its neighbours, which merely furthers the proliferation of poisons around the garden. The toxins that now scatter the ground prove just as lethal to the spherical creatures, in turn rendering them inedible to the snakes. Obviously, this is analogous to the use of pesticides and their potentially catastrophic impact on the wider environment, while also symbolising the seed of animosity as it spreads its corruptive influence, finally prompting the once-peaceful garden inhabitants to declare full-blown war upon the shrimps (they do not seem naturally hardwired toward violence, their first instinct being to flee rather than fight, although they rise to the challenge when prompted), rather than attempt to reach a more amicable solution. As a survival tactic, it proves as bogus as their measure taken against the insect population, culminating in a tragedy so terrible that it stops both sides in their tracks.

The hardest thing about exiting Hoedeman's film is the deliberate lack of resolution. The dispute between the garden inhabitants and the invasive shrimps, not to mention the broader ecological problems caused by the introduction of the various toxins into the garden, remains unsolved by the fade-out. For a fleeting moment, we are teased with the possibility of peace, with all parties united in their recognition of the devastation their joint hostility has brought about. The shrimps seem as concerned by the young sheep's death as the garden's denizens; while two of them were responsible for pushing down the boulder that killed the young sheep, it looked to me like they were attempting to help the friend a snake had cornered on a lower ledge, and it is evident that the young sheep was not their intended target. That final wide shot, showing all of the survivors coming together to gaze upon the body of the crushed sheep, provides the one moment in which the sense of community that previously enabled Écos to thrive seems to extend across all barriers; neither side wanted it to end with this. The possibility of understanding is there, but alas, Hoedeman insists that it is not realised. The garden inhabitants, upon noticing the shrimps attempting to participate in the mourning process, angrily turn on them and force them to retreat, definitively denying them a place within their order. Whether the garden has seen the last of these interlopers remains up in the air, but there is no feeling of victory in their closing expulsion. The point of no return has already been crossed, with the death of the young sheep indicating the termination of any last hope of recovery, both for the garden and its inhabitants. The fallen youngster, a symbol both of innocence and of the incoming generation stifled by the shaky decisions of its elders, has been extinguished by a toxin of a different nature, one that both sides are fully culpable in proliferating through their mutual inability to share resources and see eye-to-eye. The residents of Écos have compromised themselves, and even if life within their garden is able to continue on in some form, the gentle guilelessness that once pervaded the land seems irrecoverable. Death had always existed in Écos, but by the end it has truly come to signify the snuffing out of life, and not the process by which life perpetuates itself.