"Bart of Darkness" is the premiere of the sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on September 4, 1994.
The episode was written by Dan McGrath and directed by Jim Reardon.
Plot
During a heatwave, Bart and Lisa persuade Homer to buy a swimming pool for their backyard after a day of swimming in a mobile pool truck. Once the backyard pool is up and running, the family holds a town-wide pool party that ends with Bart breaking his leg in an attempt to dive into the pool from the tree house; after a hospital visit, Bart is ordered to spend the rest of the summer wearing a full cast over his broken leg, leaving him unable to swim in the pool or socialize with any of the other children. To cheer him up, Lisa gets Bart a telescope, which he uses to spy on other town residents. Bart becomes gradually more concerned about his next door neighbor Ned Flanders after he first hears a womanly scream from his house, and later witnesses Ned digging a grave in the backyard and remorsefully calling himself a "murderer". The next day, Bart overhears Ned telling his sons Rod and Todd that their mother is "with God" and they will soon join her. All of this leads Bart to believe that Ned has killed his wife Maude and is now planning to do the same to their children.
Lisa revels in her newfound popularity with the schoolkids as a direct result of the swimming pool, until the other children abandon her in favor of Martin Prince, whose family now has an even bigger backyard pool than the Simpsons. Without the attention from the other kids, Lisa soon notices Bart's fears of what Ned might be up to, and she reluctantly agrees to help him investigate by sneaking into the Flanders house while Ned is away. However, Ned unexpectedly comes home early and Lisa hides upstairs, causing Bart to chase after Ned. The three of them soon meet in the attic where Bart accuses Ned, who faints from the shock.
After the police arrive to question Ned, they discover that Maude is alive and well, having just returned from her time "with God" at a Bible camp in the countryside. Bart presses Ned about the grave in his backyard, forcing Ned to tearfully confess that he dug the grave for one of Maude's houseplants after realizing it was overwatered. When Ned sees the police have unearthed the dead plant from his backyard, he lets out a high-pitched scream which Bart recognizes as the womanly scream he originally heard. Martin's turn as the new popular kid goes well until he overestimates the capacity of the new pool, which quickly collapses from the physical stress. While the schoolkids all walk away in anger, Nelson rips off Martin's swim trunks. Martin, naked and alone amid the wreckage, solemnly sings "Summer Wind" as he watches the sunset.
Production
For season six, 20th Century Fox moved The Simpsons back to its original Sunday night time of 8 pm, having aired on Thursdays for the previous four seasons. It has remained in this slot ever since.
Dan McGrath was chosen to write the episode, while Jim Reardon directed. This was because the episode, along with "Lisa's Rival", was in production at the time of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The earthquake damaged much of the Film Roman building in which The Simpsons writing and animation staff worked, forcing them to move out for three months and continue production in a temporary building. and wearing his underwear instead of a swimsuit.
Many of the heatwave jokes at the start of the episode were based on events from the crew's lives. The sitting in front of the fridge-freezer joke came from McGrath, who had done something similar as a child. The Springfield Pool-Mobile was based on a similar vehicle from David Mirkin's childhood, where a truck with a "spinning cars" fairground ride on the back would often come around his neighborhood. The Itchy & Scratchy episode title references Planet of the Apes, with the mutants being a reference to the Star Trek episode "The Menagerie".
Critical reception
Mike Duffy praised the episode, stating it showed that The Simpsons was "just as strong and funny as it ever was". Later reviews shared these sentiments.
Gary Russell and Gareth Roberts, authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, found that the "eventual explanation for [Flanders'] murderous behavior is hilarious".
Erik Adams, in The A.V. Club, writes that "'Bart Of Darkness' starts The Simpsons’ sixth season off on the right foot with a full-bodied embrace of its source material and a comedic core that challenges traditional TV logic. The episode may have marked the show’s induction into the television establishment, but it would be many more years before any of its well-honed edges would be blunted by complacency."