Season 1 Episode 2: Bart the Genius

Original Airdate: January 14, 1990
Chalkboard Gag: I will not waste chalk.
Couch Gag: Bart gets bumped off the couch.

This episode marks the first appearance of the iconic opening to the show, as the previous episode simply starts with “The Simpsons Christmas Special” and then moves right along. The opening is about the same as it would be for many years, but the animation and colors are all slightly different (they reanimated the entire opening for the second season, and that’s the familiar one they stuck with). Some of the differences in this season 1 opening include Bart yanking away a bus stop sign, causing people to run after the non-stopping bus, Lisa riding her bicycle around on a sidewalk, and when Homer runs out of the Nuclear Power Plant, there’s a man eating a sandwich in the background instead of Mr. Burns and Smithers.

This is also the first Bart-centric episode, and it fits in well with his oeuvre. It sets the classic template of Bart doing something dishonest and then facing the moral consequences of his actions. Here he switches the names on his and Martin’s IQ tests and is promptly labeled a genius and sent to a special school. There he finds himself in an incomprehensible academic environment amongst a bunch of elitist snobs who prey on Bart’s below average intelligence for their own bitchy kicks. This advanced 5^th grade class is also conducted like a college seminar, with discussions about Freud and paradoxes and complicated math problems, so Bart, unable to keep up the façade, eventually confesses to Springfield Elementary’s psychologist J. Loren Pryor (one of those forgotten early season characters who vanished without any mention). Homer, who gained newfound respect for his son after his supposed genius, is of course brought into a violent rage when he finds out about Bart’s cheating, and in classic Simpson’s tradition, everything is back to the way it was by the conclusion. Though oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of school-sanctioned punishment on Bart for taking someone else’s exam, and Martin, who must have received a terribly low score considering Bart filled in random answers, doesn’t seem to ever raise any questions about this and disappears from the episode after the opening. I guess the cheating never would have caught up to Bart if he hadn't turned himself in. Though that stays in line with how everyone keeps excusing Bart's misbehavior and clear stupidity just because he has the label of "genius".

So overall it’s a pretty standard episode. What’s noteworthy is that, unlike the first one, this is more consistently funny and is less bogged down in a serious subject matter. The worst that happens here is Bart blows up his chemistry experiment and covers the class in green goop, and that’s far less weighty than the financial despair Homer faced previously. The writing is sharper and wittier here, and there’s nice commentary on how adults react to children under varying circumstances; i.e. in how Bart’s vandalism of school property (graffiti of Principal Skinner saying “I am a weiner” [Bart’s spelling]) is at first punished and then treated as a work of art after his gifted abilities are exposed.

The best visual gag is probably in the psychologist’s office, where on one side of his desk he has a picture of Einstein, and the other a picture of Bart. Homer teaching Bart how to put on a clip-on tie is classic Homer. And Mrs. Krabappel (in her first appearance) has a funny line where she assures her students not to worry about the IQ test, as it “merely determines your future social status and financial success…if any.”

Some closing remarks: Bart says “Eat my shorts” for the first time here, Krusty makes his first appearance on a cereal box, and what ever happened to Bart and Milhouse’s two friends, Louis and the other kid whose name I forget? I think they only ever speak in the first couple of seasons and then became background characters for the rest of the series, like Sheri and Teri after a certain point, and even Martin.