This Little Wiggy (S09, E18-196)

"Ah, you've done grand, laddy.  Now you know what you
have to do: burn the house down!  BURN THEM ALL!"

Plot Summary
The Simpsons go to some kind of fun Science museum, a Knowledgeum.  While the family has some fun there, Bart comes across not just Ralph Wiggum, but the full assortment of bullies.  They toss Ralph into a model ear, while forcing Bart to kiss a virtual ass.  Later, as Ralph is pried free from the ear, Marge takes pity on the poor boy, and decides to have Bart play with him, much to Bart's disapproval, but Marge forces him to spend time with Ralph anyway, so what can he do?

Ralph messes around with Bart's stuff too much, so the two go outside.  However, Bart sees the bully brigade near (videotaping a crime spree), and quickly hides Ralph while trying to play it cool.  The two decide to go to Ralph's house.  After Ralph shows him his stuff, including a rock where a leprechaun appears to tell Ralph to burn things, Bart gets Ralph to show him where his father, Chief Wiggum, keeps his police stuff.  The fun quickly ends when Chief Wiggum comes home and promptly tweaks his back suspecting a criminal in the closet where said police stuff lies.  After Bart apologizes, he sees Chief Wiggum lay down a key, learning from Ralph that its the police's master key.

That night, Bart stays over, and is able to sneakily take the key while Chief Wiggum sleeps.  He and Ralph then have fun around town, playing in a toy store and eating a cake in another establishment.  At this point, the two run across the bully brigade again, but now that Bart has in his possession the master key, the bullies find him to be alright.  Bart then suggests they have fun with it at a new destination: an abandoned prison.  Ralph starts to get scared, forcing Bart to take the key away, but immediately regrets doing so.  The bullies tire of Bart's wishy-wash, and toss the key into the prison before departing to pick huckleberries.  Ralph and Bart go into the prison to retrieve the key.  Upon doing so, they find the room that contains an electric chair, and have fun with it, but are forced to leave when a guard comes near.  Notably, they leave the safety to the chair off as they depart.

The next day, the two see on TV that Mayor Quimby is at the same prison, planning to put it back into use to scare criminals.  To prove his point, Quimby plans on putting himself on the chair to show crooks what awaits them, unaware that the safety to the chair is set to off.  Bart realizes this and tries to think of a plan.  Ralph tells Bart to ask Lisa, who is good at coming up with plans.  She decides to tie a note to Bart's model rocket stating that the electric chair is on, and shoots it toward the prison.  However, it misses its mark and flies to the nuclear plant, flying in Mr. Burns' office.  He reads the note, and upon realizing that the old prison has been receiving free power for so long, promptly turns it off just as Quimby has received a few volts of electricity.  Everyone praises Ralph for coming up with the idea to ask Lisa (Lisa is at first offended that she's getting no praise but relents when Bart tells her Ralph could use a win).  Ralph's leprechaun friend then appears to make sure Ralph understands that its time for some house burnin'.

Quick Review
This was a pretty good episode, with what is just the second episode to focus on Ralph Wiggum.  Ralph, I think, is a character that can't really sustain an episode by himself especially as his character becomes more and more of a caricature of itself.  Still, his dynamic with Bart works for the most part, and the few scenes involving the bullies were well done as well.

Final Score: 9.0