MoneyBart

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"MoneyBart"
Couch gag
Couch gag by Banksy: The Simpsons are seen as a picture on the wall of a sweatshop where Asian workers are seen drawing the couch gag and creating Simpsons merchandise.
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"MoneyBart" (stylized as "MoneyBART") is the third episode of the

winning streak by using her book smarts in statistics and probability. However, when Bart questions Lisa’s coaching tactics and accuses her of taking the fun out of baseball, Lisa benches him from the championship
game.

The episode was written by

political activist Banksy, who stated he had been "inspired by reports that Simpsons characters are animated in Seoul, South Korea".[1]

The episode was watched in a total of 6.74 million households.

Critical reception was generally favorable, with praises towards the story and jokes but criticism towards the episode's use of baseball-themed celebrity cameos.

Plot

A visit by Dahlia Brinkley, the only

Moe's Tavern, who direct her to Professor Frink and his scientific colleagues. She learns about sabermetrics from them and uses this science to organize the Isotots' strategy; as a result, their record quickly improves, and they rise in the league standings. However, Bart eventually rebels against her management, saying that she has taken all the fun out of the game, and hits a home run
despite her orders to let the pitcher walk him. The Isotots win the game, but Lisa throws Bart off the team for his insubordination.

The dismissal raises tension at the Simpson household, with

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (and a former ringer for Mr. Burns' softball team), pops up in the seats behind Marge and Bart and tells him that the best players listen to their managers, pointing out his three World Series wins – two as player, one as manager. Marge takes Bart to the game, which is now in its last inning, with the Isotots down 11-10. Bart puts aside his differences with Lisa and offers to pinch-run
from first base, then ignores her signs and steals both second and third. As he begins to steal home, Lisa realizes the odds are vastly against him, then decides to ignore the numbers and cheer him on anyway. He is tagged out at the plate, costing the Isotots their championship bid, but Lisa thanks him for helping her learn to love baseball as a game, and the team cheers them for resolving their differences.

Production

The episode was written by Tim Long, his second writing credit of the season after "Elementary School Musical", and was directed by Nancy Kruse, her first directing credit of the season, and her last of the series. This marks the second appearance of Mike Scioscia on The Simpsons. His first appearance on the show was in the season 3 episode Homer at the Bat in 1992, which is referenced in the episode.[2] Baseball sabermetrician Bill James also makes a guest appearance in a talking picture on a wiki, being used as a reference when Professor Frink points out to Lisa that "baseball is a game played by the dextrous but only understood by the poindextrous."[3]

Opening sequence

Approximately the first half-minute of the opening sequence remains the same, with a few oddities: the word "Banksy" is sprayed onto a number of walls and other public spaces; Krusty's billboard advertises that he now performs at funerals (first seen on "Take My Life, Please", but this had "Banksy" on it). The chalkboard gag ("I must not write all over the walls") is written all over the classroom walls, clock, door, and floor.[2]

After the Simpsons arrive at home, the camera cuts to a shot of them on the couch, then zooms out to show this as a picture hanging on the wall of a fictional overseas

animation cel, which he washes in a vat of biohazardous fluid.[4]

The camera tracks down to a lower floor of the building, where small

searchlights, and a watchtower.[2]

Creation

standards and practices department demanded some changes, and Jean agreed to them "for taste"; Jean said that "95 percent of it is just the way he [Banksy] wanted," but declined to say what was in the censored 5%, only saying that the original version was "even a little sadder."[6][7] In January 2011, Banksy published the original storyboard on his website.[8] It appears that a poster of Rupert Murdoch
could be the 5% that was left out of the final cut.

The Simpsons is storyboarded at

conical Asian hats, but these were removed.[9]

Banksy told The Guardian that his opening sequence was influenced by The Simpsons long-running use of animation studios in Seoul, South Korea.[1] The newspaper also reported that the creation of the sequence "is said to have been one of the most closely guarded secrets in US television – comparable to the concealment of Banksy's own identity."[1]

outsource."[1] Although conceding to the fact that The Simpsons is largely animated in South Korea, Jean went on to state that the scenes shown in titles are "very fanciful, far-fetched. None of the things he depicts are true. That statement should be self-evident, but I will emphatically state it."[6]

Cultural references

The title is a play on

Michael M. Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball, which examines the 2002 Oakland Athletics' use of sabermetrics to build a competitive baseball team;[11] the book would be made into an Oscar nominated film in 2011, the year after this episode aired. Moe laments his decision to advertise his drink specials in Scientific American magazine, which led to Frink and company coming in.[2]

Homer references the 1969 Mets outfielder Ron Swoboda, as well as the collision between Pete Rose and Ray Fosse in the 1970 All-Star Game. When Flanders tells Bart that he is resigning from the little league team, he says to "call him Walter Matthau, but I'm a bad news bearer." This is a reference to the baseball themed film, The Bad News Bears (which Matthau starred in). When Maggie defeats Lisa in fencing, she carves a letter M into Lisa's chest pad, a reference to Zorro.

Reception

In its original American broadcast on October 10, 2010, "MoneyBart" was viewed by an estimated 6.74 million viewers, according to the Nielsen Media Research, receiving a 3.0 rating/8 share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49, beating The Cleveland Show and American Dad! in the demographic and total viewers and ranking third in its time slot.[12] The episode received a 29% drop in the demographic from the previous episode, "Loan-a Lisa".[12][13]

The episode received favorable reviews.

Brad Trechak of the

TV Squad said of the episode: "In the end, the episode was really good at the beginning and the ending, but the middle kind of dragged."[2]

Eric Hochburger of TV Fanatic criticized the Mike Scioscia cameo, although he said that "[w]hile this week's installment will never replace our favorite Simpsons baseball episode, "Homer at the Bat," there [was] certainly plenty of great jokes and a strong enough story with heart to keep us entertained."[14]

Rowan Kaiser of The A.V. Club compared the episode favorably to "Lisa on Ice" although she also criticized the Scioscia cameo, calling it "awkward".[15] In conclusion she gave the episode an A−, the best grade of the night.[15]

The opening sequence received a generally mixed response.

Nelson Shin, the founder of AKOM, the Korean company that animates The Simpsons, said that he and his staff did protest being asked to animate the sequence. Shin said that the sequence suggests that animators work in sweatshops, but they actually work in "high-tech workshops". He added, "Most of the content was about degrading people from Korea, China, Mexico and Vietnam. If Banksy wants to criticize these things ... I suggest that he learn more about it first."[9]

Colby Hall of Mediaite called the sequence "a jaw-dropping critique of global corporate licensing, worker exploitation and over-the-top dreariness of how western media companies (in this case, 20th Century Fox) takes advantage of outsourced labor in developing countries."[16]

Melissa Bell of The Washington Post felt Banksy's titles had helped revive The Simpsons' "edge", but after "the jarring opening, the show went back to its regular routine of guest cameos, self-referential jokes and tangential story lines."[17]

Marlow Riley of MTV wrote, "as satire, [the opening is] a bit over-the-top. What is shocking is that Fox ran Banksy's ballsy critique of outsourcing, The Simpsons, and the standards and human rights conditions that people in first world nations accept. It's uncomfortable and dark, and not what's expected from the modern Simpsons, which mainly consists of 'Homer hurts himself' jokes."[18]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Halliday, Josh (October 11, 2010). "Banksy takes Simpsons into sweatshop". The Guardian. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
  2. ^ a b c d e Trechak, Brad (October 11, 2010). "'The Simpsons' Season 22, Episode 3 Recap (VIDEO)". HuffPost TV. Archived from the original on February 4, 2013. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  3. ^ Hurley, Michael (October 11, 2010). "Sabermetrician Bill James Pokes Fun at Himself on 'The Simpsons'". NESN. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e Roberts, Soraya (October 11, 2010). "Banksy's 'Simpsons' couch gag targets Twentieth Century Fox banking on its most famous cartoon". New York Daily News. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  5. ^ Lawson, Catherine (October 11, 2010). "Banksy Does 'The Simpsons': Street Artist Creates Title Sequence". TV Squad.com. Archived from the original on February 5, 2013. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  6. ^
    New York Times
    . Retrieved October 11, 2010.
  7. ^ a b c Snierson, Dan (October 11, 2010). "Banksy does 'The Simpsons': Exec producer Al Jean talks about pulling off the ultimate couch gag". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  8. ^ Original Storyboard from Banksy's website (archived at https://web.archive.org)
  9. ^ a b Cain, Geoffrey (September 30, 2010). "South Korean Cartoonists Cry Foul Over The Simpsons". Time. Archived from the original on October 30, 2010. Retrieved January 13, 2021.
  10. ^ "Banksy creates new Simpsons title sequence". BBC News. October 11, 2010. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
  11. ^ Abbott, Henry (October 11, 2010). "The Simpsons go sabermetric". ESPN.com. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  12. ^ a b Gorman, Bill (October 11, 2010). "TV Ratings: Against Sunday Night Football & Baseball; Simpsons, Cleveland, Family Guy, American Dad, Housewives Dive". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on October 13, 2010. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
  13. ^ Seidman, Robert (October 4, 2010). "TV Ratings: Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, Sunday Night Football Rise; CSI: Miami Premieres". TV by the Numbers. Archived from the original on October 6, 2010. Retrieved October 4, 2010.
  14. ^ Hochburger, Eric (October 11, 2010). "The Simpsons review: "MoneyBART"". TV Fanatic. Retrieved May 22, 2011.
  15. ^ a b Kaiser, Rowan (October 11, 2010). ""MoneyBART"/"How Cleveland Got His Groove Back"/"Welcome Back Carter"/"Son of Stan, Pt. 2 of 2"". The A.V. Club. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  16. ^ Hall, Colby (October 11, 2010). "Banksy Directed Simpsons Opener Portrays Bleak And Exploitative 20th Century Fox". Mediaite. Retrieved October 11, 2010.
  17. Washington Post
    . Retrieved October 11, 2010.
  18. ^ Riley, Marlow (October 11, 2010). "Banksy Brings Rebel Humor To 'The Simpsons'". MTV. Retrieved January 13, 2022.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MoneyBart&oldid=1216737721"