"The Isotots lose the pennant!"
Original air date: 4/29/2007
Production code: JABF-11
One day at the Springfield Little League Park, Bart catches the winning ball for the town's little league team, the Isotots, which sends them into the Little League Championships against Shelbyville. Because of this, the town celebrates the team as heroes and gives them the right to "behave like arrogant oafs", allowing Bart to moon them and happily get pelted with eggs by the team. Before the game, the Simpsons go shopping at Costington's and a tired Homer decides to rest on one of the sale mattresses. When he is caught in the mattress, he tries to save face by complimenting its qualities, which convinces a customer to buy the mattress. The owner of the store goes to Homer to congratulate him for making the sale and hires him as a mattress salesman.
On the day of the big game, with Shelbyville loading the bases and Springfield on the verge of winning. However, Bart misses the pop fly and constantly fumbles ball trying to pick it up, allowing Shelbyville to score four runs win the game, and costing Springfield the championship. The spectators boo Bart for causing the team to lose and he runs to Chief Wiggum to escape the mob. However, the Chief drives Bart back into and around the stadium and opens the car's roof so the crowd can throw garbage and beer cans at him. Bart is totally humiliated and is now a pariah.
Meanwhile, while Homer is selling mattresses, Reverend Lovejoy comes to him to help him find a mattress to put the spark back in his love life with his wife Helen. Homer suggests the "Snugglux" by Matrimonium and they buy it. The next day, the Lovejoys come to the house to tell Homer that their troubles haven't been solved, but as Homer is writing them a refund check, they begin making out on Homer and Marge's bed and enjoy their experience. They and Homer trade each other's mattresses; the next day, the Simpsons are stagnant and bored while the Lovejoys are acting giddy in church.
For the past few days, Bart has been getting harassed nonstop by Springfield's denizens for his error. In fact, the KBBL radio station has Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney sing "Bart Stinks" as part of its "Bash Bart Block". Seeing Bart depressed from the abuse, Lisa tries to cheer him up by taking him to a baseball convention to meet Joe LaBoot, a veteran player who had a similar experience as Bart's when his fumble ended up scarring the First Lady. Bart is at first relieved that somebody sympathizes with him, until LaBoot discovers his identity and gets everyone in the room to boo him, making Bart feel even worse. The next morning, Bart is gone, and Lisa wakes up to find that somebody had spray-painted the words "I HATE BART SIMPSON" over the front of the house. She and Marge explore the town to find that the phrase had been painted all over town (including on a passed out Barney), and discover the citizens looking up at the vandal writing the phrase on the watertower and discover that the vandal is none other than Bart himself, who has snapped into a state of self-loathing from the town's constant harassment. At the town's insistence, Bart jumps from the tower in a suicidal attempt to escape his ordeal.
Bart survives his fall and is knocked unconscious. While the family visits him in the hospital, they hear a mob of townspeople outside chanting "Bart sucks!". Finally having had enough of the town's constant bullying, Marge steps outside and angrily chews them out on their extreme vindictive behavior, effectively more than living up to their title as the "Meanest City in America". Feeling guilty, the townspeople apologize for hurting Bart and agree to restage the game to fix his self-esteem. Bart awakens in his baseball uniform on the field and, after 78 tries, Bart finally catches the ball and "wins" the game.
In the meantime, Homer and Marge try to sneak back into the Lovejoys' house to reclaim their mattress, but they catch them in the act and, after a brief squabble, they settle on splitting the mattress in half "Solomon style". The Simpsons end up taking their half of the mattress and make out on it behind a billboard, just like they did on their honeymoon.
The episode ends sometime in the future, where an elderly Bart and Milhouse living at the retirement home commenting on the events that transpired, while a ghostly Homer asks Marge for ghost sex despite her pleas that it's "worse than nothing".
"The Boys Of Bummer" contains examples of :
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Coach Flanders points at his black armband and tells the kids to play for Groundskeeper Willie... who made the armband.
