I ve Said It Before and I ll Say It Again Democracy Simply Doesn t Work

Episode - 2F11
Showtime Aired - ii/5/1995

After unleashing an unflattering balloon caricature of Principal Skinner, Bart is forced to help Skinner with his early-morning astronomy... and Bart fooling around with the telescope leads to the discovery of a comet that'due south on a collision grade with Springfield.

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Tropes featured in "Bart'southward Comet" include:

• Achievements in Ignorance: Skinner has been at his astronomy for years, makes very calculated and precise adjustments with his telescope with the hope of finding something interesting, and has ultimately turned up cipher. Bart screws around with the telescope for a few seconds, spins information technology around haphazardly, and discovers a comet.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Sticking basically unrelated riders onto other bills in an effort to either torpedo a popular measure or let an unpopular one go its pes in the door is hardly uncommon. Just ask Florida's Amendment nine.
• Apocalypse How: Form 0, as the comet'due south potential devastation seems to be limited to just Springfield.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Used as a joke. Selma and Dr. Hibbert are of the belief that goats are always male and sheep are e'er female person.
  • Penguins are shown flying to escape the comet. Penguins cannot wing in real life.
• Allurement-and-Switch: Ned finds all of Springfield right exterior his bomb shelter, glaring at him and in some cases carrying weapons. Moe angrily states they desire to be in the shelter themselves, but Ned tells them there's no infinite. So Moe just calmly announces they'll all "go off and die, so," and anybody turns to leave.
• Big "NO!": Skinner unleashes four of them over the form of the episode.
• Brick Joke:
  • A running ane involving the "Large Butt Skinner" balloon. After Skinner loses it at the end of the commencement act, it disappears from the plot entirely. And so at the very cease, it shows up once again only in fourth dimension to exist popped by the now mostly disintegrated comet.
  • A visual one pays off when Homer hypothesizes the atmosphere could disintegrate the comet into pieces no bigger than a chihuahua's caput. Come the cease, and exactly that happens, consummate with a dog to compare sizes with.
• The Bus Came Back: A rather odd and unexpected example; instead of the Speaker of the Firm of Representatives being depicted as the person who held that position in real-life at the time (Newt Gingrich), or fifty-fifty a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of him, the prosecuting attorney from Krusty's trial all the way dorsum in "Krusty Gets Busted" suddenly shows up again, occupying the speaker'southward chair afterwards manifestly irresolute his career from law to politics. ^note (This was probable the event of the show's product squad not knowing during production who the speaker would actually be when the episode aired, every bit control of the Firm switched from the Democrats to the Republicans during the 1994 mid-terms, but the previous Republican caucus leader, Bob Michel, didn't stand for re-ballot, and Gingrich wasn't chosen as the new speaker until slightly less than a month before the episode aired)
• Barrel-Monkey:
  • Moe's Tavern doesn't end up doing well on either projected destruction.
  • Nothing goes Skinner'southward manner at the showtime of the episode. Outset Bart tampers with the weather balloon, turning it into an insulting caricature of him. Then Bart discovers a comet just when Skinner managed to catch the balloon. And so Skinner in his despair lets go of the airship, losing it again. Then a newspaper shows up denigrating schools. He reacts to all of these misfortunes with a Large "NO!".
• Call-Back: Ned's bonding with his fellow Springfielders by singing "Que Sera, Sera" is similar to the ending of "When Flanders Failed", as he sang "Put On A Happy Face" with the customers at his now-successful Leftorium.
• Chekhov's Gunman: As Professor Frink starts his presentation, a man frantically yells "QUIT STALLING! WHAT'S THE Program!?!" That same man appears later that season in "The PTA Disbands," yelling "The PTA has disbanded!" and jumping out a window before being informed that the PTA did not disband, jumping dorsum through that window.
• Airtight Circle: All of the drama of the 3rd act involves the fact that (for this episode merely) there is simply 1 mode to leave of Springfield and that is through the span that was accidentally blown upward.
• Colony Driblet: The Bart Simpson Comet turns out to be on a directly collision course with Springfield.
• Comically Missing the Signal: This exchange between Bart and Lisa, when they realise the comet is approaching Springfield:

  Lisa: Don't y'all realize what's happening, Bart? Your comet is gonna collide with the earth and every living affair in its path will be killed.
  Bart: I knew yous'd attempt to find something wrong with my comet, Lisa. You've always been petty and small, right from the beginning.

