- Children of a Lesser Clod
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Children of a Lesser Clod is the 20th episode of The Simpsons twelfth season. In the episode, after spraining his knee during a basketball game, Homer begins taking care of the neighborhood kids to cure his boredom, prompting jealousy from Bart and Lisa, who feel that Homer is giving the kids the attention they never had.
The episode is written by former and current show runner, Al Jean and directed by Michael Polcino. The title is a parody of the play/movie Children of a Lesser God.
Contents
Plot
The family goes to the YMCA to attend one-time-only free classes, along with many other Springfieldians who admit they will never return to the YMCA and pay for any of the regular classes. Lisa takes gymnastics (and gets yelled at by the Russian coach for being too old), Bart gets tricked into taking an etiquette class by a black man dressed as a gangsta rapper (who happens to be the husband of the prim and proper etiquette teacher), and Homer participates in a basketball class for men over the age of 35, but suffers a torn ACL after a dunk attempt ends with the backboard crashing down on his leg. After Homer gets his surgery, he is told by Dr. Hibbert that he cannot go to work, and he must stay home. Homer finds himself extremely bored, even going so far as attempting to cross-breed Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II. One evening, Ned wants Marge to watch Rod and Todd while he attends a Chris Rock concert (that he misinterprets to be an abbreviation for a Christian Rock concert), but Marge is out identifying a body (which ends up being a very much alive Hans Moleman which everyone thinks is really dead) so Ned asks Homer instead. The kids like having Homer take care of them, which allows Homer to establish his own day care center.
Homer starts a day care center (under Marge's ownership), "Uncle Homer's Day Care Center", to entertain himself, but makes Bart and Lisa feel like outcasts by ignoring them, giving Bart's jacket to Milhouse, forcing them out of their bedrooms for a film crew that is making a documentary about him, and having them work long hours at night to cut out felt hearts in his honor. The daycare center is wildly successful, and Homer earns a nomination for the "Good Guy Awards" ceremony. For the ceremony, Bart and Lisa splice in home movie footage of Homer at his worst (passed out on the floor drunk and almost naked during Christmas, losing Maggie in a poker game, and chasing Bart down the street while wielding a chain mace) to prove to everyone that Homer's nice guy persona is a sham. The audience becomes outraged and Homer angrily strangles Bart on stage. Everyone in the audience becomes horrified by Homer's behavior, and decide to prevent their kids from being watched over by him. Homer escapes from the ceremony with all the kids in a van, until he crashes the van into a tree, and tries to escape before Chief Wiggum stops him. After three mistrials, Homer apologizes to Bart and Lisa for neglecting them, and promises to care for his own children (including the perpetually-ignored Maggie) instead of the neighborhood kids.
Production
The episode is written by Al Jean and directed by Michael Polcino. During production the staff were looking for a basketball player to shoot a gun, but no one said yes.[1] Al Jean has a few different storylines during his pitch and decided to put all of them together into this episode.[1] The line when Milhouse says he knows Bart's dad better than Bart knows him is a reference to Mike Reiss's real life experience where a person said he knows his parents better than he does.[2] During production the animators need Ralph to get off screen for a two shot so they decided that Ralph followed a butterfly.[1] When Homer puts his daycare permit in the picture frame it is based on Dana Gould's real life experience in which he gave his parents a newspaper article about him winning a boston comedy competition and later found out that it was replaced by Larry Bird dunking butterfingers.[3] The third act with the police change was not the original third act.[1] When the video about Homer's day care starts the scratches of the video were added in post production.[1]
This episode marks the first appearance of Lugash the Béla Károlyi-esque gymnastics coach. He would later appear in "Little Girl in the Big Ten". This is the first episode where it is revealed that Kent Brockman and Arnie Pie (the helicopter news reporter) do not get along at work. In previous episodes, the two characters did not audibly hate each other (in fact, they were shown bowling together on the season seven episode "Team Homer" as part of the Channel 6 Wastelanders bowling team along with Krusty the Clown and The Mexican Bumblebee Man), but there were many times where Kent Brockman would brush off any misfortune that Arnie Pie happened upon (cf. Mr. Plow). In later episodes, Kent and Arnie would either argue or express hatred for each other (cf. the season thirteen finale "Poppa's Got a Brand New Badge", the season fourteen episode "Pray Anything", the season fifteen episode "The Wandering Juvie", and the season 18 finale "You Kent Always Say What You Want").[4]
This episode was advertised as featuring Ron Howard in what would have been his third appearance on "The Simpsons" (his first two appearances can be found in season ten's "When You Dish Upon a Star" and season eleven's "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder"). Originally, the third act involved Homer getting all the kids in Howard's latest film, a Gladiator-like picture, hence the original title of the episode being "The Kids Stay In The Picture" (a play on the title of legendary producer Robert Evans' "The Kid Stays in the Picture"). However, Ron Howard did not appear in this episode (in fact, no guest voices were used at all in this episode) and the third act was about Homer winning an award for caring for the neighborhood kids until his own children show him as an unfit father.