- Bait the Dog:
- Chief Wiggum seemingly offers to move Bart away from the jeering crowd, only to send him back into stadium so the crowd can throw beer cans at him.
- Joe LaBoot initially appears to be sympathetic towards Bart for his situation, but the moment he learns his name, he callously drives him to tears.
- Baseball Episode: The plot hinges on Bart's snafu making his team lose.
- Break the Haughty: Bart was pretty haughty about his worthiness to the team until he missed the ball and the bullying started. This gets to the point where he gets Driven to Suicide.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: LaBoot initially seemed to be a positive role model towards Bart, but upon learning who Bart is, he cruelly drives him to tears.
- The Bully: Practically everyone in Springfieldnote is one towards Bart, going as far as to encourage Bart to kill himself. And they still bully him after he's hospitalized, forcing Marge to condemn their horrible acts on him.
- Bungled Suicide: Bart's fall from the water tower is broken by a conveniently-placed bush.
- Buried Alive: "Bart, Cottontail died. Dad buried him in the backyard — but not in that order."
- Butt-Monkey: Bart really gets it in this episode. And it's not played for laughs, either.
- Captain Obvious: The cover of one of Lenny's mystery novels has the phrase "The Murderer Did It".
- Card-Carrying Jerkass: The whole town quite proudly (literally, as in has it on billboards advertising the place) labels itself "The Meanest City In America".
- Cerebus Retcon: Many previous episodes had showcased that Springfield is a town full of sore losers that will seek revenge on whoever made them lose with extreme prejudice (at one point arriving to the airport when their losing football team arrived to scream insults at them and toss rocks and even try to lynch them). This episode shows that they are perfectly willing and able to bring this insane amount of cruelty down upon a little kid without any hesitation and that they are actually proud of this being one of the facts the rest of the country knows best about the city. By the time Marge manages to shame the mob, this has long since stopped being funny.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Most of the abuse Bart endures from the townsfolk isn't Played for Laughs at all, especially when they continue to harass him as he is in a comatose state.
- Champions on the Inside: As the rest of this page shows, this trope is averted to high heaven.
- Crapsack World: During her speech, Marge addresses a nearby billboard citing Springfield as the "Meanest City in America". After the townspeople's actions in this episode, she couldn't agree more.
- Contrived Coincidence: Invoked by the entire city after Bart's suicide attempt- the ball that drove him to it was conveniently declared invalid because "the umpire didn't clean the base with a regulation brush" (when Bart begins to Spot the Thread, Milhouse runs away in a panic, admitting they told him not to talk about it); when he repeatedly misses it, it becomes a Overly Long Gag, with the crowd coming up with increasingly obvious and increasingly Blatant Lies until he finally catches it, at the crack of dawn. Bart is so desperate to get closure, however, that everyone still maintains the lie into his senior years.
- Comically Missing the Point: A retroactive example. When the people of Springfield (off-screen) first placed the label "The Meanest City in America" on their advertisement billboards, Marge initially thought that it was just something to attract small businesses. She is very upset, to say the least that it turned out to be Not Hyperbole.
- De-aged in Death: A Distant Epilogue taking place sixty years after the events of the episode in which Bart and Milhouse are 70-year-old men in the Springfield Retirement Castle. Homer and Marge's ghosts appear to comment on the scene, looking no older than they do in the show's main timeline.
- Death Glare: The townspeople (despite their actions) give this response to Chief Wiggum when the latter condones Bart's suicide attempt.
- Despair Event Horizon: Bart comes very close to this when he tries to kill himself thanks to being hated and bullied by everyone in town.
- Dirty Cop: Chief Wiggum is among those who bully Bart for his mistake and goes so far as to encourage the latter to kill himself (something that, for all their unbridled cruelty throughout the episode, none of the other townsfolk do).
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- Deconstructed. The way the townspeople treated Bart, who made a simple mistake at a sport that is unimportant, would be absurdly cruel if he was a grown man. Doing that to a kid just paints the town as a horde of complete psychos. The episode pulls no punches in showing how much of a negative impact ruthlessly shaming and harassing someone over a mistake can be.
