"The Bart of War" is the twenty-first and penultimate episode of the fourteenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 18, 2003. The episode was written by Marc Wilmore and directed by Mike Frank Polcino.

In this episode, Bart and Milhouse badly damage Ned Flanders' collection of Beatles memorabilia. Under adult supervision, they are then placed in separate youth groups, but the groups go to war. The episode received negative reviews.

Plot

Marge disapproves of Bart and Milhouse watching South Park, so she unsuccessfully tries to get them to watch Good Heavens on PAX. The boys soon find themselves outside the house and bored, and decide to tie a thread to a fly. When the fly enters the Flanders house and is eaten by a cat, Bart and Milhouse find themselves inside the home, unsupervised. They take the opportunity to cause mischief, and discover Ned's collection of Beatles memorabilia in the basement. They drink from cans of a 40-year-old novelty beverage and start to hallucinate, with Bart seeing Milhouse as John Lennon through various stages of his life. When Ned, Rod and Todd return home and discover the damage caused by Bart and Milhouse, they flee to their panic room and call the police. Chief Wiggum and his crew subsequently catch the boys in the basement, and call their parents. They decide that Bart and Milhouse should spend all their time under parental supervision. Bart is also forbidden from playing with Milhouse, who Marge believes incites Bart into his bad behavior.

Marge subsequently establishes a peer group based on Native American life, called the "Pre-Teen Braves" — composed of Bart, Ralph Wiggum, Nelson Muntz, and Database, with herself as tribe leader after Homer fails in his leadership skills. Later, when Marge takes the boys on a nature walk, they meet Joe Proudfoot of the Mohican tribe who shows them a field that is in need of cleaning up. The Pre-Teen Braves agree to the job, but discover that it has already been cleaned by another peer group, the "Cavalry Kids" — led by Milhouse's father, Kirk Van Houten, composed of Milhouse, Martin Prince, Jimbo Jones, and a nerd named Cosine.

Critical response

Colin Jacobson of DVD Movie Guide said it was "a pretty dull episode" but liked some of the jokes. He also thought that the plot "quickly drags".

On Four Finger Discount, Guy Davis thought the episode was disrespectful to multiple entities including the Beatles and Native Americans. Brendan Dando enjoyed the Beatles jokes but thought the episode took too much time to set up the Bart and Milhouse conflict.

References

it:Episodi de I Simpson (quattordicesima stagione)#La miglior guerra è la non guerra