Radio Bart

My Recollection.

The internet has taught me that there are two types of women who suck dog dicks: the ones who are getting paid and the ones who like it. Money is the great explainer. A big enough sum can be an acceptable response to any “why” in the phrase “why did you do that?” Do you know how insane most jobs are without money? Cash is dull, it’s the people with a taste for dog dicks that are interesting.

Poor maniacs, then, are understandable even if their actions are completely unintelligible. It’s the rich mutants that scare me.

His name was Miles. He had a cut-off kerosene bottle in his hand that took me a while to recognise as such because why. I’d known him for all of a few seconds before he swigged from the bottle, lifted a lighter to his lips, and blew a fireball that scorched the wall of the Graceville railway station pedestrian subway. He was in his high school uniform. It was a nice school, a rich school. His face was on fire and the orange clashed with his blue uniform. He was running about the concrete tube, slapping his face with one hand while still holding a sloshing plastic container of kerosene in the other. The job would have been done had he put down the kerro and used both hands. It would have been done if he’d lifted his shirt up and used it to smother the flames. It would have been done had he followed any natural human response. The one handed Three Stooges impression ended in singed hair and a face that was flaming slap red.

Once he was done yelling, he swirled his kerro, took another swig, and brought his lighter to his face like something different was going to happen this time.

Graceville is a nice place with nice yards and the kind of nice lawns that are composed of singular grass varieties the homeowner can’t wait to tell you about. Buffalo is the fat grass, a good lawn if you have kids because it can take the traffic. The Nullabor Couch requires a bit more maintenance, but it’s the kind of lawn that looks like a Disney cartoon from just a few metres away. People in Graceville will tell you things like this because it genuinely interests them and they’ve so little else on their minds.

At a bit past midnight on a Wednesday morning, it takes on a sinister tone. It’s not because the numerous, well maintained streetlights create the alternating pattern of dark and light of a mid-2000s Nintendo game. It’s not because these lights pool with the security lights of the commercial district to create an island of haunting twilight amidst the midnight black. And it’s not because the night brings the goons out. There are no goons, so many no goons that 4 teenagers buying weed count as The Goons. That there’s nobody around to count us is what keeps Graceville the winner of Brisbane’s annual Goonless Town awards.

The sinister element is seeing perfection when it feels like it shouldn’t be seen. A kind of existential voyeurism that fills one with a dread of getting caught, but a dread that can find no logical purchase in the mind. We are wrong for existing here, and the town knows it. So, I was already on edge when Miles spotted a Lifeline bin.

A Lifeline bin is a metal box about the size of half a TARDIS one dumps unwanted but otherwise functional items in so they can be recycled among the underclasses. I’d already slowed my pace because it was usually a good idea to put distance between oneself and whatever Miles was about to do, so he was halfway through bragging about something insane when I caught up.  

You can learn a lot about a person by what they brag about. The structures of each thing and the plausibility of the story, are windows into what that person thinks and how that person understands the thoughts of others. Miles was bragging about sleeping in the Lifeline bins like it was tough and cool. The face you’re pulling as you try to understand that is The Miles Face.

“Bullshit” was another friend’s response, so first it didn’t even wait for Miles to finish is idiotic lie. The rest of us agreed, and asserted that, less an issue of whether Miles would, there was no way he could.

There’s a point in most male stupidity where reality kicks in and whatever dumb thing we were attempting declares itself, often painfully, impossible. Part of what made Miles an Other is that he’d hit these points, sometimes seconds into whatever it was, and blow past them like Universal Laws were merely suggestions.

A Lifeline bin’s slot isn’t a slot, exactly, it’s a right angle of metal that creates a size-limit-enforcing space between outside and in. We expected to watch Miles hit this reality and confess that he was full of shit. Instead, he folded himself like a Swiss Army Knife and stuffed himself into the space.