- Somehow, Bart screwing up his fly ball weakened the dollar.
- Distant Finale: Showcasing three things: Bart and Milhouse will live in the Retirement Castle, Bart will continue to gloat about the win the town provided him out of pity (and will continue to fall into suicidal despair if someone brings out the truth, forcing them to lie that they were just joking) well into his old age, and that Marge and Homer have a lousy sex life as ghosts.
- Dog Got Sent to a Farm: At some point Bart had a rabbit named Cottontail who he believes was sent to live upstate. He was actually killed by Homer (accidentally, one hopes).
- Down to the Last Play: Bart was supposed to catch a simple fly ball and his team would have won... except that he didn't, leading to the plot.
- Driven to Suicide: Springfield's cruelty results in Bart jumping from a water tower. Thankfully, he survives, though is knocked unconscious.
- Easily Forgiven: After driving Bart to kill himself, he and his family forgave the whole town after one little apology. Homer moreso as they quickly forget him defending Bart as soon as the mattress subplot starts.
- Epic Fail:
- For the sake of trying to help Bart feel okay, the whole town makes a new game and they try to make Bart the hero of the day. Emphasis on "try". An absurd barrage of failures make it so Bart can't catch a single ball or do anything else right (not to mention add another bunch of humiliations), and by the time he finally makes the play, it's the next morning and almost everybody who was watching had gone home or was falling asleep (and the umpire had to order the play to be redone 78 times).
- LaBoot's attempt to try to catch a suicidal Bart ends with the latter getting hospitalized and the former jeered by a passing Abe.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- LaBoot may be willing to make fun of Bart for making an error he himself made decades ago, but he still tries (emphasis on "tries") to save Bart when he jumps off the water tower.
- The whole town keeps hating on Bart when they see him, quite unhinged, on top of a water tower and keep hating on him while he is in the hospital in a coma after jumping off and surviving, but when they hear someone yelling at Bart to jump, they immediately pause their own yelling to look at Wiggum.
Chief Wiggum: [hastily hides bullhorn behind his back, fakes looking around in disgust] Who said that? - Fan Disservice: Moe running onto the baseball field naked.
- Felony Misdemeanor: Bart losing the game results in almost everyone hating him and wanting him dead.
- Hate Sink: Joe LaBoot is deliberately written to be an odious man, who had a career just as atrocious (if not worse - at least Bart's missing catch did not ended in someone being injured, let alone the First Lady) and equally unforgiven, yet he has No Sympathy for Bart and his Kick the Dog moment is the exact moment Bart reached the Despair Event Horizon. His attempt to save Bart when he jumps off the water tower is also an Epic Fail to downgrade, if not avoid, it being a redemptive moment.
- Hidden Depths: Lenny is revealed to be the author of a successful series of mystery novels that are praised by Stephen King.
- Hope Spot: Lisa brings Bart to meet Joe LaBoot, one of the acknowledged worst baseball players of all time and who still has made some fame and a privileged life out of it (even if people like Grandpa keep hating him for his error), and who gives Bart a speech about not letting a single bad moment in his life drag him down. The moment LaBoot finds out that he's talking to Bart Simpson, he starts to attack Bart, heartlessly shoving him to the Despair Event Horizon.
- Hypocrite: LaBoot chides Bart for his fumble despite not only doing the same thing himself years ago, but doing it much worse when he supposedly disfigured the first lady.
- I Have This Friend: Reverend Lovejoy when he comes to Homer about his bed problems.Lovejoy: I have a friend. Well, a friend of a friend.Homer: (loudly) Sex problem, eh?
- Jerkass Ball: Everyone in Springfield, other than the Simpsons, holds the ball when they torment Bart just for missing a game-winning catch in a baseball game, even going so far as to goad him into committing suicide, lampshaded when Marge points to a billboard advertising Springfield as "The Meanest City in America".
- Judgment of Solomon: The Simpsons and Lovejoys decide who gets the mattress by splitting the mattress diagonally, making it look like a grilled cheese sandwich.
