21. Bart the Daredevil

(originally aired December 6, 1990)
Tonight, we have an episode about hero worship, impressionable youth, and the great lengths a father will go to to teach his son a lesson. We start innocently enough cutting back and forth between Bart at home and Homer at the bar watching a wrestling match. Despite their constant butting of heads, we see they’re not so different, most evidenced by their equally ecstatic reaction to an over-the-top advert for a monster truck rally, featuring the mighty Truckasaurus, a gigantic car-crushing mechanical dinosaur. Their plans to attend encounter a slight speed bump in the form of Lisa’s band recital, but before long, the family arrives at the rally, where they unwittingly drive into the arena and are attacked by the mechanized creature. Seeing the family car trapped within the jaws of a humongous robot dinosaur is quite a way to end an act. I’ve always wanted to know more about the operations of the machine. Why would they pick up the Simpson car? Regardless, the incident is brushed off by the team and the Simpsons are comped for the extensive car damage and given a half bottle of domestic champagne for being such good sports.

At the rally itself, Bart bears witness to Captain Lance Murdoch, world-class daredevil and Evel Knievel parody, who sets up a death-defying motorcycle stunt involving great white sharks, electric eels, piranha, alligators, a mountain lion, and one drop of human blood to get ’em all riled up. Bart is in complete awe, and despite Murdoch getting horribly injured, he decides to start cheating death himself with his skateboard. All it takes is one attempt to leap over the family car (the non-destroyed one) to knock him unconscious. At the hospital, Dr. Hibbert (first appearance) attempts to educate Bart on the dangers of emulating media stunts (though he opts not to subject him to the horrors of their Three Stooges ward), but Bart is a boy on a mission. He performs one successful jump, then another, and another, but soon feels he needs a greater challenge. He finds one in the form of Springfield Gorge, and announces to his fellow classmates his intentions to jump it.

I feel this review has been more synopsis-heavy than normal… I enjoy the subversion that witnessing people’s horrible accidents and disfigurements only encourages Bart more in his death-defying feats, as well as a visit to a hospitalized Murdoch, who applauds his efforts (“Bones heal, chicks dig scars, and the United States of America has the best doctor-to-daredevil ratio in the world!”) There’s a lot of great jokes in this show, but what I love most about it is at its core, it’s a sweet Homer and Bart episode. We begin with the two sharing a bond in their enthusiasm over the truck rally, and we end with Homer genuinely concerned about his son’s safety. The show manages to have very real sincere moments, which are still funny in Homer’s fumbling at trying to get through to his son. In an effort to get Bart to not go through with his jump, Homer has a heart-to-heart with him, pleading him to promise that he won’t do it (“This isn’t one of those phony-baloney promises I don’t expect you to keep! If you make this promise, you have to keep it.”) Bart promises, but is out the door a minute later. Later, Homer catches Bart at the gorge at the nick of time and can think of no other option than to jump the gorge himself to show his son “how much it hurts when a loved one risks his own life for no good reason.” There’s a real sadistic undertone to this if you think about it, but it’s pure misguided Homer logic. These scenes feature some funny lines (an exhausted Homer muses, “I tried ordering you, I tried punishing you, and God help me, I even tried reasoning with you”), but nothing really jokey. There are a lot of sincere moments in this episode that are allowed to just play out, whereas now, I feel there would be a frantic effort to not let any thirty seconds play out without a jokey joke.

The episode ends with one of the series’s most classic moments in Homer jumping the gorge and almost making it. Strange that we can find so much pleasure out of watching this poor man fall down the gorge (twice), horribly injuring himself, but perhaps it was because of his heightened enthusiasm and joy at his disbelief that he was going to make the jump. One must not get too cocky over their station in life, or they’re due for a fall, I suppose. This is another pure classic episode, full of iconic elements in Truckasaurus and Lance Murdoch, great jokes and commentary, and a truly epic ending.

Tidbits and Quotes
– The truck rally commercial is absolutely perfect, with a great finale (“If you miss this, you’d better be dead or in jail! And if you’re in jail, break out! BE THERE!”)
– The recital is like the calm before the crazy stuff in the meat of the episode, but it has a lot of great bits, like Ned weeping with joy over Todd’s solo, and Homer “consoling” him (“Come on Flanders, he’s not that bad.”) I also love Homer, super antsy to leave, lifting Lisa out of her chair at the end of the last number, and the sweet moment where he leaves, then returns so she can take a bow. The great coda to this opening is when Homer is recklessly driving down the highway humming the 1812 overture, and Lisa quietly, proudly tells her mother, “I reached him.”
– My favorite moment in the whole show is when Murdoch appears in a blast of flame inside the arena and addresses the audience whilst still in flames and two guys blast him with extinguishers and put him out. It’s one of those moments where it’s hard to place why it’s so funny; the action itself, but also he’s small in the frame and the animation is so fluid in that Murdoch is completely nonplussed by his condition. Also, his stunt was basically a success, but it was his showboating going back toward the ramp that did him in.
– We see a slightly more serious Dr. Hibbert here, but he has a great line after his serious lecturing (“As tragic as all this is, it’s a small price to pay for countless hours of top-notch entertainment,”) to which Homer gives an “Amen!”
– The first act break was one of the most ridiculous, but the second has a great bit when Bart tells Otto he’s going to jump the gorge (“You know, Bart, as the only adult here, I feel I should say something.” “What?” “Cool!!”)
– The whole scene of Murdoch in the hospital is wonderful. I love when he’s signing a photo with his teeth and reads aloud what he’s writing through gritted teeth, then in the end we see it’s all one big random scribble.
– Something that struck me… Homer’s airlifted up and put in the ambulance, then it drives off not even five tire rotations and slams right into the tree. The timing is so quick, which I love, but it’s weird how it’s so quick, like how could the front of the vehicle have been completely smashed up if it had literally just gotten into motion?