It was not graceful. Even the contortionists who manage this 3 shows a night have a point where they’re awkwardly thrashing about like a toddler being locked into its pram. Miles fought with his elbows and knees like he was tied to two separate Thai boxers. His oversized, novelty head refused even the most aggressive attempts at reshaping. It was like watching a butterfly change its mind. A dull metal THUNK, a soft fleshy THUD, and the funny drawer of skin, elbows, and oversized head that was Miles had tilted away into the blue-black abyss of the Lifeline bin.

THUNKETATHUNK

THUNK

THUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNK

The second we realised he was trapped in there and freaking out, we started to kick the shit out of the Lifeline bin. Muffled "faggots" screamed with each kick like we were all messing with a homophobic drum set. We cried with laughter. Finally, something had backfired on Miles hard enough to cause a recognisable human response. I’d seen him on several kinds of fire on several separate occasions and each of these was treated with the same blasé attitude one may regard a faintly stubbed toe. It was galling. How dare you exist without the basic fears and anxieties that a finite organic life form needs to survive. How dare you even survive. He needed to be punished.

Debate raged at the time as to where Adrian got the faeces. It raged for some time after the event, and it still consumes the odd quiet moment of mine today, but the material point here is that we were now standing outside a thrashing Muon Trap with what Adrian swore was dog poo.

Some of you may have a sense of compassion for Miles. Don’t. It is not compassion that possesses you now but ignorance. Miles is so far outside the norms of existence I fear even his corpse won’t decompose because the worms and moulds won’t know what to do with him.

Watching a 7-11 hotdog napkin with a girthy chode of "dog turd" on it leap playfully into the Lifeline bin is still one of my fonder memories.

From his hades, Miles had no idea what was going on. The gap between the poo entering his cell and Miles’ realisation was a golden moment of pure anticipation. The kind of animal excitement that the end result can rarely live up to.

“PWOOOOAAAHHHHEEEEEWWWWUUUUUGGGGHHHHH”

THUNKETYTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNKTHUNK

He resumed his savage attempts to escape with an understandable animal drive. The complicating factor was that reversing the process of folding himself in required a kind of handstand that leveraged off the inner walls of the bin. With the dog faeces as motivator, Miles managed to jam himself into the little shelf and force himself partially out. As the lid closed a bit, it did so around his protesting head, and then an arm, before finally releasing Miles back out into the otherwise undisturbed perfection of a cool Graceville night.

We’d cleared a little, assuming some kind of whirling revenge fists, but none came. He took the whole thing like it was the only possible outcome, only remarking on the smell of the dog poo. That was the scary thing about Miles, not just what he did, but how he reacted to what happened to him. "Of course, you’d do that", he'd think, "I’d have done worse."

 

The Episode.

Magic doesn’t exist. The point of a magic show isn’t to convince you otherwise, it’s to so thwart your ability to think of another explanation for what you’ve seen that the dumb part of your brain can only yell, “MAGIC MAGIC MAGIC” at the rest of it.

Magic doesn’t exist. Another point of a magic show isn’t to convince you otherwise, it’s to dazzle you with a display of skills. I know that these cards aren’t moving through other dimensions or visible via psychic modem, but wow, I’m looking at the cards and they are appearing as magic through an incredible skill.

The way magic accomplishes these tasks is very similar to how a narrative (particularly any genres that emphasise a surprise or twist) functions. For magic to work, there must be a setup. You must know that there is a premise, as surprise works via contradiction of knowledge. If I walk up to you with a ball in my hand and go, “TAH-DAH!”, so what? I may have actually caused the ball to manifest into reality via actual magic, but it means nothing as there wasn’t a “no ball” state to make the “yes ball” state meaningful.

Magic occurs in the same pocket realities as stories. Things that are shown are shown for purposes that have ultimate payoffs and the payoffs have to relate to the things that were shown. Incredible skill is all well and good, but you could use any number of amazingly skilful sleight of hand techniques to move cards around, it’s meaningless if you don’t then show me the one I picked.

