Original air date: 1/16/2000 (produced in 1999)
Production code: BABF-06
Bart becomes a faith healer after removing a glued-on bucket from Homer's head at a church revival. Meanwhile, Homer builds a homecoming float from his alma mater (the college he briefly went to in "Homer Goes to College.")
Tropes:
- Amusing Injuries: Dr. Hibbert shows off a litany of patients living their lives to reassure the Simpsons that the bucket stuck on Homer's head won't ruin his. There's a cowboy with Invisible Holes, a man on a treadmill with a dog biting his butt, and a person with a swordfish impaled through his chest reading a magazine. Hibbert gives his trademark laugh afterwards.
- An Arm and a Leg: Springfield University's star football player returns to the field after Bart tries to heal his broken leg, and attempts to win the game with a field goal. He succeeds...because he inadvertently flings his own leg off, which goes on to kick the ball a second time in mid-air, propelling it just far enough to make the goal.
- Bait-and-Switch: Homer goes to see a Fake Faith Healer because his head is stuck in a bucket.Homer: Cure me! Cure me!Healer: Brother, I sense you are feeling trapped and desperate.Homer: Yeah. And I got a bucket on my head.
- Blind Mistake: We get to see how Blind Without 'Em Milhouse really is. In this case, he confuses an on-coming car for a dog.
- Call-Back: Homer returns to the same university he went to in "Homer Goes to College".
- Comic-Book Time: Parodied. As Homer sets up a prank on Dean Peterson, the security guards recognize Homer for running him over five years ago. They bring up a photogram of him from that time, about to eat a fish. They then age the picture five years. All that's different is that Homer's clothes had rotted, he had grown a beard, and the fish turned into a skeleton.
- Couch Gag: Sigmund Freud is seen sitting in a chair next to the couch, and Homer lies on the couch and yells, "Oh, doctor, I'm crazy!" while the rest of the family stares at each other sadly.
- Eye Scream: Bart drills eye holes into the bucket that Homer got stuck on his head so he can see. This happens:Homer: Steady...steady...(squish)... too far.
- Fake Faith Healer: Bart decides to become one after successfully removing a bucket from Homer's head. His best friend (Milhouse) nearly pays with his life when Bart claims to have cured Milhouse's poor eyesight, and Milhouse — believing him — walks into the path of an oncoming car, seriously injuring him.
- Hidden Depths: Parodied. The Sea Captain admits he suffers from crippling depression, to which Bart lampshades he thought the Captain "had it all".
- Ill-Fated Flowerbed: Homer picks all of the flowers in Ned Flanders' garden to use for his float. He also salted the earth so nothing would ever grow again, for no reason other than to be a Jerkass.
- Kent Brockman News: The Trope Namer himself complains about the overuse of the word "fever" in his report while on the air, and ends up crumpling his papers in frustration upon reading the phrase, "Additional Seating Capacity Fever".
- Kick the Dog: It’s bad enough that Homer picked all of Ned Flanders’s flowers to use for his parade float, but then he salted the earth afterwards so nothing would ever grow again.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Homer only got the bucket stuck on his head in the first place after a prank he tried to pull on the dean went wrong. Additionally, he picked all of the flowers from Ned's flowerbed and salted the earth so nothing would ever grow again (for pretty much no reason), so him getting the bucket stuck to his head feels well-deserved.
- Major Injury Underreaction: After getting his head stuck in a bucket, Homer asks Bart to use a drill to carve holes in it in order to see through. When Bart, as expected, pierces through his head with the drill, what was Homer's response? "...Too far."
- Make-Out Point: Springfield apparently has a "Makeout Creek."
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Lisa tries to explain to Bart that the real reason he was able to pull the glued-on bucket off of Homer's head despite everyone else failing to do so and insisting it couldn't be done was that the hot stage lights heated the bucket, which liquefied the glue, while also expanding the bucket and allowing Bart to pull it off. He's not hearing any of it and insists that he has real healing powers.
- Mistaken for Superpowered: Bart becomes convinced that he has Healing Hands after removing a bucket that had been glued to Homer's head. Despite Lisa's protests that this was a simple result of the glue expiring, the boy sets up a church and promotes himself as a faith healer. One of his actions is to "cure" his best friend's myopia, which leads to Milhouse throwing away his glasses, mistakenly walking in the path of a car and getting seriously injured as a result. This horrific incident immediately causes Bart to retire.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Seeing Milhouse getting hit by a car after confusing it with a dog prompts Bart to quit his run as a Fake Faith Healer. This wouldn't last long, as Homer would demand him back in business to heal a football player he ran over and whom The Mafia paid good money for, despite Bart's objections and hesitance.
- Noodle Incident: According to Homer, he's the reason why there's a warning for tickets to not be "taken internally."
- Not Hyperbole: A non-verbal one: when Homer calls Lenny's alma mater Springfield A&M a "cow college", Lenny retorts "Oh, you're only calling us a 'cow college' because we were founded by a cow!". The scene proceeds to linger on a now silent Lenny for several seconds as if to say "No, that's exactly what he meant to say".
- Series Continuity Error: Lisa says Homer only attended Springfield University for one term. However, the episode "Homer Goes to College" ends with Homer agreeing to return to Springfield University to set a good example since he cheated to pass the first time.note
- Shout-Out: The Springfield Church's sign reads "Today's Topic: Life In Hell", a nod to the Life in Hell comic strips also created by Matt Groening.
- Song Parody: The Springfield University halftime song parodies "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing.
- Special Guest: Don Cheadle as Brother Faith.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Even with eyeholes drilled into the bucket on Homer's head, he still can't drive well due to the lack of periphery vision.
- Bart and friends pull an exterminator tent off a house, with the intent to use it for Bart's revival meeting, but it wasn't aired out, causing Milhouse and Ralph to be sick.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: When reporting on the college football game, Kent Brockman proclaims, "Big Game Fever is reaching a fevered pitch as the fevered rivalry between Springfield U and Springfield A & M spreads like wild fever." It turns out that his nephew is behind the repeated use of the word "fever".Kent: This... this is writing?
Nephew: I'm sorry, Uncle Kent, I lost my thesaurus.
Kent: Thesaurus... you'll lose more than that.
