Brother from the Same Planet

From Simpsons Wiki

"Brother from the Same Planet" is the fourteenth episode of the fourth season. The episode's title is a play on John Sayles Film The Brother from Another Planet.

The plot of this episode is similar to a Ren and Stimpy cartoon produced around the same time and vice versa. Dan Castellaneta provided the voices of Ren and Stimpy in this sequence instead of Billy West. Incidentally, Rough Trade Studios does the animation for both that show and The Simpsons.

According to the DVD commentary for this episode, the role of Tom was written with Tom Cruise in mind. However, after being repeatedly turned down by Cruise, the producers went with Phil Hartman.

Plot

After playing soccer, Bart waits for Homer to pick him up. However, Homer forgets, and Bart is left alone as a storm approaches. Many occurrences at home remind Homer that he was meant to do something, but he cannot recall what. When Homer finally remembers after a dream about seeing Bart's skeleton on a soccer field, he rushes out to pick up Bart (who is very angry) and tries to put the issue behind them, but Bart isn't buying.

When they return home, Bart watches television when a commercial for a mentor program called Bigger Brothers comes up. This gives him an idea and he goes to the Bigger Brothers Agency disguising himself with accent as a brave young boy whose father left him six years ago. Afterwards, Bart is assigned a big brother called Tom whom Bart first meets when he comes to school to pick Bart up by letting him ride on the back of his motorcycle. Later on, Bart and Tom meet up for Tomato Day at the Springfield Stadium. Afterwards, they go to lift weights and watch Ren and Stimpy. Eventually, Homer finds out about Bart's Big Brother, angrily confronts him about the issue, and goes to the Big Brothers Agency where he is assigned the child Pepi (whom he calls Pepsi for a brief period) for revenge. Homer shows Pepi the garage door, "a wonder of modern technology" and then the two look at the stars together.

Meanwhile back at the Simpsons household, Marge finds a $378.53 phone bill for calls made to the Corey hotline. Because of this, Marge headed up to talk to Lisa who was hiding in her room, as the entrance was decorated with a Corey poster. Marge tells Lisa that she understands what she was going through and that when she was a girl she had a crush on Bobby Sherman, which causes Lisa to laugh uproariously. Even so, in the end Lisa agrees to never make any more calls. However, Lisa continues to make the calls until eventually she stops after taking Marge's advice in that if she could make it until 12 o'clock without calling, she would have conquered her addiction.

Elsewhere, Homer takes Pepi and Tom takes Bart to Marine World,a parody of SeaWorld to attend Big Brothers Day. There, Homer meets up with Tom and the two fight because Tom was angry after hearing Bart's stories about his father being a gambling drunk. In the end, Homer ends up in a stretcher leaving Tom without a child to take care of and Pepi without a Big Brother. Seeing this, Bart makes an obvious conclusion, telling them that Tom should become Pepi's big brother. Tom and Pepi agree and start hanging out with each other. Afterwards, Bart and Homer reconcile and the episode ends with them sitting on the couch, Homer teaching Bart how to fight dirty (like he did with Tom).

Goof

Bart's telephone only has buttons from 1 to 9 with no zeroes or punctuation marks.

Continuity

This episode marks the third time Homer falls down Springfield Gorge, though this time he is not injured. The name I.P. Freely that Kent Brockman was given was one of the prank names Bart gave in one of his calls to Moe's bar.

The R-rated movie Bart's friends are so excited about seeing is Barton Fink, a drama about a struggling screenwriter in the 1940s, which presumably is far from what they would hope to see. A later episode, "Bart the Fink", would take its title from that film, which, like The Simpsons, is produced by 20th Century Fox.

Cultural references

When Tom and Bart are watching TV, they are watching Ren and Stimpy. The producers had to get permission from Nickelodeon to let them use it, and the scene follows like this:

Ren: (eating a dinner made by Stimpy) This meatball soup is delicious Stimpy!!

Stimpy: That's not meatball soup, that's just my collection of furballs and stomach acid!

Ren: YOU IDIOT!!! YOU'RE TRYING TO KILL ME MAN!!!

(Ren's eyes then wrap around each other and burst into blood.)

(Tom and Bart laugh.)

Milhouse writes "Trab pu kcip" on the wall, which is "Pick up Bart" backwards, a reference to Danny Torrance writing "redrum" which is "murder" backwards, in The Shining. The woman that Bart mistakes for Homer in an ironic touch sings "I Am Woman". While Bart is stuck in the storm waiting for Homer, a nun is lifted up by the wind, a reference to the show The Flying Nun.

The grapefruit scene is a reference of the[James Cagney movie, The Public Enemy. When Bart tells himself "Eye of the Tiger, Bart" he is making a reference to what Rocky says to himself in Rocky III. When Homer tells Bart "You've been flouncing around with that floosy of a bigger brother of yours, haven't you? Haven't you!" he is making a reference to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when Richard Burton accuses his wife of adultery.

Skinner makes a reference to the movie Psycho when he says "Oh... there's mother now." This is the first time Skinner has been portrayed as a Norman Bates like character. At one point, Bart tells Homer that he would fake the excitement he would have when Homer pushed him on the swing and demonstrates it, to Homer's horror. This is a reference to the infamous fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally. A section of the fight between Homer and Tom parodies the introduction to Street Fighter II.

The episode makes various references to Saturday Night Live. During the part where Bart watches "Tuesday Night Live" (a parody of NBC's Saturday Night Live), Bart comments that he misses Joe Piscopo (who was a castmember of SNL from 1980 [during Jean Doumanian's low-rated sixth season] to 1984). It parodies how the loss of a castmember or members from one season leaves the next season to be weak in the eyes of SNL fans because of the loss of said castmember (or castmembers). Krusty's line during Tuesday Night Live, "We've got a great show, except the last half hour is a real garbage dump" is a jab at SNL putting on weaker, less funny sketches and performances in the last half hour of the show. Another criticism of SNL comes when Krusty is in a sketch called "The Big Ear Family", which could be a reference to the 'Coneheads. Krusty's line, "This sketch goes on for 12 minutes", is a reference to/jab at SNL writers in the 1990s trying to milk humor from one-joke sketch ideas (which, to this day, is a complaint from former SNL fans who believe the show has gone downhill).