This is why you don’t see many, or really any, mysteries end with the killer being some guy that didn’t exist in the narrative up until that point (tell me if you’ve seen one, though I’m betting if any exist they do so to be overtly contrarian).  It’s my Tah-Dah ball, and worse as it renders the whole preceding film a waste of time. The solution, too, has to be visible to the audience, however craftily presented. Without that, you aren’t a magician showing a trick, you’re a talentless cheat, otherwise known as Criss Angel clearly editing a piece of video. So, these needs have left fiction littered with bits and bobs that, like magic, are fairly clear to anyone who’s studied it.

The one nearly everybody knows is Chekhov’s Gun, it primarily manifests as the “thing at the start of the movie is useful at the end of the movie” thing that creates the closed system that narratives need to not feel like the unfair expanse of cruel existence. A part of what makes magic, at least the kind that aren’t meta comedy bits by Penn and Teller, effective is not being aware of the moving parts. Intellectually, I know that there’s something going on, but if the act keeps me ignorant, I’m able to suspend my disbelief. Mystery or twist-based media will, by absolute necessity, need to hide their moving parts, but other narratives need to as well. Seeing the moving parts thwarts engagement, mystery or no.

There is a fundamental tension in this. Highlighting something enough that the audience notices it, but not so much that the audience figures out that it’s important is a legitimately tough balance. Most fail spectacularly, usually because they focus on one thing. I first noticed this kind of foreshadowing in Terminator 2, when Sarah Connor dropped a shotgun shell, only to run out when trying to blast the T-1000 into the molten steel. It blew my small mind, usually the hero just runs out of ammo for narrative convenience, but here she was out of ammo for a reason that made sense within the narrative world. Having lots of little ones is a superior approach, as they create a kind of bottom-up internal cohesion and distract from any bigger ones you may want to use.

Radio Bart is one of those single-sentence episodes whose premise would, by later seasons, become the title. It, like Homer Goes to College, Deep Space Homer, and others, operates within a more relaxed narrative environment created by a built-up back catalogue of established character and setting. Once a longer form series has these elements established, it actually benefits the narrative world to take time away from them, as further focus wastes what is now a rapidly dwindling resource. These become the sitcom equivalent of a monster of the week episode, and help with the overall structure of the series, as I spoke about regarding Lisa’s Pony and Saturdays of Thunder.

In this particular instance, though, the episode suffers from a lack of emotional focus. Certainly, there is the obvious moral lesson, even some genuine moments between Bart and Homer, but these are separate in the narrative. Homer and Bart’s birthday present conflict is resolved when Bart starts using the microphone, and the second element of Bart’s punishment in the well has no callbacks to establish a single line through the story. Typically, the opening act’s separation from the main story will abandon a character or plot point, or shift one into the background, as this establishes the new start point of the story proper and creates a more defined whole. Homer’s feelings of intellectual inadequacy run the length of Homer Goes to Space but Bart’s disappointment in the first act doesn’t carry through the story despite Bart’s focus doing so. The result is an episode that is less a matter of doing x over y and more a matter of doing y poorly.

But while the emotional elements of the story shift awkwardly (a problem emphasised by the shaggy dog joke for an ending), the narrative exhibits some surprisingly clever construction that shifts focus enough to carry the episode.

The best way to hide a Chekhov’s Gun is to keep me ignorant that the story will contain one. Knowing that a twist exists in a story alerts you to the moving parts, it’s what makes Black Mirror and Shyamalan so predictable, ignorance lets me see the No Ball states without realising what they are. A sitcom seldom uses complex construction, so nobody sits down at these things, eyes peeled, looking to spot the clue that will unravel some amazing 7-minute puzzle, and nobody expects a joke to matter in the narrative.

The reveal of the label maker’s relevance is a great moment and one that punches way above its weight. There are dozens of ways an animation could use to get Bart stuck in a well, daft ones that the format would cover for if we dared to overthink it, but instead we get a moment that surprises, connects to and recontextualises an earlier moment, and provides the perfect closed-system motivation for Bart to go down the well. Tah-dah!

Narrative genres like sitcoms can get away with C-grade construction because that’s not what they’re for. You’re there to laugh, the narrative is just scaffolding for jokes so who cares if it’s a bit ugly. But this truth has a way of obscuring another, that there is no hard reason you can’t have both. Children’s television can be thoughtful and mature. Action films can be more than the sum of their explosive set pieces. And sitcoms can feature excellent narrative turns.

