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| Marge can't believe Homer is forcing Bart through that Desk Reference book. |
Bart misses another homework assignment and, despite his best efforts to prevent it, a letter is sent home which Homer reads indicating Bart's lack of homework completion. Meeting with Principal Skinner, Homer is more than willing to pile on missing assignments for Bart to catch up on, but Marge is more merciful, believing it too much for a 4th grade boy to handle. Those concerns continue at home; as Homer forces Bart to focus on his homework, a short time later Marge tells Bart just to do a couple more problems then take a break. Bart describes this inconsistency to Lisa during his break, and she tells him that people who agree on most things can have one thing to disagree over which is normally called a wedge issue. Bart decides to exploit this as much as he can.
Bart sneaks away whenever he gets Marge to let his ease up on his homework. As the days continue, Marge becomes stubbornly convinces she's doing the right thing, and openly tells Homer his strict method is wrong. The two begin arguing over all sorts of other things as spill over, and Bart is reaping the rewards as he is no longer their concern. Homer and Marge fight really badly that night, and stay intensely mad at one another the next day though as they day goes along they get to talking and thinking and realize staying mad at each other is no good. Homer and Marge find each other and quickly reconcile. They realize Bart was trying to tear them apart and that until they iron out their differences, Bart can just fend for himself.
They start this practice right away, not giving a single care what Bart plans to do, despite trying to tell them while holding a suspicious bag of equipment. A short time later, Bart and Milhouse pull a prank on Principal Skinner, and flee to an abandoned subway system Milhouse had found earlier. The two get into a train and find out, amazingly, it still works, much to the shock of people above ground as the train causes tremors across town. Despite that, Homer and Marge still don't care about what Bart did or might be connected to. This really bothers Bart, and Nelson tells him his pranks aren't satisfying unless he gets in trouble from his parents. Bart decides to pull off something so big not even his parents can ignore it, when he learns the earthquake has weakened the school's foundation, with another tremor likely causing it to collapse.
Lisa overhears Bart's conversation with Nelson (though not the part where Bart decides on the school), and soon a letter is written to Homer and Marge from Lisa warning about Bart's plan. Homer rushes into the subway and is able to stop the train in its tracks just before the school crumbles (though a falling flagpole, implied to be rigged by Nelson and Mrs. Krabappel, finishes the job). Homer and even Marge punish Bart severely for this, but Bart is happy to have the attention again. Lisa talks to Bart, revealing that she didn't write that note and it contains the same misspellings commonly found in Bart's writing, though Bart doesn't particularly care.
Quick Review
This wasn't really a funny episode. There's a few decent moments throughout, but for the most part the comedy fell flat.
Final Score: 6.5
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