Das Bus
From Simpsons Wiki
"Das Bus" is the 14th episode of the ninth season of The Simpsons, and a parody of the book and film Lord of the Flies.
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Plot
The whole family watches TV for the whole night, much to Marge's protesting. By morning she realises that the dozey kids need to go to school while Homer calls in sick at work "Mr. Smithers, I won't be coming to work today. Why? Because I have Smallpox... well it wasn't wiped out in my house!". The Springfield Elementary School Model United Nations Charter has an excursion where the bus ends up in disaster after falling from a bridge and into the sea, ending up in the middle of the ocean.
The bus driver Otto abandons the kids and gets washed away by the current, the students however (Bart, Lisa, Milhouse, Nelson, Ralph, Martin, Sherri, Terri, Wendell and Lewis) swim to a nearby tropical island. Bart tries to tell the kids that being stranded on an island is just like TV where life is easy and cocktails are plentiful, but reality soon sets in when the island is largely barren and the kids lack survivalist skills. With no food and no adult supervision, they rely on snack food retrieved from the sunken bus, but they awake one morning to find the snacks are missing. Suspecting Milhouse because of his pot-belly and nacho cheese breath, the students put him on trial and he blames the loss on a mysterious island "monster". At the trial, Bart is elected judge.
Meanwhile, Otto is ”rescued“ by Chinese fishermen in search of slave laborers, who say in their native tongue he can be put to work in a cannery.
Due to lack to evidence, Bart forces himself to acquit Milhouse, but the other students are unconvinced and attempt to kill him. Lisa tries to stop this, but then gets pushed up. Bart, angered by this, tells everyone to leave Lisa alone, and at that point, he, Lisa, and Milhouse get chased by the other students that are trying to kill them. This is thwarted only when the monster is proved real - except, it is a wild boar. In one of the boar's tusks was a empty bag of chips, proving that the boar ate all of the food. The students apologized to Milhouse for blaming him, and then kill the boar and eat it (except Lisa, who is a vegetarian, and eats the slime off rocks that the boar was subsisting on). The episode ends here, but at this point a narrator intrudes and tells the audience that the students will somehow be rescued by Moe.
In the subplot for the episode, Homer (seemingly unaware of his children's plight) launches Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net, an Internet business. He does so after finding out Ned Flanders has his own home-based Internet business and is making money out of it. Homer claims to Marge that everyone except the Simpson family are getting rich due to the Internet, and he wants a piece of the action. His business is later 'bought out' by Bill Gates' goons.
Trivia
- The countries the kids represent in the Model U.N. are as follows:
- Since this episode, the voice of Bart in the Latin America version was provided by Claudia Mota instead of Marina Huerta, who had filled the role since the first season. Huerta returned as Bart's voice from season 16 onwards.Template:Fact
Cultural references
- Most of the episode about being on the island is a spoof of the classic novel Lord of the Flies, although in the end of the story the boys are rescued by naval officers, who themselves are in the middle of a war.
- When the kids are squabbling in the classroom, Principal Skinner restores orders by banging his shoe on the desk. Skinner's actions are similar to Soviet dictator Nikita Kruschev at the UN banging his shoe on a table and yelling to the US Ambassador to the UN: "We will bury you!".
- When the children are chasing Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse, Ralph Wiggum has painted his face to resemble Peter Criss of KISS.
- The title is a play on the film "Das Boot".