Bart the Daredevil
"Bart the Daredevil" is the eighth episode of the second season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on December 6, 1990. In the episode, Bart decides he wants to become a daredevil after watching famous stunt performer Lance Murdock at a monster truck rally.
The episode was written by Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky and directed by Wes Archer. Series creator Matt Groening called the episode his favorite of the series, and it is also considered among the series' best by several critics.
Plot[edit]
The Simpsons attend a monster truck rally featuring Truckasaurus, a giant robotic dinosaur that crushes their car when they accidentally drive into the arena. The rally's grand finale features a death-defying stunt by legendary daredevil Lance Murdock. The stunt leaves Murdock badly injured and hospitalized, but it inspires Bart to be a daredevil.
Bart injures himself trying to jump the family car on his skateboard. At the hospital, Dr. Hibbert shows Bart a ward full of children who have been hurt by dangerous stunts. Undeterred, Bart keeps performing daredevil stunts, and during a class trip to Springfield Gorge, announces he will jump the gorge on his skateboard the next Saturday.
Lisa persuades him to visit Murdock at the hospital, hoping he will discourage Bart from jumping the gorge, but instead, Murdock encourages Bart to do it.
Homer insists jumping the gorge is too dangerous and forbids Bart to do it. None of Homer's punishments or arguments dissuade Bart, who goes to the gorge that Saturday. As Bart is about to perform the stunt, Homer arrives, tackles Bart and decides to jump the gorge himself to show him what it feels like to see a family member unnecessarily risking his life.
Not wanting to see his father get hurt on his account, Bart ultimately promises to stop being a daredevil; as Homer hugs Bart in relief, the skateboard accidentally rolls down a hill and flies over the gorge with Homer still on it. It appears Homer will make it safely across, but he loses momentum, and plunges onto several jagged rocks during his fall until he hits the bottom of the gorge. Homer is then airlifted into an ambulance, which crashes into a tree, causing him to fall down the gorge again.
In the hospital, Homer ends up in the same hospital room with Murdock. He tells him, “You think you’ve got guts, try raising my kids!”
Reception[edit]
In its original American broadcast, "Bart the Daredevil" finished 20th in Nielsen ratings for the week of December 3–9, 1990, with a 15.0/24 rating/share and 26.2 million viewers, making The Simpsons the highest-rated television series on the Fox network that week.[20] To promote The Simpsons Sing the Blues, the music video for the album's lead single, "Do the Bartman", premiered shortly after this episode's first broadcast.[21]
In an interview conducted by Entertainment Weekly in 2000 celebrating the show's tenth anniversary, Groening named "Bart the Daredevil" his favorite episode of the series, and chose the scene in which Homer is loaded into an ambulance and then falls out of it as the funniest moment in the series.[22]
Writing for the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Simpsons writers Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky noted that "Bart the Daredevil"'s sequence in which Homer falls down the gorge is the one that "everyone remembers", noting that "he's getting much stupider by this point."[23] Kogen also considers the episode to be his favorite of the ones he has written.[24][25]
Since airing, the episode has received positive reviews from critics. Michael Moran of The Times ranked it as the third best in the show's history.[26] DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson enjoyed the episode, and referred to its opening by claiming that "any episode that starts with the brilliance that is Truckasaurus has to be good." He liked the decent morals explored in the episode, and called the conclusion a "great one", making it a "consistently fine episode".[27]
Jeremy Kleinman of DVD Talk considered "Bart the Daredevil" one of his favorite episodes of the season. He found the daredevil scenes to be funny, but also appreciated the episode's scenes with "true heart". Kleinman concluded by noting that the episode helps The Simpsons stand apart from other animated and live action sitcoms by focusing more on the relationships between the characters than "just a humorous weekly plotline".[28] In his book Doug Pratt's DVD, DVD reviewer and Rolling Stone contributor Doug Pratt chooses the episode as one of the funniest of the series.[29]