Radio Bart falls short of being a true classic by failing to hitch its emotional conflicts to the episode’s exceptional plotting, which is a shame. But it stands out as a good example of the burgeoning Classic Era format, solid jokes paired with elements above and beyond the necessary. In the canon of Simpsons history, it’s the characters and character episodes that get remembered as what made the show great. While this is true, there are structural gems that people should look out for, and, in that regard, Radio Bart is a perfect example.

Yours in never playing one of Sting’s records, Gabriel.

 

Jokes, Lines, and Stray Thoughts.

There is a near fundamental asexuality to the Simpson family, so much so that Lisa’s gyrating looks more like someone put a dress over two soccer balls. A near spherical lower half that is more cartoon than human. They are capable of drawing otherwise within the style, like with the hair, but the family retain design elements from the creepy Ulman short style.

Speak of the devil, you can see up that young lady’s skirt! This reminds me of the weird self-insert Simpsons porn on the internet. I find this shit creepy as the show has a familial sense to me. It’s like sexualising your grandma.

The reflection of the proto-twerking in Homer’s eyes is a fairly done gag but the superlative of the drool shot is a goodun.

Horny Homer is always such an awkward thing. The glandular quality to arousal is so viscerally organic that it clashes with the cartoon elements he needs to get into his various escapades.

This fucking microphone ad is based on a real thing with precious little changed. It’s ghastly and you will cringe so hard watching it that light won’t be able to escape your core. Here.

We’re gonna roll this Kevin Conroy across the USA, CON-ROOOOOYY

Weird use of the Mayor Quimby model in the ad there

Bart’s turning ten, even though he talked about turning ten in Stark Raving Dad.

Bart’s terrible presents is a funny concept, but somewhat at odds with the family’s characterisation. Bart is seen with toys and videogames, so scumming him with presents like shelf paper doesn’t hold water.

Serrated growth lines on the door jam are a novel touch

“Take a message”

I got a free cream bun from a bakery for my birthday, once. It was terrible.

The digital audio tape thing is weird. CDs came out in ’83 and DATs in 87’ but the real boom of CDs as an audio medium wasn’t until the late 90s, hell, their biggest year was 2000.

There’s only so close you can draw a child’s head to an adult woman’s vagina and this episode dances on that line.

Bart has the same existentially ambiguous watch as his father.

Some classic character designs at Wall E Weasels, nice to see things like that.

The scene where Nelson is dumping balls in the hole is repeated animation, which you can tell because the edge of Bart glitches back into frame a few times.

I do love the videogame depictions in the show. Larry the Looter reminds me a little of that PS2, I think it was a release title, game State of Emergency. Nice to see art imitate art.

I’d love to see a game made to look a bit like this today.  One of the great things about the amazing graphics of the sleek-dazzling year of 2020 is that you can make them effectively look like the old cartoon games I wanted as a child.

The whole scene with the robot band is a classic, great run of solid gags, “Birthday boy or girl” gets quoted all the time and the guy in the Wall E outfit putting the fire out adds this hilarious extra dimension to the dilapidation of the venue. Like, they can’t even afford a separate tech guy.

First gift off the bat is the label maker and the subsequent plot point that Bart labels everything with it. Why would this matter later? It’s a throwaway gag.

Bart’s speed with it is uncanny.

“Nothing’s gonna top that cactus” almost sounds like an Australianism and I am now determined to use it as such.

I always thought the Etiquette Guide was Martin’s present.

“One can of beer left and it’s Bart’s” is a goodun. There’s an undercurrent element  of Homer where he deeply respects a variety of colloquial rule concepts like jinx and it’s always nice to see that crop up again.

Using the mic to prop open the window is a goodun, it escalates from doorstop in a believable yet unexpected way.

The turnaround on the present is limp. Marge talks into it once and Bart just lights up. Having it come through a radio on in another room or something would have been better, as it would have illustrated the use for mischief in a way different to all previous examples.

