5. Bart of Darkness
Season Six
1994
“Flanders is going to kill Rod and Tod, that’s horrible…! In principle.” This episode drew a little bit of a connection for yours truly, as I could pretty much sympathize with Bart’s situation, sans the lunacy. Breaking my arm years ago, I was excluded from many summer activities including sports, and yes, going to public pools. In possibly one of the best episodes I’ve ever seen, the summer heat wave is so bad in Springfield that a guitarist singing “Sunshine on my Shoulders” gets knocked cold by a passerby, and the ice cream man drives around the neighborhood announcing that he’s all out of Ice Cream.
The Simpsons inevitably get a taste for pools after the Pool Mobile drives by for the day to give the neighborhood some relief. It’s too bad we never had pool mobiles growing up, but then again I wouldn’t want to be in the same water with my neighbors, anyway. The family becomes the neighborhood celebrities after buying their own pool, but showman Bart breaks his leg after being distracted by Nelson Muntz. While Bart is left with a broken leg, isolated in his room out of protest and boredom, Lisa becomes the sensation of the now public pool. Bound to a cast, with Krusty playing old repeats of his series, Bart’s sanity deteriorates and in “Rear Window” fashion, he spots a murder from Ned Flanders out the eye of his new telescope.
This brings about more usual hilarity from the writers who pull great gags from a tired premise. The last person suspected of murder is Ned, and he’s a likely candidate after Lisa (playing the role of Grace Kelly) goes inspecting his house after being guilted into it by Bart. The inevitable reveal in the finale is funnier than most comedies as we learn what happened to Ned’s wife, what the bag reading “Human Head” is, and where the female scream from Ned’s house came from. In its prime, “The Simpsons” could not only satirize a famous piece of cinema, but add a new dimension to it, while also re-inventing what made it so brilliant. “Bart of Darkness” is consistently funny, and infinitely quotable. All in all, it’s a hilarious hall of famer for the series.