- Kick the Dog: Driving a ten year old boy to suicide is one the nastiest things anyone in the show has pulled.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: Bart jumps off the town's water tower and is knocked into a coma. The town decides to stand outside his hospital window and keep ragging on him, even if he's completely unable to hear or react to them. This is what hits Marge's Rage Breaking Point and makes her tell off the whole town.
- Lack of Empathy:
- Even after Bart is hospitalized from his attempted suicide, the citizens still harass him. Thankfully, Marge sets them straight afterwards.
- Despite himself going through similar circumstances as Bart in his youth, LaBoot is shown to be just as unsympathetic to Bart's misery as the townsfolk, even encouraging the townsfolk to chastise him into the Despair Event Horizon. That being said, he was still willing to save Bart from falling off the water tower, albeit unsuccessfully.LaBoot: Boo. Boo, indeed.
- Left the Background Music On: When Marge and Homer sneak into the Lovejoys' house to retrieve their mattress, Homer imitates a sneaky high-top cymbal like in a spy movie until Marge tells him to cut it out.
- Madness Mantra: Bart showcases he's finally snapped from the bullying when he spray-paints "I HATE BART SIMPSON" all over town. And it's the last thing he says before jumping off the tower.Bart (manic, on top of the water tower): See? I hate me too! Now we can be friends again!
- Mama Bear: After finding out the hard way that the people of Springfield will not be satisfied in their hatred of Bart until he's dead (maybe), Marge finally has enough and marches out of the hospital to give them a Shaming the Mob speech, which thankfully works.
- Mistakes Are Not the End of the World: Lisa tries to cheer up Bart by having him meet Joe LaBoot, the worst baseball player of all time, who tells him this. This trope is then cruelly defied when LaBoot finds out who he's talking to and bullies him about missing that damned pop fly as well.
- Mooning: "Behold, my naked butt! Each cheek is a god to you!"
- Naked People Are Funny: Moe streaking on the field.
- Never My Fault: As soon as Moe shifts the hate onto Homer, the latter immediately passes the buck back to Bart to avoid further hazing.Homer: Hey get off my case! He's the choke artist!
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The announcer is a sound-alike of Vin Scully.
- No Longer with Us: Flanders, while wearing a black armband, tells the team to do it for Groundskeeper Willie — not because he's dead, but because he made the armband.
- Noodle Incident: Bart once had a pet rabbit who died and was buried in the backyard by Homer—"not in that order."
- Not Hyperbole: Marge angrily points out (as she is Shaming the Mob) that when the town made billboards advertising itself as "The Meanest City in America", she believed at first that it was just some kind of publicity stunt.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Bart misses a fly ball, losing his team the game, and is bullied until he attempts suicide. The professional baseball player Joe LaBoot is another example, as he is still bullied for being a terrible player despite having retired decades ago.
- Only Sane Woman: Marge is the only one to stand by Bart's side (excluding Lisa and Maggie, who didn't get involved at all).
- Overly Long Gag:
- Bart attempting 78 times to catch the ball during the restaging of the game. In fact, by the time Bart finally caught it, most of the spectators had left.
- Played for Drama with the town's treatment to Bart. Springfield being a land of extreme (and that is lynch-causing violent) sore losers had appeared on quick gags before, but this is an entire episode that showcased almost the whole town as villainous.
- Pet the Dog: Despite his actions earlier in the episode, LaBoot tries to catch Bart after the latter jumps from a water tower. Unfortunately, he misses.
- Police Are Useless: Chief Wiggum doesn't arrive at the water tower to try to talk Bart out of apparently attempting suicide, but to encourage him to jump. Earlier on, Bart asked Wiggum to drive him away from the crowd, only for the latter to drive him back into the stadium so the crowd could continue terrorizing him.Wiggum: He's back! Go nuts, everyone!
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Marge calls out the entire town for their harassment towards her son.Marge: You should all be ashamed! Passing judgment on a child for a sports boo-boo! Now, thanks to you, my special little guy will be haunted by this for the rest of his life! I always thought thatnote was just a slogan to attract small businesses. But now I know it's the truth!