Homer doing nothing but eat the chocolate out of the Neapolitan ice-cream is a clever piece of film-making that shows us Homer likes to, indeed, needs to, eat ass.

Bartron is a reference to an Ulman short, one that shows up in The Simpsons 138^th Episode Spectacular.

The original joke of Homer’s reaction to the alien invasion was that he was going to be making Kool-ade filled with rat poison, like what the cultists drank in Jonestown, with the idea that he was going to be preparing himself and his family for suicide. Beyond being a notch dark, it is wildly out of character. Grabbing the shotgun is a far better choice.

This is the end of the emotional component of the episode. If they’d better integrated Homer’s need for Bart’s love with him being more permissive leading directly to prank escalation, the episode would have been closer to the complete package. Keeping character focus on a character but changing the core plot, emotional arc, or theme like this will always present as a problem because the character’s continued presence forces the point.

“Sorry lady, show’s over” my brother would say that to mum sometimes and it would always draw a disapproving frown.

“Non-Threatening Boys” is such a hilarious magazine title, but also, I get it. Imagine having an organ that wanted you to go hang out with a tiger or something and mostly it was fine but sometimes, not even always intentionally, the tiger would lacerate or eat you. Women have to deal with that and it’s what drives them insane.

The fart gag isn’t gonna work because no speaker is going to beat the audio of you making the fart sound with your mouth if you’re in the same room as it. It’s redundant.

“Rod. Todd. This is God.” Excellent delivery.

Almost out of character for a fundie kid to ask how god can do something.

I wanted to do something like this using ultrasonic speakers and the street preachers in the city. These things work like the audio equivalent of lasers, there’s no spill, so only the things in the direct path of them can hear them.

“Happy God, happy God”

This whole section is a great example of how humans can claim to be the voice of god through asinine bullshit like revelation to manipulate frightened morons into doing things they otherwise know is morally wrong. 

The well idea being just an extension of the prank montage is good. Minus some scene of Bart planning something bigger and worse, it presents the event as something that got out of hand due to Bart just not thinking. It’s true to the age of the character.

“Hoot-man” Willy’s exclamation here isn’t in the Frinkiac.

Old wells and quicksand were two things child-me thought would be a much bigger issue in my life.

Willy and the tractor with plough attachment is good, paired with “Horse’s arse” is a great cap.

“He’s a liar!” is well delivered, paired with a near Marvel style pose it really sticks the joke.

The lost child phenomenon is a crazy one. It does genuinely happen, but there’s this weird level of fakery that exists, and some of it’s nuts. There’s the obvious “doing it for attention or cash” one, but then there’s events like the Mexican earthquake survivor Frida Sofia, a non-existent girl who ripped through the Mexican national consciousness like a meme plague.

The media circus scenes here pretty faithfully imitates the usual mess that surrounds these events.

Black haired Wiggum. Eddie and Lou aren’t in the fat cop scene cause they weren’t fat enough for the joke to work. They’re in later scenes, but the established reason functions within basic cartoon reality. I mean, there’s a million ways to resolve the issue, but the genre doesn’t demand such reasoning.

I love the “unorthodox solutions”. Socrates’ owner’s voice and manner is one of those things that we’d do imitations of, and the line, “I don’t think he’s coming back” is a perfect modern Simpsons quote. The rhythm of the scene is perfect. The release, the flutter away, the single cry, and the absolute lack of tone change in the character are perfect. There’s a video online of something like this where the bird flies into traffic and explodes on a truck’s windshield.

There’s also a guy in a cow print shirt in the background, which baffles me. There are a few wild designs floating around this episode, good to keep an eye out for.

Basic Jaws reference, but the gutting a child gag adds a bit more to it.

Great Frink moment, so beautifully stupid and impractical.

There’s a general haphazardness to Marge’s housewife stereotypes as she has several competing ones at once. Sometimes she’s the domestic goddess who demands an according level of civility, others she’s banging out frozen meals in front of the TV with no explanation.

Lisa hitting Homer about the hero remark is a goodun. I loathe the overuse of that word.