• Couch Gag: The living room is black and white, and the Simpsons are dancing Condom Hose Limbs cartoon characters.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Early, Homer shrugs off the comet's perceived threat, claiming that it will burn up in the atmosphere and end up "no bigger than a chihuahua's caput." That's exactly what happens, complete with a nearby chihuahua for comparing.

  Bart: What's actually amazing is that this is exactly what Dad said would happen.
  Lisa: Yeah, Dad was correct.
  Homer: I know, kids... I'grand scared too... (the family hugs together, terrified)

• Decoy Protagonist: The offset one-half of the episode makes it seem like it's about Bart and his discovery of the comet. Once said comet is found to be on a standoff form with Springfield, the focus of the episode shifts more to the town as a whole itself, with the Simpsons serving equally the main point of view.
• Democracy Is Bad: The Congress is about to pass a bill on the evacuation of Springfield from the comet, but then the bill has a pornography rider attached to it and is promptly struck down. This leads Kent Brockman to declare: "I've said information technology earlier, and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't piece of work."
• Description Cut: This scene:

  Homer: It'south times similar these I wish I were a religious homo.
  Reverend Lovejoy: It'due south all over, people! We don't accept a prayer!

• Didn't Recollect This Through: This episode offers a five-for-ane:
  • When it's announced that a rocket will be used to destroy the comet, everyone decides to stay and sentry the issue rather than leave just in case something goes wrong.
  • The rocket launched from Fort Springfield misses the mark and takes out the but bridge out of Springfield, seemingly dooming the urban center
  • There's only one span out of Springfield.
  • Rather than face certain death from the comet'due south collision, several people try their luck with the ruins of the bridge. Arnie Pye fifty-fifty lampshades it by calling it "a silent testament to the never-give-up and never think-things-out spirit of our citizens".
  • Artie says this while in a helicopter, suggesting that, span or no span, the people of Springfield could nevertheless (a few at a fourth dimension) wing out of boondocks.
• Dirty Coward: The whole of Springfield becomes this when they unanimously decide to kick Ned out of his ain bomb shelter. At first, not fifty-fifty his wife steps frontward for him, but Ned being Ned, he leaves without argument, calmly singing to himself; subsequently trying desperately not to heed, Homer (the one who suggested it) has a Heel Realisation and leaves then Ned doesn't accept to face death alone, promptly followed by anybody else.
• Empathic Environs: As Skinner recounts his story to Bart of how his astronomical discovery was reported by another school principal before him, a large cloud briefly passes over the moon and darkens the nighttime every bit Skinner proceeds to growl ominously that he 'got back at him, though; him and that little boy of his'. And so the cloud passes and Skinner returns to his previously upbeat, cheerful manner.
• Epic Fail:
  • A fighter pilot launched a missile that somehow hits his wingman, and some other on himself, to say goose egg about their targeting computer somehow identifying Willie as an Iraqi fighter jet. The wingman blames information technology on lack of budget due to the first pilot putting all the coin into health care instead of the military.
  • The missile fabricated to intercept the comet not only doesn't hit the comet but it comes crashing downwardly on the only bridge that leads out of town, sealing it off.
  • The countless avalanche of people attempting a Ramp Bound to get over the bridge's hole and declining.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: Principal Skinner tries using this to his reward:

  Whoever gets that balloon down doesn't have to learn fractions!

