The title of this post isn't very creative, and neither is this starting sentence. Since it's baseball season's start why not do something about Simpsons and baseball? Why not also write about an episode people say is a bad one? "The Boys of Bummer" is from the 18th season, it's the 18th episode, and aired during the 18th month.... uh it aired in April 2007, the same year as the movie came out.
This episode, as stated, is not well regarded, but maybe is aged better as other episodes have come out? Conceptually, the episode follows the absurdity that some people take sports or this case children's sports way too seriously. It starts with a high where Bart catches a ball a little league game and the team wins the game. That means they get to the championship. The episode shows Bart mooning and crowd and they don't care, and the other plays are able to freely egg people. They also seem to enjoy getting egged. It's a good way to show how again, people can take sports very seriously and would let a sports star do what they want if their team is winning.
The other plotline is Homer lays down on a bed and ends up becoming a mattress salesman. There's a championship that looks to be held in a very large baseball stadium and has a large attendance. The town is riding high on wanting to win. Then Bart makes a mistake and costs the team a win and now the entire town is mad at him.
Lisa tries to help him get over his loss, which is nice, but not sure that helps him get over a bunch of people in town being mad at him. Bart has ended up going mad and writing "I hate Bart Simpson" all over the town. He ends up jumping from a water tower.
Homer's plot ends up having the Reverend and his wife swap mattress with Homer and Marge and it helps them, but Marge and Homer aren't sleeping very well on the new mattress. [and other things]
It's not memory foam, it won't remember a thing/ Copyright 20th Television
Marge, rightfully, calls out the town for being mean to Bart then they get the bad idea to do a fake rematch game to have Bart make the catch. They lied to Bart too get him to play and yeah catch time, oh never mind. Bart misses the ball and they keep doing do-overs. I do find it amusing he ways Bart misses the ball. Then he does catch it 78 tries later. Then it skips ahead 60 years to the future and Bart remembers the catch yeah something.
The person who wrote this episode? Copyright 20th Television
Uh oh, I don't hate episode. I don't think it's great, but I can kind of think it had an idea there. The idea that some people can take sports too seriously- especially youth sports. There's been cases of parents getting into fights at youth games, for example. I also think it shows how people can go from praising someone for sports accomplishments then turning against them when they fail. If you feel the Simpsons should do that with humor, then yeah there's not a lot of that in this episode.
Is it mean to Bart? Yeah. If anything, you can say the episode gets a visceral reaction because it plays it straight of how people can quickly turn against someone for any reason and that's unpleasant. There was no other reason why people should get mad at him, there was nothing he really had done otherwise, and the town was not bothered when he mooned them earlier. If Bart had been doing things to be more unlikable this episode it could have helped that prove a point of why the town getting mad at him would at least be more not justified but at least less brunt. Also I do like that Lisa, Homer, and Marge don't turn against Bart, defend him at times, and try to help him.
I think the episode is weak, but not horrible. The Homer plot is somewhat there, I do like that they really don't have Marge and Homer devolve into fighting each other or something really bad happening. They at least kept this part more light-hearted.
If you don't like this episode, well I'm not defending it and really can agree that it's not good. I don't think it's horrible, I think it was trying to do something, but messed up a little bit on how it was executed.
That's it for now, tune in next time when I take baseball way too seriously and write mean messages like "You didn't play well at all" to players.
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