Das Bus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"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.
Contents |
[edit] Synopsis
When the Springfield Elementary School organizes a Model United Nations, a related field trip turns into disaster when the bus flies into the ocean. The driver, Otto, goes missing, and the students, including Bart, Lisa, Milhouse, Nelson, Ralph, Martin, Sherri, Terri, Wendell, and Lewis wind up on an island. With no food and no adult supervision, they rely on snack food retrieved from the bus, but they awake one morning to find the snacks are missing. Suspecting Milhouse, the students put him on trial, and he blames the loss on a mysterious island monster.
Meanwhile, Otto swims from the bus and is washed away by the current. He is later rescued by Chinese fishermen in search of slave laborers.
Bart acquits Milhouse, but the other students are unconvinced and attempt to kill Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse. Violence is prevented only when the monster is proved real - except, it is a boar. The students kill the boar and eat it (except Lisa, who is a vegetarian, and eats the slime off of a rock that the boar was subsiding 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 a subplot for the episode, Homer, seemingly unaware of his children's plight, launches Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net, an Internet business; it is later 'bought out' by Bill Gates's thugs.
[edit] Trivia
- The playing backwards noise Otto's freestyle makes is actually Homer saying "Hey, this is Homer Simpson saying 'hi' to all the girls out there in radio land!"
- In the end credits, at 21:39, the statement "Certain celebrity voices impersonated" is shown for a fraction of a second. (Hank Azaria impersonated Bill Gates' voice.)
- The countries the kids represent in the Model U.N. are as follows:
- In the episode several characters represent the main characters in the Lord of the Flies. Bart represents Ralph, Lisa represents Simon, Milhouse represents Piggy, and Nelson represents Jack. To a lesser extent Martin may represent Roger, Ralph represents Percival, and Sherri and Terri represent the twins Sam and Eric.
- Since this episode, the voice of Bart in the Latin America version was made by Claudia Mota instead of Marina Huerta, who has made the voice since the first season. Huerta will come back as the Bart's voice since season 16.
[edit] Cultural references
- Most of the episode about being on the island is a spoof of the classic novel Lord of the Flies
- Skinner takes off his shoe and bangs it on the podium much like Nikita Khrushchev did in a speech to the United Nations in 1960.
- The coconut radio is taken from Gilligan's Island.
- The treehouse Bart imagines is similar to the one in the movie Swiss Family Robinson.
- Comic Book Guy is attempting to download pornographic pictures of Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager. This, along with his brief fling with Agnes Skinner several seasons later, hints that he has a thing for older women.
- The episode title is inspired from the German film Das Boot. The grammar is however incorrect. It would read "Der Bus" in German, as the word "Bus" is masculine.
- Ralph's "warpaint" matches the "Catman" makeup of Peter Criss from KISS, minus the white facepaint.
- The episode has the same name of an episode of The Adventures of Pete and Pete.
[edit] External links
- "Das Bus" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive
