Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood

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"Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood"
The Simpsons episode
Episode no.Season 5
Episode 8
Directed byJeffrey Lynch
Written byDan McGrath
Production code1F06
Original air dateNovember 18, 1993 (1993-11-18)
Guest appearance
Episode features
Couch gag
The family's eyes all run in darkness – and when the lights come on, the bodies run in after the eyes. The bodies sit down on the couch and lean forward, sticking their eyes in their sockets with a popping sound.
CommentaryMatt Groening
David Mirkin
Dan Castellaneta
Yeardley Smith
George Meyer
Bob Anderson
David Silverman
Episode chronology
← Previous
"Bart's Inner Child" 		Next →
"The Last Temptation of Homer"
The Simpsons season 5
List of episodes

"Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood" is the eighth episode of the fifth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on November 18, 1993. In the episode, Bart, intoxicated from an all-syrup Squishee, mistakenly joins the Junior Campers, a Boy Scout-style organization. Homer and Bart join a father-son rafting trip which goes awry when they are stranded at sea.

The episode was written by

Nielsen rating
of 13.0, and was the highest-rated show on the Fox network the week it aired.

Plot

Squishee made entirely of syrup from Apu at the Kwik-E-Mart
. With their senses reeling from the high sugar content, they spend the rest of the money on a wild night out on the town. The next morning, Bart wakes up with a hangover, not remembering the previous night's events. Bart soon discovers, to his horror, he joined the Junior Campers during his revelry.

Bart plans to quit the group as soon as possible; however, he decides to give it a chance after learning that Junior Campers can be excused from pop quizzes to go to their meetings. When Bart learns that Junior Campers are allowed to own pocket knives, he continues attending meetings. Homer mocks Bart relentlessly for continuing to be a Junior Camper. When a father-son rafting trip is planned, neither Bart nor Homer wish to go together. To his and Bart's annoyance, Homer inadvertently agrees to accompany Bart. A boy whose father is in prison has "celebrity dad"

Rod
.

When Homer loses the map after folding it into a makeshift hat that blows away, they paddle the wrong way and find themselves lost at sea, thanks to Homer believing the current will take them back to land. Homer continues to make the situation difficult by eating most of the rations of food they have, throwing Rod's

Krusty Burger
on an offshore oil rig. They sail to the Krusty Burger, which is about to go out of business due to a lack of attendance; Homer places a large order, saving the Krusty Burger's business and the castaways. Bart is proud of his father after the rafting party survives their ordeal.

Meanwhile, the rest of the campers (and Borgnine) are getting ready to play a song around the campfire. Just as Borgnine begins the song, he is attacked from behind by a mysterious figure lurking in the shadows.

Production

Ernest Borgnine guest-starred as himself in the episode.

"Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood" was written by

West Los Angeles.[2] Ernest Borgnine guest starred in the episode as himself. The staff liked his work on the films Marty and From Here to Eternity, so they asked him to do a guest appearance on the show. Borgnine felt he could not say no to the offer because his grandchildren were fans of the show.[3] In the final scene of the episode, Borgnine plays a guitar and sings campfire songs with the children. Borgnine was a guitar player in real life, so he brought his own guitar with him to the recording studio.[2] Borgnine apologized because he felt that he was not being able to sing very well, but Nancy Cartwright (Bart), thought his voice "added to the authenticity of his character".[4] Matt Groening thought the recording sessions with Borgnine were "so much fun".[3] Hank Azaria, (Apu), remembered that Borgnine "had no idea what the hell he was doing. He's a good actor, and he read his lines just fine, but he had no idea what the show was, no idea what we were doing."[5]

In her book My Life as a 10-Year-Old Boy, Cartwright recalls that she was a fan of Borgnine's performance in Marty. She writes that the film had "changed [her] forever", and that it made her "realize that actors have the power through their work to inspire and enlighten others." She recalls that when Borgnine arrived for the recording session, she "lost all coolness" and ran up to him and exclaimed "ohmygod, Marty!"[4]

Cultural references

When Bart and Milhouse visit the local

"Crocodile" Dundee (1986).[6] Ernest Borgnine introduces himself a la Troy McClure to the Junior Campers by recalling his role in From Here to Eternity, to the delight of the campers. As Homer hallucinates, he sings "Sugar, Sugar" by The Archies.[6] While on the raft, Homer misquotes Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner when he says "Water, water everywhere/So let's all have a drink."[7] The scene in which Borgnine and the other rafters drift through a dark forest watched by mountain men is a reference to a scene in Deliverance (1972), and the scene features the music from the film's "Dueling Banjos" scene.[8] The unseen person or creature that attacks Borgnine at the end of the episode is implied to be Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th film series.[8]

Reception

In its original American broadcast, "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood" finished 35th in the ratings for the week of November 15 to 21, 1993, with a

Nielsen rating of 13.0, translating to 12.3 million households. The episode was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week.[9]

Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, wrote: "A terrific episode, with Homer so stupid it isn't true, yet still saving the day. Seeing Ned Flanders get it wrong is great, but the show-stealer is a toss-up between Borgnine's great self-deprecating role, the ironic seagull, and the dolphins."

Broadway musicals, adventure-suspense and classic teen horror."[8] Adam Suraf of Dunkirkma.net named it one of his ten favorite episodes of the show. He called the musical sequence a "classic".[13] Rick Porter of Zap 2 It wrote in that he was not a "fan" of the episode's second half: "Despite the presence of Borgnine, Homer is a little too aggressively stupid for my taste". He thought the first part was "absolutely brilliant", though.[14]

Kurt M. Koenigsberger analyzed a scene from the episode in his piece "Commodity Culture and Its Discontents", published in

Itchy & Scratchy short because Itchy stakes down Scratchy's appendages and props his belly to form a tent with faulty knots. With Homer looking on from the couch, Lisa reminds Bart that "cartoons don't have to be 100% realistic" as a second Homer wanders past the living-room window. Koenigsberger said that "this moment and many others like it reveal a strong sense of self-awareness within the show, an awareness especially characteristic of high modernism."[15]

In the

Sky 1 held a Golden D'ohnuts evening, in which viewers voted for their favorite episodes to win in each category. This episode won the category of: Best School Jinx.[16]

References

  1. ^
    OL 433519M
    ..
  2. ^ a b Castellaneta, Dan (2004). The Simpsons season 5 DVD commentary for the episode "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  3. ^ a b Groening, Matt (2004). The Simpsons season 5 DVD commentary for the episode "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  4. ^
    ISBN 0-7868-8600-5
    .
  5. ^ Marder, Keith (April 28, 1994). "Real people are models for 'Simpsons' voices". The Times Union.
  6. ^ a b c Martyn, Warren; Wood, Adrian (2000). "Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood". BBC. Archived from the original on February 13, 2009. Retrieved April 12, 2008.
  7. ^ Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".
  8. ^ a b c Daly, Kay (February 11, 2005). "The Simpsons: The Complete Fifth Season DVD Review". TV DVD Review. Archived from the original on January 16, 2009. Retrieved January 9, 2009.
  9. Long Beach Press-Telegram
    . November 24, 1993. p. C6.
  10. ^ Jacobson, Colin (December 21, 2004). "The Simpsons: The Complete Fifth Season (1993)". DVD Movie Guide. Retrieved January 24, 2009.
  11. ^ Bromley, Patrick (February 23, 2005). "The Simpsons: The Complete Fifth Season". DVD Verdict. Archived from the original on January 16, 2009. Retrieved January 24, 2009.
  12. ^ Gibron, Bill (December 23, 2004). "The Simpsons – The Complete Fifth Season". DVD Talk. Retrieved January 9, 2009.
  13. ^ Suraf, Adam (December 18, 2004). "The Simpsons: Season 5". Dunkirkma.net. Archived from the original on February 18, 2009. Retrieved February 10, 2009.
  14. ^ Porter, Rick (December 31, 2008). "TV reminds you to drink responsibly this New Year's". Zap 2 It. Archived from the original on February 24, 2009. Retrieved February 10, 2009.
  15. ISBN 0-8143-2849-0
    .
  16. ^ "Sky One host Golden D'ohnut Awards". simpsoncrazy.com. Archived from the original on March 21, 2015. Retrieved May 12, 2015.

External links

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