Rate & Review: "Bart the Cool Kid" (UABF08)

How would you rate this episode?

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Brad Lascelle

Brad Lascelle

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Season 33, Episode 15
Original Airdate: March 20, 2022

Writer: Ryan Koh
Director: Steven Dean Moore
Showrunner: Matt Selman
Co-runner: Brian Kelley

Synopsis: When Bart befriends a famous kid influencer who owns an ultra-cool skate wear brand, Homer leads a rebellion of loser dads against them.

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R&R Poll Average Score: 3.34 / 5 (as of September 23, 2022 / 29 votes)
IMDb User Rating: 6.4 / 10
 
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Eh, this episode is not bad! But... This episode was kinda totally cool though. And once again, I guess Bohdan and I were right a few weeks ago that Steven Dean Moore is the director for Bart the Cool Kid. So... I guess I could go with 5/5 for this one
 
Solid episode, but with a few flaws. I think the satire in this and the way of showing how fads become “uncool” when another generation picks it up was the best part of the episode. It felt a bit like last week’s episode in that it involved a character “going viral,” but this one didn’t dwell on that part as much, instead making him become cool by being associated with Orion.

Orion and Mike Wegman were the weakest parts of this episode. I couldn’t get much of a personality feeling from Orion. I appreciate that the writers tried to flesh him out a little and strengthen his relationship with Bart by having Bart teach Orion how to skate, but the skating part was just dropped other than giving the shoes their colors. And Mike, while less irritating than in “Go Big or Go Homer,” was still a lot less funny than the writers seem to think he is.

I thought the jokes in this were solid too. I especially liked the one where the family all made a mess eating tacos. Seriously, fuck hard taco shells. The episode really picked up steam when Homer got the older guys into the trendy clothes; before that, it just felt like a fairly bland “Bart’s mad at his dad and also finds a new friend who’s cool” story, but this threw a wrench in all that, and I liked the direction it went with the adults about to ruin the reputation of something only the kids really knew about. They maybe could’ve resolved it with something better than a speech from Marge, but it wasn’t bad. The post-credits scene, though, where Orion’s dad says Orion is just a clone of him? What the hell was that?

4/5
 
What the fuck even was that act 4 scene?! Felt like they took a page from FG regarding how shit theirs are 99% of the time!

Might comment more later but this sucked! Unpopular opinion of the year: Next week's episode probably won't be good either, but it'll likely still be better than this simply for not being this.
 
Yeah, I'm not feeling this one. I didn't hate seeing the sneakers disintegrate.. I don't care for the sappy emotional arc with Bart and his new friend. I'd rather wear the assassin shoes than the slipstreme ones.

2/5
 
I actually liked the first part, especially the pop corn scene. Homer was touching while Bart was being like a brat for the whole episode. And Marge and Lisa were nearly useless. Regarding the last scene, i share @NOSaintsFan09 POV.
 
It was mostly just meh. As usual, hard to get invested in guest star eps anymore. I mean, people complained about the cloning thing but that's probably the only thing that interesting about... Orion or whoever. I think Mike Wegman was probably around the point it got weak.

But hell, it's not just a Bart episode but for once this season, actually felt like I was watching the Simpsons. Not just a great one.

Also, did they really need Shauna to excitedly comment on seeing Bart's underwear? Okay I get it, the writers enjoy women creeping on boys, please stop.
 
Started off well and I enjoyed The Weeknd's appearance on this one... but God, what the hell was that asspull final act??? It pretty much derailed all the credibility the episode had.

5/10
 
I was already done with Mike about halfway through his first scene with his "Bed wetter" comment which forced me to break away from the episode for about a minute afterwards because it enraged me that much! While not as detestable as in his first appearance, he still sucked and like a bad running gag was even less "Funny" in each scene after that continuing to show how out of touch the show is with his character and how only they (the writers) seem to like him or think he's funny.

I still don't view Shauna as a pedophile, but this was the first episode where I could understand why there are people who hate her in a context outside of Beware My Cheating Bart as even I thought she was just cruel and nasty. That whole act 1 honestly was on-par with Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart in terms of it being one of the show's worst! Was tempted to just quit the episode afterwards, and looking back I wish I had.

Episode falls into the usual Selman trap of forcing the audience to sympathize with the douchebag character by the end even though they don't deserve it. Homer just came across as immature with his plan to ruin Bart's event just feeling like him being petty over how he was hating him over something he did!

Only thing that came close to feeling like an actual joke was the delayed response of Marge's taco exploding. But at best, that only got a small half-smile from me.

At least last week's episode was just a painfully boring worse version of Homer Badman, this was just bad!
 