• Fallout Shelter Fail: The whole boondocks crowds into Flanders' bunker though Ned states they'll like die of suffocation before the comet hits and in that location's no food for all of them but he allows it cause Ned but can't refuse to help. Indeed it very comically crowded and filled to the breaking signal. Eventually everyone leaves to face their demise together. But luckily the comet burns upwardly in the atmosphere and reduced to a pocket-sized rock, which bounces off the bunker - causing the whole matter to instantly crumble on touch.
• Failed a Spot Bank check: A pair of fighter jets somehow mistaken an angry Scotsman as an Iraqi fighter jet.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Kent's "the following people are gay" listing consists of Simpsons staff members.
  • When the whole town crowds into Ned's bomb shelter, you tin briefly see Waldo the get-go fourth dimension everyone is shown crowded in.
• Gilligan Cut: When the only bridge out of town is blown up:

  Lisa: We're doomed!
  Homer: It'south times like this I wish I were a religious man.
  Lovejoy: (running through the streets) It'south all over, people! We don't accept a prayer! Aaaahh!!!

• Green Aesop: Inverted. The town is saved but considering the clouds of pollution high above information technology thickened the temper to the necessary levels to destroy the comet. Lisa even lampshades this while pointing out that Homer was right in his assumption.
• Heel–Face Plough: Downplayed case with Homer. He'due south the beginning to go out the bomb shelter since he can't in his skilful censor let Ned die alone, but conveniently forgets that he was the ane who booted him out in the offset identify and called him useless.
• Homage: The final act has several to The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street". At that place are even stronger parallels to another TZ episode titled "The Shelter". What makes information technology all the more hilarious is that, dissimilar in "The Shelter", Flanders did build his flop shelter with the intention of letting other people in, but Homer wants to kicking him out anyhow. And unlike in "The Shelter", the residue of the town doesn't try to strength their manner in, only instead enquire and sadly start to leave when Flanders tells them there'southward no room (just for Flanders to change his mind and permit them all in anyway).
• Hypocrite Has a Point: Homer condemns everyone (including the Flemish region family unit) for Ned having to leave the shelter when it was Homer's ain idea to kick him out in the first place. Non that he was incorrect in calling everyone out, especially since Ned'southward own family seemed okay with information technology.
• Insane Troll Logic: Later the comet fails to hit Springfield and burns up in the polluted atmosphere, Moe blames the observatory for the cause of the approaching comet. "Let's go fire downward the observatory then this'll never happen again."
• Irony:
  • Out of all people in the shelter, the i to leave was Ned Flemish region, who built information technology in the beginning place.
  • The only thing the comet destroyed was the bomb-shelter that was supposed to protect everybody (it as well pops the airship).
  • Skinner's been trying to find unnamed objects in the sky for years, to no success. Bart looks through the telescope (unsupervised) for all of three seconds and discovers a comet.
  • For all of Lisa'south badgering in the past and the futurity about Springfield's rampant pollution, this time information technology saved them all. She even points it out.
  • After Bart catches the burnt-up comet and anybody rejoices, Selma comments to Patty that what simply happened "sure makes you capeesh the preciousness of life," earlier they both take big drags on their cigarettes.
• Jerkass: When Homer demands Ned let his family utilise the Flanders' bomb shelter, Ned agrees equally he built it big enough for both families. Homer tells him no and demands his neighbours family leave to the Simpsons can have information technology all to themselves. Marge calls him out on information technology and forces him to share the shelter with the Flanders.
• Jerk with a Centre of Gilt: Hypocrisy or not, Homer is the starting time 1 to exit the shelter to wait for Ned. Moe soon follows.
• Long List: Kent Brockman, when preparing for the end of Springfield thanks to the eponymous comet, presented a very fast scrolling list of People Who Are Gay. Homer hurriedly tries to re-create down the listing every bit it scrolls. ^note The names are actually those of the bear witness'southward production crew.
• Expect Behind You: Database assumes Bart is trying to pull this on the Super Friends, since comets could not be seen in wide daylight and without a telescope, before realizing the comet is approaching Springfield.

