Bart the Daredevil

PLOT SUMMARY FROM WIKIPEDIA

The Simpsons family attends a monster truck rally featuring Truck-o-Saurus, a giant robotic dinosaur which ultimately crushes the Simpson family car. The rally's grand finale features a death-defying stunt by "the world's greatest daredevil", Lance Murdock. Despite the fact that the act leaves Murdock badly hurt and hospital-bound, Bart is enamored by his performance and dreams of becoming a daredevil. Bart quickly injures himself during his first skateboard stunt. At the hospital, Dr. Hibbert shows Bart a ward full of children who have been hurt from attempting stunts. Nonetheless, Bart is persistent and continues to pursue his daredevil interest by jumping over a swimming pool and Homer on his hammock. On a class trip to Springfield Gorge, Bart announces that on Saturday he will jump over the gorge. Lisa talks Bart into visiting the hospital to see Murdock, hoping that the daredevil will talk him out of the dangerous stunt. Unexpectedly, however, Murdock encourages Bart to continue on his legacy. Bart plans to do it against the wishes of Homer, who insists that it is too dangerous.

Even after a punishment, several orders, and a "heart-to-heart talk" with Homer, Bart still goes to the gorge and tries to jump it. He is stopped at the last second by Homer, who decides to jump the gorge himself to show Bart what it is like to see a family member needlessly risk their life for no good reason. Bart, not wanting to see his father injured on his account, recants his wish to jump the gorge, and promises that he will never try to be a daredevil again. He and Homer reconcile, but Homer is still on the skateboard—when he moves to hug Bart, the board rolls down a hill and flies over the gorge, with Homer on board. Although it briefly appears as though Homer will make it safely across, he loses momentum near the middle and plummets to the bottom. A helicopter winches Homer out, slamming his head against the side of the gorge several times in the process before he is loaded into a waiting ambulance. Mere seconds after driving away, however, the ambulance crashes into a tree. The gurney carrying Homer falls out of the back, and Homer once again falls to the floor of the canyon. Homer is eventually taken to the hospital and put in the same ward as Lance Murdock, where he tells him, "You think you've got guts? Try raising my kids!"

The episode was written by Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky and directed by Wes Archer. The character Lance Murdoch was based on Evel Knievel, an American motorcycle daredevil and entertainer famous in the United States and elsewhere between the late 1960s and early 1980s. Kogen, Wolodarsky, and many other members of the Simpsons' staff were fans of Knievel's stunts, and Wolodarsky named "Bart the Daredevil" as his favorite episode among the episodes that he wrote for The Simpsons, because it is "near and dear to [his] heart". Dr. Hibbert makes his first appearance on the series in the episode. In Kogen and Wolodarsky's original script for "Bart the Daredevil", Hibbert was a woman named Julia Hibbert, who they named after comedic actress Julia Sweeney (Hibbert was her last name, through marriage, at the time). When the Fox network moved The Simpsons to prime time on Thursdays to compete against the National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) top-rated The Cosby Show, the writing staff instead decided to make Hibbert a parody of Bill Cosby's character Dr. Cliff Huxtable.

Accessed from Wikipedia on Feb. 27, 2010