Recap / The Simpsons S 26 E 19 "The Kids Are All Fight"

The discovery of an old film strip prompts Homer to tell the story of Bart and Lisa's sibling rivalry when they were younger.

Tropes:

• Already Met Everyone: This episode has Bart and Lisa's earliest encounters with Milhouse, Jimbo, Dolph and Kearney occurring before they ever started school.
• Ambiguous Time Period: Marge's lead-in spoofs the introductions of similar flashback episodes in earlier seasons of the Long Runner, which clearly anchored the stories in specific years before Comic-Book Time got stretched to its breaking point.
  Marge: It all began six years ago. The president of back then was the president. The popular music of those times was all the rage.
• Another Story for Another Time: Marge says this with regard to the room that's now Maggie's bedroom, where she claims she used to grow weed.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: When Bart and Lisa ask the young Milhouse for help, he runs into his house to get Kirk, only to be immediately distracted by a cartoon on TV. Then Kirk walks in...and is immediately distracted by the same cartoon.
• Brainy Baby: Two-year-old Lisa is nearly as articulate and smart as her eight-year-old counterpart, pulling a Wounded Gazelle Gambit on the bullies and correctly understanding the meaning of the word "crown" (referring to Jack's head rather than, as Bart assumes, a literal crown) in the nursery rhyme "Jack and Jill."
• Bystander Syndrome: Marge asks Homer why he didn’t think to intervene in the fights while taking the pictures, to which Homer replies that the lighting was so good he didn’t want to miss the chance.
• Call-Back: Grandma Flanders and Bart's monster clown bed make their first appearances since "Lisa's First Word" way back in season 4.
• Cheated Death, Died Anyway: The action of the episode starts when Grandma Flanders apparently dies while babysitting the kids. An epilogue shows that she was rushed to the hospital and managed to pull through, only to be killed by (seemingly) Ned's loud chorus of "Amazing Grace" upon learning she survived.
• Contrived Coincidence: Bart and Lisa get trapped on top of the Springfield Tire Fire, and Homer bends a nearby tree for them to reach. The branch he's holding breaks, sending them shooting across town...straight through the window of their bedroom for a safe landing on Bart's clown bed.
• Department of Child Disservices: Marge narrowly stops Homer from telling them he lost his kids while they weren’t under his watch.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Even pedal cars, apparently!
• Faux Horrific: Bart and Lisa are terrified of and flee from a “big dog” - a chiauwa.
• Fire-Forged Friends: According to Homer and Marge, being lost in the neighborhood together as embattled toddlers led to Bart and Lisa developing the camaraderie they have now.
• Happy Ending Override: In "Lisa's First Word," two-year-old Bart hated baby Lisa until her first word turned out to be his name, prompting the discovery that she had loved him all along and causing the two to bond immediately. This episode shows that within the next two years they had become bitter enemies who constantly and violently fought one another to the point of alarming their parents and making them impossible to take anywhere.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Homer strangles Bart for hitting Lisa with the Phonic Frog. Bart picks up a lamp and smashes it on Homer's head to save himself. Homer's response to Bart's behavior?
    Homer: Where is he learning all this violence?
  • Ralph Wiggum witnesses a Too Dumb to Live action on Bart's part and calls him "stupid" before casually doing something even more dangerous.
• Invisible President: Variant. It's mentioned that the President in the flashback was "the President."
• Lampshade Hanging: Marge asks Homer why he simply stood and took pictures instead of intervening in Bart and Lisa’s fights.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Moe develops the photos and Marge thinks he's asking her if she'd like a "matte" finish. He just means he'll write "Matt" in the right-hand corner.
  • When Homer adds the epilogue explaining what happened to Ned's grandmother, an exasperated Bart and Lisa ask him to stop telling the story as it's had "three natural endings already"—poking fun at the way the three-act structure had changed to four segments plus The Tag when the show went into HD.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Homer shoots a pizza the guys want him to help them eat to show he's more concerned about his lost kids.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: 2-year-old Lisa has this to say before whacking Bart with a classic picture book:
  Lisa: Goodnight Moon? Goodnight BART!
• The Runaway: Bart and Lisa escaping into town on their own is about the only time when Marge and Homer are worried about them being out by themselves. Of course, they were much younger at this point in time.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • Kearney is seen as a kid along with Dolph and Jimbo, despite the series typically implying that he's many years older than both of them, being a young-looking adult man with a child of his own in the show's present.
  • According to "The Musk Who Fell to Earth," a mere seven episodes ahead of this one, Bart named Maggie. Here, Homer comes up with the name while he's searching for the young Lisa and Bart, as he realizes it would be a great name to yell if their hypothetical third kid gets lost.
• Sibling Rivalry: The classic rivalry between Bart and Lisa was much worse when Bart was four and Lisa was two, to the point where the current Bart and Lisa are quite confused by all of Homer's pictures of them fighting and wonder how they ever developed "the uneasy alliance we enjoy today."
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Averted. While Homer and Marge were looking for Bart and Lisa, Homer entered a municipal building and started telling about the missing kids until Marge interrupted him because the building served as headquarters for social services.
• Take That!: Moe claims Bart and Lisa used to fight "like creationists and common sense".
• Too Dumb to Live: Bart's been warned of stranger danger and, seeing strangers on the sidewalk, drives his tricycle into heavy traffic to avoid them. He's promptly outdone by Ralph Wiggum:
  Ralph: Your brother is stupid! (He stands inside the tire of a moving truck and sings as it rolls away)
• Uninhibited Muscle Power: When Bart and Lisa get trapped on top of the Springfield Tire Fire, Marge hopes that seeing the kids in danger will trigger this in Homer, having read of several similar cases. Although Homer tentatively says he's "kind of feeling it," he's not actually enabled until Marge mentions that they just bought them new shoes, causing him to bend an entire tree down to where the kids can reach it.
• Useless Bystander Parent: While looking at the photos of Bart and Lisa fighting and picking on each other, Marge questions Homer, who took the pictures, why he didn't intervene. Homer's answer is that the light was too perfect to step in.
• Whole Episode Flashback: The majority of the story takes place six years prior when Bart was 4 and Lisa was 2. They were fighting so much that Marge and Homer were at their wits end; during a brunch double-date with the Flanders, Bart and Lisa end up escaping their babysitter and go on an adventure around town.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Back when Bart and Lisa were younger, she pulled one to trick some bullies into leaving Bart alone.
• Your Answer to Everything: Parodied:
  Marge: We have to find some answers.
  Homer: Answers. That's your answer to everything!