  Database: I arrive a point never to plow my caput unless I expect to see something, Bart.

• Meta Twist: By this point in the series, Homer Simpson has long since proven himself as a homo you lot would not trust at all when it comes to matters of scientific knowledge (or, heck, any cognition period), but the climax involves his prediction that years of pollution from the nuclear plant has thickened the atmosphere to a higher place Springfield to the point that the comet would tear itself apart from the friction until it was "the size of a chihuahua's head" being completely correct (with a random chihuahua even actualization to provide a comparison). Bart, Lisa and Homer get scared that the latter turned out to exist completely right.
• Mis-blamed: In-universe. When everything is said and done, Moe pins the blame of the comet near destroying Springfield... on the town's observatory.
• Model Planning: During the boondocks meeting to discuss how to stop the comet, Professor Frink uses a model of the city of Springfield to illustrate the city's plan to stop the comet by bravado it upward with an explosive rocket. Unfortunately, some of the flames from the controlled explosion demonstration wind up falling onto the model'due south representation of Moe's tavern, setting it afire.

  Moe: Oh, beloved God, no!

• Mooning: Bart manages to rig a weather balloon to brand it expect like a mooning Main Skinner.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Skinner got even with Master Kohoutek..."him and that footling boy of his."
  • Homer's story of how he drove away from some unnamed criminal offence and missed work.
  • Frink mentions during the Info Dump regarding the missile that the people who helped him design information technology worked for the Carter administration and resigned for reasons he doesn't thinks are worth talking about at the moment.
  • Apparently, Skinner has previously punished Bart with a caning.
  • When Skinner introduces the conditions balloon, he mentions that this was "our most propane-explosion-free science calendar week ever".
• Odd Name Out: Lisa is the but fellow member of the Super Friends to not have a nickname.
• Off-Model: About the finish of the episode, Apu is yellow instead of brown for a few seconds.
• Persecuted Intellectuals: The people of Springfield rally into a mob and go after the observatory and its personnel considering they (or at least Moe, who triggered information technology) believe destroying it will forbid something like this from ever happening over again.
• Precision Crash: Played for Laughs: Springfield is hit past a comet; fortunately most of it burns up in the atmosphere so only a modest rock lands. Information technology scores a direct hit on Ned Flemish region' bomb shelter, which everyone had left mere minutes before.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Skinner has patently once punished Bart with a caning, a possible nod to the Michael Fay incident in 1993, when the teenaged Fay was punished by caning for vandalizing during a trip to Singapore. That incident would provide the parodic basis of "Bart Vs. Commonwealth of australia", which aired two weeks subsequently.
• Rule of Three: Skinner's Big "NO!" when he finds out Bart discovered a comet, that he just let go of the balloon and read the front page article about how the Prez says school is for losers.
• Running Gag: The "Big Butt Skinner" balloon keeps popping upwardly throughout the episode after its launch, with its almost plot-important scene being when Skinner leaves Bart alone to try to take hold of it, assuasive Bart to notice the comet.
• Running Gagged: The Skinner balloon is destroyed at the end of the episode past the falling star punching through it.
• Schoolhouse Is for Losers: Skinner does a Large "NO!" when the newspaper headlines says "PREZ SEZ SCHOOL IS FOR LOSERS".
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Later on Skinner's attempts to down the balloon fail, Bart attempts to flee the scene, to no avail. ("Race y'all to Utah, Milhouse.")
  • After the missile blows the only bridge out of town to bits, and with the aerodrome on the other side, numerous Springfielders try jumping the gap in the bridge with their cars. Emphasis on try.
• Shout-Out: Ned sings "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Volition Be, Will Be)" while awaiting for the comet. He is so joined by the whole boondocks.
• Shown Their Work: The numbers that Chief Skinner reads off while observing through the telescope ("half-dozen hours 19 minutes Correct ascension, xiv degrees 22 minutes Declination") are actual astronomical coordinates. Chief Skinner is observing in the constellation Orion, just to the east of the star Xi Orionis (about 2/3 of the way between the stars Betelgeuse and Alhena), slowly moving northwards until he reaches 6 hours nineteen minutes Correct Ascension, fourteen degrees 59 minutes Declination, a distance of 37 arcminutes, about the apparent width of the full moon. Bart finds his comet at four hours 12 minutes Right Ascension, 8 degrees 7 minutes Declination, in the constellation Taurus, just southwest of the star Mu Tauri.
• Signs of Disrepair: The only bridge out of Springfield is labeled exactly like that when the photographic camera focuses on it. After the missile blows the bridge to pieces, chunks of the sign are also diddled abroad, leaving backside "Bridge OUT".
• Smart Ball: Homer predicts that a meteor heading for Springfield will probably burn up in the atmosphere until information technology'south the size of a chihuahua'south head. At the finish of the episode, information technology gets lampshaded. "Dad was correct!" "I know, kids. I'grand scared, as well." For added hilarity, the meteor even lands correct next to a chihuahua for comparison.
• Storyboarding the Apocalypse: The town hall meeting to discuss the comet and the plan to blow it upward with a missile includes showing some slides with crude drawings of what the comet volition do to the town. For some reason, the artist felt it necessary to highlight Moe'due south Bar amongst all of the buildings destroyed by the impact... and brand a drawing of the gigantic crater with clearly-labeled charred corpses surrounding it.

