Bart on the Road

After encountering administrative errors that will require him to begin his vacation one day earlier than expected, Principal Skinner abruptly changes the final day of the school semester to be a "go to work with your parents day" so he can close the school early. Lisa goes to the nuclear power plant with Homer, while Bart, after finding out he is not allowed to just stay at home and watch Marge do housework, instead goes with Patty and Selma to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Bart makes himself a fake driver's license while at the DMV, and later uses it to rent a car and arrange a road trip with Nelson, Milhouse and Martin, paid for with $600 that Martin's father helped him earn on the futures market. The boys soon hit the road after each giving their parents an alibi concocted by Bart. At first, they travel aimlessly for a while and frivolously spend Martin's money at multiple stops, before deciding to travel to the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. Only after arriving at World's Fair Park do they discover that the Fair was held in 1982, and they spend the last of Martin's money on mediocre souvenirs. A frustrated Nelson throws a rock at the Sunsphere and causes it to topple, crushing the boys' car and leaving then stranded in Knoxville. Bart places a collect call to Lisa, who has so far spent her entire spring break at the power plant with Homer, and asks her to help him return home while concealing the ordeal from their parents. On her advice, Bart becomes a courier, but none of his assignments take him anywhere close to Springfield. Lisa tells Homer of Bart's predicament after making him promise he will not get angry. Homer deliberately destroys his workstation so that he can order a replacement unit from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and have it shipped via nearby Knoxville, with Bart as the courier and the other boys stowing away inside the shipment crate. With Bart safely back in Springfield, Lisa and Homer quietly fume at him at the dinner table. However, Marge remains clueless about Bart's misadventures, despite later receiving multiple confusing phone calls from Principal Skinner (who saw Bart during a delivery run in Hong Kong), the Tennessee State Police, and the courier service that employed Bart. ==Production==

in Knoxville, Tennessee. The episode was written by Richard Appel, The writing staff had never done a spring break episode before so they thought, "What would Lisa and Bart do on spring break?" and came up with the road trip plot. Bill Oakley, the show runner of The Simpsons at the time, said that road trips were something that the writers liked to write stories about. The idea of four children going on a road trip was "so exciting" that they immediately knew they wanted to write it. There was a debate over where the children would go, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was first suggested, but the writers eventually decided to have them go to a "funny unlikely place". Oakley's show runner partner, Josh Weinstein, said that the writers were always looking for combinations of characters that had not been done many times on the show. Homer and Lisa had not been done "too often" and they wanted the two characters to bond and get closer to each other. The episode was directed by Swinton O. Scott III. ==Cultural references==

During his visit to the cracker factory as part of the "go to work with your parents day", Milhouse and his father slide down poles like Batman and Robin in the 1960s Batman TV series. Bart and his friends use Bart's fake license to see the R-rated 1991 film Naked Lunch, an adaptation of William Burroughs's novel dealing with heroin addiction, homosexuality, and hallucinogens. While leaving the theater after viewing the film, Nelson Muntz muses, "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title". Principal Skinner books a vacation with AmeriWestica, a parody of America West Airlines. On the road, the boys pick up a hitchhiker, who is based on the hitchhiker in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Bart says of Branson: "My dad says it's like Las Vegas if it were run by Ned Flanders." ==Reception==

In its original broadcast, "Bart on the Road" finished 63rd in the ratings for the week of March 25 to March 31, 1996, with a Nielsen rating of 7.2. The episode was the fifth-highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, following The X-Files, Cops, Party of Five, Martin, and Melrose Place. said that it "contains some superb touching character scenes between Homer and Lisa, a fascinating glimpse of Marge's insecurities, and some nice touches that take it above the show's very high average." DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson enjoyed the episode and said that he "loves" the children's experiences at their parents' jobs, adding, "and when they head out of town, the fun continues. Any episode that sends the kids to the site of the World's Fair is OK by me." Jennifer Malkowski of DVD Verdict considered the best part of the episode to be when Patty and Selma explain their job at the DMV: "Somedays we don't let the line move at all. We call those weekdays." Malkowski concluded her review by giving the episode a grade of B+. John Thorpe of Central Michigan Life named it the eighth-best episode of the series. Robert Canning of IGN gave the episode a score of 9.5 out of 10, calling it "outstanding" and summarizing his review with: "'Bart on the Road' is a fun trip and very funny, but it's the way everything comes together that really makes it memorable." ==References==