- Sanity Slippage: The jeers and boos the town gives Bart for losing the game are slowly eating away at him, and it's clear they're hurting his feelings and self-esteem. Finally, Bart snaps, and after spray-painting, "I HATE BART SIMPSON" across town, he tries to kill himself by falling off a water tower.
- Serious Business: Exaggerated regarding Minor League Baseball. Lose a game, and the town will bully someone to death. It also works the other way around as Bart could ask people to worship his butt with no consequences since the team was winning.
- Shaming the Mob: Marge finally gets sick of the town's harassment of Bart and furiously chews them out for it after they drive him to a Bungled Suicide and still won't let up on their bullying, pointing out the sign that labels Springfield the "Meanest City in America" and how their actions prove it right. At that, the entire town gets the message and make up for their jerkassery by restaging the game so Bart can win.
- Sore Loser: The entire town are this. Bart fumbles the ball in the Little League Championships which causes Springfield to lose to Shelbyville. Springfield doesn't react well to this.
- Suicide Dare: Chief Wiggum tells Bart to jump off the water tower.Wiggum: (catches people looking at him) Who said that?
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A campaign of bullying as thoroughly (and absurdly) cruel as the one directed at Bart would make anybody snap or seek death in real life — just like it happened to Bart. The Distant Finale of the epilogue also shows that Bart carries the scars of the trauma well into his old age - the moment his equally-old friend Milhouse snaps from hearing Bart telling about catching the pop fly for the Nth-time and tells him it was arranged, Bart immediately falls apart and Milhouse has to make up a lie to prevent it from going further.
- To the Tune of...: "Bart Stinks" to "Love Stinks", courtesy of Dolph, Jimbo and Kearney.
- Trauma Button Ending: The episode fast-forwards to the time Bart and Milhouse are elderly to hammer home the fact that the people of Springfield had to maintain the lie for decades because any time Bart thinks (or is revealed) that they undid the fly ball loss to make him get over his suicidal depression he just falls to pieces all over again.
- Twitchy Eye: Signaling Bart's Sanity Slippage by the time he's up on the water tower.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Up until the last play Bart had effectively carried the team all season and was the reason they'd made it to the championships in the first place. If Bart hadn't been there they wouldn't have gotten nearly as far, but all that's thrown out the window with the last play.
- Ungrateful Townsfolk: The citizens of Springfield becomes these for the whole episode when they bully Bart into suicide just because of a screw-up on a ball game. Lampshaded with a billboard even citing it as the "Meanest City in America".
- Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Bart is an incredibly bad winner, at one point declaring himself a literal god the best of his team must worship because he's brought them this far in the championship. The Distant Finale of the episode also showcases that he will keep up bringing his win long into his old age. Could be worse, though: the scene also shows that the trauma of the original loss and everything that came afterwards makes him also fall into suicidal despair whenever he doubts himself long into his old age.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The town themselves are so desperate for attention, they were willing to throw a pep rally for the team and essentially give them free reign; as Flanders was trying to point out, this would likely work better after the championship game. As it were, it did indeed cause the entire team to get a swelled head, instead of focusing on the task at hand, and thus just made the backlash when they did choke that much worse.
- World of Jerkass: Everyone in Springfield except Bart, Marge, Lisa and Maggie over the Little League loss. Lampshaded with a billboard even citing Springfield as the "Meanest City in America".
- Would Hurt a Child: Most of Springfield is willing to drive Bart to suicide.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Most of Springfield appears to be this. When Homer calls them out on bullying Bart, he is peer pressured into joining in, but when Marge does the same, everyone suddenly turns nice.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: When Bart meets LaBoot and sees that he had a similar ordeal like him, Bart feels happy knowing that there’s one person who's not mad at him... until Lisa says his name.LaBoot: Bart?! Are you Bart Simpson? The kid who dropped that easy fly ball?! You stink like a Dutchman's throw-up.