  Moe: Oh, dearest God, no!

• Suicidal Overconfidence: The morning after the bridge gets blown abroad by the missile, multiple Springfield citizens try to leap the massive gorge it was set over to become to the other side and get out town while the news cameras scout on. None of the ones we run into endeavour to arrive, and yet in that location is still a large conga line of cars right behind them prepare to attempt the jump regardless. Artie Pye narrates that this is a typical case of Springfield'southward "never surrender and never recollect things through" spirit.
• Take That!: The United States Government doesn't come up off well in this episode, starting with two jets that are running on Epic Neglect Alleged Car levels of inefficiency thank you to government fund cutting-offs and after with Congress deciding to get out the entire town to dice because some idiot decided information technology was a perfect thing to attach a pornography rider to the evacuation assistance proposal and thus is promptly struck down. The people who created the Ballsy Neglect of a missile that causes all of the third-act drama are also mentioned by Frink to have worked for the Carter assistants and left for undisclosed reasons.

  Kent Brockman, later seeing the live feed from Congress: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.

• Tempting Fate: Homer says he'southward not worried about the chances of the missile declining because they can cross the bridge to leave Springfield if necessary to escape the comet. The missile not only misses the comet but also destroys the bridge.
• 3 Stooges Shout-Out: Skinner shows Bart the star sign of the Iii Wise Men. In Bart's imagination he sees the Three Stooges in the sky.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Homer's grudge against Flanders escalates from petty jealousy to trying to go out him for dead to the comet. He at least has the graciousness to regret it afterwards (if in a hypocritical tone in which he blames it on the townspeople).
• Unreadably Fast Text: Kent Brockman's newscast:

  Kent: Now, over the years, a newsman learns a number of things that for 1 reason or another, he only cannot report. Doesn't seem to matter now, so... the following people are gay. (Long List scrolls really fast upwardly the screen)
  Marge: (disgusted) Turn it off.
  Homer: (taking notes) Only a second...

• Wham Line: "You don't need a stupid telescope. It's right there!"
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The congressman presenting the neb on the evacuation of Springfield from the comet is about to mention the state where the town is when he's interrupted by another congressman attaching a pornography passenger to information technology.
• Your Television Hates You: Or radio, in this case, when Bart has to wake up at four:30 am:

  Radio announcer: Top of the hour, time for the news. Merely of course, there is no news nevertheless. Everyone'due south still comatose in their comfy, comfortable beds. Good dark, everybody.
  (Bart groans)

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E14BartsComet

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