The Bart Wants What It Wants

Plot

Homer Simpson steals the Olympic torch after the TV broadcast of the games repeatedly bumps his favorite shows. Olympic officials chase the Simpsons in a helicopter as they drive away. Marge returns the torch, but the flame causes the helicopter to crash. The officials survive, though the Olympic flame goes out.

On the way home, the family stops at a fair hosted by a private school. There, Bart meets Greta, daughter of actor Rainier Wolfcastle. Greta develops a crush on Bart, who remains unaware, and the family enjoys special treatment from Rainier. Lisa notices Bart does not take Greta seriously after he skips her school dance to watch Principal Skinner bomb at an open mic night.

Following Lisa’s advice, Bart ends things with Greta, who reacts poorly. After the breakup, Bart realizes he actually wanted to be with her and goes to her house to ask her back. He finds Greta now dating Milhouse. Greta travels to Canada with Milhouse while her father films a movie, and Bart follows with his family.

On the set, Bart confronts Milhouse, and they fight, causing chaos. They both stand before Greta and demand she choose between them. Greta loses interest in both and turns them down. The two boys make up and join the Canadian Mounted Basketball Team.

Production

Michael Polcino directed this episode, with writing credits going to John Frink and Don Payne, though the concept came from staff writer Matt Selman. He pitched a story where Bart is attracted to a girl because she owns "awesome things," while she likes him for his personality. The episode features the Simpsons traveling to Toronto, which Fox used as a promotional hook despite Canada not being mentioned until the third act. To boost publicity, Fox asked the city of Toronto to declare February 17, 2002, as "The Simpsons Day" and give the Simpson family a key to the city.

This request was denied because Toronto does not grant keys to for-profit entities. Executive producer and showrunner Al Jean noted that Fox's request "upset" Canada, leading to a "sternly worded" editorial in The Toronto Star that criticized the network's promotional tactics. That same newspaper credited Canadian Simpsons writers Joel H. Cohen and Tim Long with pitching the episode, but this claim was disputed in the episode's DVD commentary. This episode marks the family's first trip to Canada, with two later visits: in season sixteen's "Midnight Rx," Homer and Grampa go to Winnipeg to smuggle cheap medication, and in season twenty-one's "Boy Meets Curl," Marge and Homer travel to Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Cultural references

Milhouse greets Greta for the first time with "Whassup?", a nod to a Budweiser ad campaign where characters repeatedly say that word to each other. At Moe's, Rainier Wolfcastle is bombarded with questions from patrons and dispatches his authorized look-alike to field them. According to the DVD commentary, this scene was written when celebrity impersonators were earning substantial incomes. Bart and Greta play Scrabble, a Hasbro word game, during the episode.

The music before and after Principal Skinner's comedy set borrows from the opening theme of the TV sitcom Seinfeld. Bart dumps Greta in an ice cream shop, mirroring a breakup scene in the Reese Witherspoon film Legally Blonde. The episode's title twists the saying "the heart wants what it wants."

Release

When "The Bart Wants What It Wants" first aired in the United States, Nielsen Media Research reported that it earned a 6.1 rating, which meant around 6.4 million people watched it. For the week of February 11 through 17, 2002, it ranked 27th overall and was the third most-watched show on its network. Later that same year, it received a nomination for a Writers Guild of America Award in the Animation category, but the prize went to the Futurama episode "Godfellas." On August 24, 2010, the episode came out as part of The Simpsons: The Complete Thirteenth Season DVD and Blu-ray set. The audio commentary featured contributions from Al Jean, Matt Selman, Tim Long, John Frink, Don Payne, Tom Gammill, Max Pross, Joel H. Cohen, Pamela Hayden, Michael Polcino, Steven Dean Moore, and Bill Freiberger.

Critics had mixed feelings about the episode after it aired. Ben Rayner of the Toronto Star gave it a positive review, noting that it matched the quality of the season's best episodes. He praised its relatively straightforward plot and said the main romantic storyline had a childlike sweetness similar to earlier Simpsons crush episodes. Colin Jacobson of DVD Movie Guide, however, admitted that while he generally liked the thirteenth season, this episode and "Half-Decent Proposal" made him reconsider.

He found "The Bart Wants What It Wants" not bad, but stale and rehashed. Nate Boss of Project-Blu pointed out that the episode featured Rainier Wolfcastle, whom he called one of the funniest characters in Simpsons history, but he felt the story covered familiar ground. He added that including Canada and Mountie jokes was a predictable formula. Ron Martin of 411Mania also saw it as unoriginal, calling it a yearly episode that just swaps out the temptations.

Hannah Sung, also from the Toronto Star, was disappointed. She said the episode wasn't entirely bad, but the payoff didn't live up to the buildup. She criticized the third act set in Toronto as a sloppy collection of every Canadian joke Americans have told, which loses its humor after being repeated too many times.