YMMV / The Simpsons S7 E4 "Bart Sells His Soul"

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Milhouse that bad, or is he acting that way to get back at Bart for all the bad things that happened to him? It's not like he forced Bart to sell his soul; Bart came up with the idea in the first place to prove a point. For a more supernaturally-slanted explanation, Bart's soul may have turned Milhouse into more of a brat.
  • When it comes to the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane plot, is Lisa's guess about what's going on as good as Bart's, or is she an Aesop Enforcer purposely goading Bart into valuing his soul by encouraging him to think he really lost it? The question of when, exactly, she got her hands on Bart's soul raises a whole new series of ideas and potential interpretations: the fact that Bart camped out in front of the door of the comic shop all night and never encountered Lisa would seem to indicate that she'd already made the purchase of his soul by the time they were eating at Moe's new family restaurant, when she taunted him with his supposed soullessness during grace. Was she: getting in her last wisecracks on the subject with the intention of giving him his soul at dinner (inadvertently scaring him into running out to find his soul himself), continuing her effort to teach him a lesson, or simply behaving more mischievously than usual because Bart's soul was in her possession at the time?
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: Milhouse asking how people can benefit from lying about the existence of a soul is accommodated by the camera zooming in on Lovejoy counting money from the collection plates. While the intended punchline is about organized religion cheating its followers out of money, it can also be interpreted by the amount of money in the plates. Since most of it is coinage, it can also mean that pastors such as Lovejoy don't have much to gain if people aren't willing to question their faith.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Bart did his homework with that hymn prank: "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" was originally called "In The Garden Of Eden." Doug Ingle wrote the title down while drunk and sleep-deprived, resulting in it coming out as incomprehensible gibberish. And, yes, the song really is seventeen minutes long.
• Awesome Music: "In A Gadda Da Vida" sounds amazing on a church organ. Too bad Reverend Lovejoy doesn't feel the same way.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The evil street sweeper who wrecks Bart's bike and then crashes into a nearby subway tunnel entrance. It all happens from out of nowhere, happens for no real obvious reason, and then it is never brought up again.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Sherri and Terri switching the lyrics from "Hell" to "Hello operator, give me number nine..." makes sense when you realize it's referencing the nine levels of Hell.
  • The giant deep fryer Moe bought from the Navy is marked "USS Missouri", a real life battleship that was preserved after retirement. Coincidentally, the ship's nickname is "Mighty Mo".
• Harsher in Hindsight: Bart's quip about Michael Jackson being a joke adults make to scare kids. At the time, it was due to Jackson's molestation allegations first making headlines two years after "Stark Raving Dad" aired. It got worse when Jackson was accused of molestation twice more (first in 2003, then again after his death in the "Leaving Neverland" documentary), resulting in "Stark Raving Dad" being banned from all future reruns and home media releases (although it can still be viewed on pre-banned home media and online).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The joke that prompted Moe to change his place from a bar to a family restaurant was the Hibbert family not knowing what type of place it was. In 2017, the State of Utah enacted a law requiring all eating establishments to post a sign on the outside to indicate if they were licensed as a restaurant or bar in order to avoid families mistakenly taking their kids into bars. After some mockery, the law was altered so restaurants weren't required to post the signs, but bars still have to.
  • In the late 90's/early 2000's, many Las Vegas casinos tried to rebrand themselves as "family vacation" destinations. This initiative didn't work out all that well, and the idea was scrapped after a few years. Moe's arc in this episode can appear oddly prophetic in this context.
• Memetic Badass: Mrs. Feesch got a lot of respect from viewers for managing to play all 17 minutes of In the Garden Of Eden as a woman in her nineties on the pipe organ, an instrument that takes a lot of energy to play.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Wait a minute, this sounds like rock and/or roll!" Go to any video playing "In A Gadda Da Vida," and you'll see this in the comments.
  • ALF pogs. "Remember ALF? He's back. In pog form."
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: By some accounts, this episode has been shown in some Sunday school classes as a way to get conversations started on what the soul is, despite its mockery of organized religion. It helps that the episode doesn't mock faith in itself and even contains An Aesop about valuing the spiritual.
• One-Scene Wonder: The malicious street sweeper only appears in one, bizarre scene, but due to how densely packed with jokes that scene manages to be, he's definitely memorable.
• Tear Dryer: Bart is so utterly despondent that he resorts to praying to get his soul back. It turns out that Lisa bought his soul from Comic Book Guy.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The episode is dated almost entirely around its treatment of pogs as being current and trendy rather than a goofy, nostalgic reference to something nobody can believe was ever popular. It's more amusing in hindsight, since the show does make a joke around the "outdated and forgotten fad" angle — but directs it at ALF through the medium of pogs ("Remember ALF? He's back! In pog form."). It does end up being somewhat correct by accident, as the main person espousing pogs is Milhouse.
• Woolseyism:
  • The Latin American and Spaniard Spanish versions of the scene wherein Bart discovers the Comic Book Guy already sold his soul and bangs his head against a display as a result have the Comic Book Guy say, deadpan, to please not do that because the glass will break and hurt someone instead of him saying (in his standard sarcasm-laden tone of voice, complete with sing-song "thank you") that the display has an issue of Mary Worth in which Mary advises a friend of hers to kill herself. If anything, it reduces the Kick the Dog nature of the line a little bit.
  • The Latin American version also changes the homeless man's ramblings into a doom-and-gloom spiel about how the whole world will be audited and he will watch with glee.
  • Before Ned Flanders ushers his family out of Moe's restaurant, he says, "I expect that type of language at Denny's, but not here!" Since Denny's isn't well-known outside of the United States, many foreign versions change the target of Ned's Take That! to McDonald's. The German dub uses Burger King.

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