Screenshot 2022-03-21 at 00-02-04 Watch The Simpsons Season 33 Episode 15 - Bart the Cool Kid.png

One thing that might get overlooked but I found very good this week is the storyboarding. This is the first time I really thought that whoever came up with how each scene is executed deserves a shout out. The first time I noticed it was the decision to make Homer pull the sheet off Bart and have him spin around and fall on the floor just to see the shoes in front of him, purely to make the execution of "Homer shows Bart shoes" more interesting, but this scene especially was just extremely fun and deserves props. Comparing it to Family Guy that was really struggling to incorporate their 2D characters into the 3D driving scenes.

I thought the episode itself was good too, I thought the modern tech was incorporated well in the episode without feeling forced. Both plots naturally came out of each other and culminated at the end in a fun way. I like that they decided to make both Bart and Orion be genuine friends to each other rather than have a fake out at the end, and seeing them work together was sweet. As I said, Homer and Marge have been on fire this season.

The moral is a little muddy, Homer thinks he's now uncool and learns to love himself again, but he did actually do something bad at the beginning. Bart becomes cool by being himself and helping out Orion, but he never really learns to care more about that than status and material things, instead he learns to appreciate his dad in his own way, which is still also good, but not really the problem Bart had. They made the extremely smart decision to make whatever that last scene was hapen after the end credits. Is that a Jaden Smith crossed with Gemini Man reference? Either way it was dumb.

This is another episode that makes me wish this site had scores out of 10, neither 3 nor 4 really works as a score for me, and usually I'd just not vote but I'll give it a 3.5 rounded up.
 
Smear-Gel said:
This is another episode that makes me wish this site had scores out of 10, neither 3 nor 4 really works as a score for me, and usually I'd just not vote but I'll give it a 3.5 rounded up.
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Same. I wish we could create a page in the future where we decide if it's better to have polls be out of 10 instead of out of 5.
 
The episode was really well-written. The problems of generation gap and fashion on "good look" are essential. However, sometimes the lames still appeared.

I liked many moments: Bart's shame (and how it was animated), how Bart really trusted Homer had stood for his sneakers (even strangely), how Marge converted Homer by classic "I love you who you are" speech, how Homer becoming cool (just the start of becoming, not how he behaves as "cool dad", though that wasn't bad). And this is a problem, because we definitely will forget something quickly. 😅

Mike Wegman's role was "meh" here, and I don't like how he briefly offence Bart in the start.

In summary, interesting and nice episode, but, unfortunally, not bright. 4/5 (up from 3.5)

P.S. The credit scene was really WTF?!, but I had a little laugh. Brian Kelly's humor was felt :D
 
Can we stop pretending the show isn't set in LA? This episode was nothing but pandering fad references and starfucking. And can we change Homer's name to Matt Selman? Lose me with that well-meaning dad crap. I thought Homer proving he was a good husband by beating a wolverine to death was queasy, but at least I know that wasn't autobiographical (or was it?)

Not a good sign when the most prominent supporting characters are guest voices. Funny that Poochie should appear, cuz Orion is a Poochie, and our great and beloved leader has all but confirmed that Orion will return, in a nauseating tweet exchange with The Weeknd. Looks like we'll be getting more MIKE WEGMAN too!

How many THE SIMPSONS GO VIRAL storylines have there been at this point? Enough! This was the second in 2 weeks. And before that we had back to back wilderness adventures. Starting to miss Homer Gets A New Job

WORST. EPISODE. EVER.
 
Well this wasn't as good an episode as some of the others we've gotten recently. The whole deal with Bart and Orion was weirdly wholesome as was the end resolve with Bart and Homer. At the same time, it's always boring when they give us two of the same episode in a row and the ending was just weird.

3/5
 
John95 said:
I still don't view Shauna as a pedophile, but this was the first episode where I could understand why there are people who hate her in a context outside of Beware My Cheating Bart as even I thought she was just cruel and nasty.
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But the thing is she's cruel and nasty either way. Her debut had her demanding Jimbo make either a baby duck or Bart suffer for her amusement. Also outside of this and BMCB there's "What to expect when Bart's expecting" where she forcibly makes out with Bart, with him even muffling in protest and I'm not sure who else would want to start a french-kissing club in an elementary school in "Friend with benefit" especially as Dolph and Kearney had their own clubs. It probably doesn't register because she's never made a bad guy, despite being wholly terrible as a person. If anything the writers' favouritism for her even outshines Lisa. I was working on something bigger to really get into that but there's double-standards all over the place.

Also, kind of a thought I'd gotten while typing but... she also more-or-less replaces two characters who are much funnier. Jeremy (The squeaky-voiced teen) and Rapheal (aka "Sarcastic middle age guy") as well. And like with Gil trying to be Lionel Hutz it just kinda completely loses the joke of either of them. Say what you want about Gil being a poor-man's Lionel Hutz, they at least had a reason to not use Hutz anymore.