There was a concert recently where the money went to victims of living in Australia. Beyond the usual discussions of how much will actually get to the people who need it, there’s just something funny about a huge pile of people having fun to benefit someone who has suffered.

Sting’s cameo is another nice one that gets a little expansion at the end, but to good effect. Also adds to the nascent idea of Krusty being a showbiz legend by mentioning that he used to open for him.

First time Sideshow Mel speaks.

The charity song fad was grotesque, and each of the songs is a fucking abomination.

Ha, a real circus where there was a media circus, what commentary!

There were so many suicide scenes and references in old cartoons. Shit like that these days would have people pitch a fit.

Nice organic roll from the Itchy and Scratchy ep to a plot development. Working things into scenes that flow into each other creates cohesion and prevents the sense of arbitrary authorial power.

Weird shot of people around the well, like they forgot a background and just thought, “fuck it”.

“Feral or wolf-like state” and the artists impression were good.

“…but I bet you’re stupid enough to leave a property of Bart Simpson label on that radio”.  So good, didn’t even show him putting the label on the radio, just showed him putting it on everything. Great background storytelling, makes the surprise Bart feels the surprise we feel. Textbook grade material, copy it wherever you can.

These days, you could easily use Bluetooth speakers or something, but why even bother going outside to find wells when you can catfish paedophiles from the comfort of home.

Lou could easily fit down the hole.

“What did I do to deserve this?” is a good line. Children are barely self-aware.

Lou and Eddie ditching Bart is funny, I’d say it’s a bit off but given the state of American police, it really isn’t.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the feeling down at the station” is a goodun. The casual nature of it gives it extra sting.

I love that Homer throws the Krusty doll down there instead of dropping it.

“Bald boob” is fucking funny and the shot of Homer trying to stuff himself into the well orifice, only to be hammerlocked by the cops, is fucking quality.

Maybe get the crane for Timmy earlier?

“The time has come for finger-pointing.” There’s a run of lines like these around this era, where Kent will say the implied element of sensationalised news out loud.

A character episode would have spent time with Bart in the hole and time with the family dealing with feeling like bad parents. This is a comedy episode, though, so what we get is a kind of montage of bits like the interview and the girl’s skipping rope rhyme. Things like this show you that the episode concept can change radically depending on presentation, even within the same show’s genre pocket.

“I Do Believe We’re Naked.” Honestly, I’m surprised an R&B group called Funky See; Funky Do never popped up.

Per the point above about montages, the scene with Quimby is pointless to the plot outside of the one joke about him, and, by extension, politicians in general.

Dave Shutton is a fun character while he lasts.

Ah, an old-timey word processor. Imagine a calculator with a primitive form of Word Perfect on it. Most had teensy screens that would only manage characters. Now this article is on one side of my laptop screen while Radio Bart fills the other. Firefox is in the background. Torrents are going. The future!

The Lincoln Squirrel is a fun jab at tabloid journalism.

Beautiful shot of Marge and Homer going to the well. Night shots require more variations like light source consideration and colour than the daytime shots. The day brings omnipresent light sources and cartoon flatness, Simpnoir demands thought which results in more considered cinematography.

“You’ll grow into it” great Homer phrase.

Bart’s realisations are nice, sometimes funny, but the emptiness of them has already worn thin. Like a Kmart shelf, they function, but you’ll never leave one to a family member in a will.

Odd Popeye reference from Homer.

Where did Marge get the wheelbarrow?

“Why didn’t I think ‘a that” is a line that covers for previous plot dents.

BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY BUFF WILLY

The Lincoln Squirrel assassination is a good fakeout.

The rest of the episode is basically fucking around. This sort of format is what led to some of the funniest episodes, the ability to experiment with the comedy elements after the expectations set and characters had been established.

Bart exclaiming “Sting” in the exact same tone he does his mother and father is a good joke.

CAUTION WELL. To be fair, a comedy tag is expected for a comedy, but it clashes with what was a legitimate emotional point in Homer feeling hurt that Bart didn’t like his present.