YMMV / The Simpsons S 10 E 3 Bart The Mother

• Broken Base: Marge's resentment towards Bart. Either it was justified given Bart's usual behavior, or she went too far.
• Genius Bonus: Homer proclaims that he hasn't been this excited since "Halley's Comet collided with the moon," which Lisa says never happened. It's likely Homer is misremembering Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 colliding with Jupiter in 1994.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Marge takes a No Sympathy attitude toward Nelson in this episode because her priority is protecting Bart from a perceived bad influence, despite her understanding that Nelson has problems of his own ("Nelson's a troubled, lonely, sad little boy. He needs to be isolated from everyone.") and the fact that Nelson is thrilled when he briefly thinks she's offering to take him home with her when she's actually talking to Bart. In "Sleeping With the Enemy" her motherly heart will finally go out to Nelson to the point where she lets him live with the family when he has nowhere else to go and treats him as a son.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When Marge shows up at Nelson's house, she says "Young man, you're coming home with me this minute!", prompting Nelson to say "All right, finally, a real home!" before she tells him she was talking to Bart. In season 16's "Sleeping With the Enemy", Nelson actually stays with the Simpson family for a while. In fact, that episode reverses the roles of Marge and Bart in relation to Nelson, with Marge developing a soft spot for him while Bart is offended to find his mom sheltering his (sometimes-)bully.
• Memetic Mutation: The Summon Bigger Fish conversation Lisa and Principal Skinner have.
• Never Live It Down: Even though she reconciles with Bart and helps him raise the lizards, some viewers wouldn't forgive Marge for giving up on him earlier just for (accidentally) killing one little bird, to the point of accusing her of being an outright abusive mother. Not to mention coming across as Jerkass by storming into Bart's treehouse as suspicion he's doing something bad again (in spite of her decision to let him do things on his own), which is not helped by her unplugging the cord connecting to Bart's incubator along the way despite her not even knowing what Bart was actually doing.
• Squick: One of the birds in Bart's Imagine Spot tells Bart they're knee-deep in their own droppings, so they want him to put fresh newspaper on the tribunal floor.
  Eagle: We're knee-deep in our own droppings. It's disgusting.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While we are supposed to sympathize with Bart because he didn't want to kill the bird, we are still supposed to see Marge giving up on him as an understandable reaction towards him disobeying her. However, because the episodes focus too much on showing his remorse before she finds out about him killing the bird, it leads to her reaction coming across as needlessly cruel rather than understandable, with her "Have fun killing things!" feeling especially like a Kick the Dog moment considering she can clearly see how regretful Bart is.

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