In this Valentine's Day Episode, Bart reunites with Mary (Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel's daughter who moved to New York and writes for Saturday Night Live), but their relationship drifts apart and Bart must win back Mary or lose her forever.
"Love is a Many-Splintered Thing" contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Marge, of all people, comes off as this when she throws Bart out of the house just because he agrees with Homer that Love Hurts. And worse, Homer and Bart have nowhere to go.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Aside from being bad at communicating, his tendency to get distracted when she wants him to listen is a recurring problem in Bart's relationship with Mary.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Bart and Homer are expelled from home, two suitcases are thrown as well. The smallest has a Krusty the Klown's face and the other doesn't have any sign to suggest it to belong to a kid. The smallest belongs to Homer.
- Bait-and-Switch Suicide: A lot of people have killed themselves at Brokewood Apartments, and Homer seems about to join them as he's hanging a noose from the ceiling while Bart closes a door on him to make a phone call. He's actually just trying something Marge always said he shouldn't do: hanging an anvil over his head so he can watch TV while sitting under it.
- Berserk Button: Don't disagree with Marge, otherwise you're left to die on the streets, even if you're her son.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: In her Break-Up Song, Mary expresses hope that Bart will "eat his own shorts" in hell.
- Confusing Multiple Negatives: In a song she writes for Bart, Mary declares that "there ain't not never no place none better than home."
- Disproportionate Retribution: Marge not only kicks Homer out, but Bart as well, all because of a frustrated response about women never saying what they mean (shortly after Mary broke up with him over the phone).
- Downer Ending: While Homer wins Marge back after going through leaps and bounds (once again), Mary dumps Bart and is now dating the son of a Brazilian producer. However, the episode ends with her relationship status updating from 'married' to 'single', which excites Bart when she messages him back.
- Grand Romantic Gesture: Invoked by Homer and all the guys staying at Brokewood Apartments, when watching a British rom-com causes them to stage what they explicitly describe as a mass "grand gesture" to win all their women back. It works on all of them except Mary Spuckler, leaving Bart Alone Among the Couples.
- Jerkass Ball: Marge is at her worst here by not only kicking Homer out of the house but Bart as well. She had already resented Bart in "Marge Be Not Proud" and "Bart the Mother", but she had reason to in those episodes. Here, she outright sends him outside (into a dangerous town and she knows it) just for petty reasons.
- Make-Out Point: Next to Springfield's is a similar "point" for couples who just want to talk. When Mary and Bart go there, they find that Kirk and Luann are also there attempting to sort out their issues.
- Old Maid: By hillbilly standards, Mary is approaching this at age 13.
- Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Double Subverted: when Mary doesn't take Bart back, he questions why he doesn't get a happy ending as he's "the main guy in this story", to which the Brazilian record producer's son asserts that everyone is the "main guy" in their own story and leaves with Mary. However, he's dead by the end of the episode, assuming he's the guy Mary married, leaving Bart with another shot.
- Take That!:
- A rather blatant one against video games, where a game Bart plays explicitly tells anyone over the age of 14 to seek professional help.
- Barry the Satellite TV Guy removes all of his racist material from his act, leaving him with no jokes.
- True Art Is Angsty: After dumping Bart, Mary finds the pain of a break up to have a positive effect on her songwriting, filled with mocking her ex and being better off without him.
- The Unfair Sex:
- The episode tries to present Bart as being neglectful of Mary, with Lisa repeatedly telling him that he’ll never find anyone better. The problem with this is that Bart never really treated Mary any different than she did him, and unlike her he tried to fix his mistakes. Bart did play video games despite her disinterest, yet he also went to her house to listen to music. However, he is presented as in the wrong when he finally gets bored (despite it being hinted that they were doing it for a relatively long time). It also doesn’t help that Bart just found something else to do while listening, yet Mary complained the whole time when they were doing something he likes. There was also never any compromise between the two - if Bart didn’t do everything Mary wanted to do and cater to her needs 24/7, he was portrayed as a bad boyfriend. The catalyst to them breaking up was Bart not wanting to sit around as she flirted with the son of a producer.
- Homer and Marge’s storyline is arguably worse as, besides taking Maggie to Moe's, he never really did anything wrong. Marge cased an accident by yelling at Homer to listen to the GPS, causing him to get distracted and take a wrong turn, and later got angry at him for not going to her sisters event, when she told him that he didn't have to. This is what caused Bart to call her out. All in all, while the Aesop of the episode seems to want to be men should treat their wives better, in actuality it comes across more like relationships are All Take and No Give based entirely in the woman’s favor ,and even if the man accepts this, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will get a happy ending. It also doesn’t help that the episode tries to present the same lesson as "A Milhouse Divided", if Mary’s brutal breakup song and the fact that Bart and Homer were lumped in with dads who give their children drugs is anything to go by.
- The Un-Favourite: Kicking him out just because of his bitterness towards Mary makes Bart this to Marge.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The episode is very heavy on the references to Annie Hall, Bart has a Framing Device dressed like Woody Allen's Alvy talking directly to the camera, numerous Flash Back and Flash Forward gags and a Woody Allen-esque figure hanging around for a couple scenes AND the framing device. Lisa shows up at the end dressed like Annie Hall too, just to complete the homage.