The original airing of the episode had a peculiar animation error in it. At the end of the schoolyard scene with Bart, Milhouse and Ralph (after Milhouse tells Bart that Bart's jacket looks better on him), the last few frames of animation show animatic layout drawings of Bart instead of cleaned and colored cels.[5] In all reruns, this error is fixed.
Cultural references
Lugash the weight trainer is a parody of Béla Károlyi.
The title is a spoof of the play Children of a Lesser God and the 1986 film based upon it. The episode features the original basket for basketball.[1] Professor Frink's use of "Flubber" directly references the 1997 film of the same name. Lugash is a parody of Béla Károlyi.[1] Homer's line "I believe you can fly!" references the R. Kelly song "I Believe I Can Fly" from the 1996 film Space Jam. As Homer recalls doing a slam dunk into space (which never happened), George Jetson crashes into his leg. Homer reacts as if he was his boss, Mr Spacely. Rainier Wolfcastle's plan to convert the YMCA so he can hunt "the most dangerous prey of all: man" is a reference to The Most Dangerous Game.The "crazy" torch song that Homer sings while babysitting Rod and Todd Flanders is a 1969 hit song by Peggy Lee called "Is That All There Is?", which was Lee's final Top 40 hit and a #1 song on the easy listening chart. When Homer goes hysterical and kidnaps the children, Ralph asks where they're going. Homer replies they're getting frosty chocolate milkshakes. When the series was on The Tracey Ullman Show, this was Homer's catchphrase. It was also something of a running joke in the first two seasons (and was mentioned again in THoH XIII's Send in the Clones, in which one of Homer's clones is his Tracy Ullman Show persona). The Good Guys Award is criticized by the New York Times as "Pointless."
Internet meme
A short segment of the episode features Bill Cosby asking a child on his show Kids Say the Darndest Things about a specific hobby, of which the child promptly replies "Pokémon!" Cosby begins incoherently rambling about what Pokémon is whilst flapping his ears. This is a parodied mannerism of Cosby's that is often used on the show.[6] This is also the second time Cosby has been parodied on The Simpsons. Another similar gag was used in the episode Helter Shelter.
This sequence involving Bill Cosby's over-exaggerated mannerisms from this and other episodes on The Simpsons (as well as the Family Guy episode "Brian Does Hollywood") became an internet meme when many parodies on these particular segments became internet memes in their own right, especially on YouTube and YTMND.[7]
Reception
Colin of Jacobson of DVD Movie Guide gave this episode a mixed review, saying "When Bart and Lisa team up to pursue a goal, the result usually succeeds. And that’s true for “Clod” – at least to a moderate degree. Like most Season 12 episodes, the program doesn’t become truly delightful, but it does more right than wrong, so it ends up as a decent success."[8]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g Jean, Al (2009). The Simpsons The Complete Twelfth Season DVD commentary for the episode "Children of a Lesser Clod" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
- ^ Scully, Mike (2009). The Simpsons The Complete Twelfth Season DVD commentary for the episode "Children of a Lesser Clod" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
- ^ Selman, Matt (2009). The Simpsons The Complete Twelfth Season DVD commentary for the episode "Children of a Lesser Clod" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
- ^ Gammill, Tom (2009). The Simpsons The Complete Twelfth Season DVD commentary for the episode "Children of a Lesser Clod" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
- ^ The Simpsons Folder - Special
- ^ [1]
- ^ Ahrens, Frank (July 30, 2006). "A Home For Quick Hits". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/29/AR2006072900041_pf.html.
- ^ http://www.dvdmg.com/simpsonsseasontwelve.shtml
External links
- "Children of a Lesser Clod" at The Simpsons.com
- "Children of a Lesser Clod" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
- "Children of a Lesser Clod" at the Internet Movie Database
Categories:- The Simpsons (season 12) episodes
- 2001 television episodes
- Internet memes
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