Other thing is Smear-Gel brings up a good point. It's funny because I thought the last episode was weaker because Homer's wrongdoing was a contrived accident so an apology feels weird. In this case he intentionally harms Bart would of laziness and tries to continue spiting him. It's weirdly opposite. I think we're supposed to feel bad for Homer being uncool but then Bart's 100% justified in being mad at a guy who humilated him twice, the second time being broadcast all over the world.
 
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Pretty middle-of-the-road episode. Nothing too special or memorable, but nothing overly horrible. People are going way too bonkers over that ending, it was just like one scene chill lol. It's hard to rate these mediocre typical ones after getting such experimental amazing episodes like Boyz N the Highlands or Pixelated and Afraid. Right now a solid 3/5 for me.
 
This season does seem to have some themes going. But let's dive in:

-The shoe's name is "Caliphate"? Is that like...like a reference to ISIS? :confused:
-I did enjoy Homer and Marge both enthusiastically watching the popcorn.
-One of the restaurants is called Ramen Coma, which sounds a lot like Ramen Kowa, a restaurant in Palo Alto.
-"Bought love is the best kind of love" :lol:
-Well, Mike Wegman, the character no one cared to see again, is back.
-Angry Ricky and Llewellyn Sinclair in line.
-Okay, I did like the scene at the Slipreme store. Maybe I'm getting old, but it does seem like everyone thinks they're an influencer these days.
-One of the CDs is a Sadgasm album. Never thought there'd be a callback to That 90s Show.
-"You're hashtagging a lot lately". Well, I never thought I'd hear Marge say that.
-Is this episode just like one giant ad for Supreme?
-"My generation shows up to things" He's got you there, Bart.
-"The Doh'cial Network" sure aged like fine milk. Though who cares since it sucked.
-Marge's speech was really nice.
-Who is this final scene for? Like, it would be one thing if it was just a one-off joke, but they really explained it in detail. Weird.

I thought this was alright. This episode is testing the limits of how trendy and hip an episode can be. Like, boy did they cross every item off the checklist today: selfie sticks, Supreme, TikTok, LookBook, a viral dance, etc. I'm never quite sure how much is lampooning this stuff and how much is the writers relishing in it and trying to ingratiate the show into what's considered cool. Lisa's statement about coolness is spot on, but I don't know that the writers believe what she said. I think what I'm enjoying most about these episodes is seeing Marge and Homer do something other than have a marriage crisis. Their relationship doesn't need to be frictionless, but just seeing how well they work together in their every day life every now and then isn't asking for much. Orion wasn't much of an interesting character, but it was nice seeing Bart be cool and confident again (even if he did have his moment of viral mockery). This episode proves they still have a use for Bart and it ended on a nice note.

That is until that weird fourth act, but, eh...let's just ignore it.

I'm thinking 3.5, but I'll round up to 4/5
 
PreciousBodilyFluids said:
Can we stop pretending the show isn't set in LA? This episode was nothing but pandering fad references and starfucking. And can we change Homer's name to Matt Selman? Lose me with that well-meaning dad crap. I thought Homer proving he was a good husband by beating a wolverine to death was queasy, but at least I know that wasn't autobiographical (or was it?)

Not a good sign when the most prominent supporting characters are guest voices. Funny that Poochie should appear, cuz Orion is a Poochie, and our great and beloved leader has all but confirmed that Orion will return, in a nauseating tweet exchange with The Weeknd. Looks like we'll be getting more MIKE WEGMAN too!

How many THE SIMPSONS GO VIRAL storylines have there been at this point? Enough! This was the second in 2 weeks. And before that we had back to back wilderness adventures. Starting to miss Homer Gets A New Job

WORST. EPISODE. EVER.
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@PreciousBodilyFluids Matt Selman reading you (and all us)🙃👀
I 100% mean it when I say TheSimpsons
fans are the greatest fans in the world — thank you for your passion for the show even when you totally hate it
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I don't know why you guys think these comment threads happen in a vacuum. Yes, the show's staff do read them and take them to heart so we should do better to set a solid example as a fan community and keep any criticisms constructive.

There are a handful of entitled individuals - and you know who you are - who do little else but spout utter vitriol about episodes without even making the effort to do more than hatewatch them. Life's too short to be so bitter and angry all the time... and, furthermore, criticism like that will rightfully ring hollow and fall on deaf ears.
 
Brad Lascelle said:
Life's too short to be so bitter and angry all the time... and, furthermore, criticism like that will rightfully ring hollow and fall on deaf ears.
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Idk seems like he heard me. Though it remains to be seen whether Homer will apologize for killing that wolverine
 
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