Children of a Lesser Clod is the 20th episode of The Simpsons twelfth season. In the episode, after spraining his knee during a basketball game, Homer begins taking care of the neighborhood kids to cure his boredom, prompting jealousy from Bart and Lisa, who feel that Homer is giving the kids the attention they never had.
The episode is written by former and current show runner, Al Jean and directed by Michael Polcino. The title is a parody of the play/movie Children of a Lesser God.
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The family goes to the YMCA to attend one-time-only free classes, along with many other Springfieldians who admit they will never return to the YMCA and pay for any of the regular classes. Lisa takes gymnastics (and gets yelled at by the Russian coach for being too old), Bart gets tricked into taking an etiquette class by a black man dressed as a gangsta rapper (who happens to be the husband of the prim and proper etiquette teacher), and Homer participates in a basketball class for men over the age of 35, but suffers a torn ACL after a dunk attempt ends with the backboard crashing down on his leg. After Homer gets his surgery, he is told by Dr. Hibbert that he cannot go to work, and he must stay home. Homer finds himself extremely bored, even going so far as attempting to cross-breed Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II. One evening, Ned wants Marge to watch Rod and Todd while he attends a Chris Rock concert (that he misinterprets to be an abbreviation for a Christian Rock concert), but Marge is out identifying a body (which ends up being a very much alive Hans Moleman which everyone thinks is really dead) so Ned asks Homer instead. The kids like having Homer take care of them, which allows Homer to establish his own day care center.
Homer starts a day care center (under Marge's ownership), "Uncle Homer's Day Care Center", to entertain himself, but makes Bart and Lisa feel like outcasts by ignoring them, giving Bart's jacket to Milhouse, forcing them out of their bedrooms for a film crew that is making a documentary about him, and having them work long hours at night to cut out felt hearts in his honor. The daycare center is wildly successful, and Homer earns a nomination for the "Good Guy Awards" ceremony. For the ceremony, Bart and Lisa splice in home movie footage of Homer at his worst (passed out on the floor drunk and almost naked during Christmas, losing Maggie in a poker game, and chasing Bart down the street while wielding a chain mace) to prove to everyone that Homer's nice guy persona is a sham. The audience becomes outraged and Homer angrily strangles Bart on stage. Everyone in the audience becomes horrified by Homer's behavior, and decide to prevent their kids from being watched over by him. Homer escapes from the ceremony with all the kids in a van, until he crashes the van into a tree, and tries to escape before Chief Wiggum stops him. After three mistrials, Homer apologizes to Bart and Lisa for neglecting them, and promises to care for his own children (including the perpetually-ignored Maggie) instead of the neighborhood kids.
"Children of a Lesser Clod" was written by Al Jean and directed by Michael Polcino. Jean initially had multiple different storylines including Homer getting hurt, before he eventually pitched them all into this episode.[1] During production, the staff members looks for an actual NBA player to appear with a shot gun during the first act, but the no player accepted the role.[1] The line when Milhouse says he knows Bart's dad better than Bart knows him is a reference to Mike Reiss's real life experience.[1] During production the animators need Ralph to get off screen for a two shot so they decided that Ralph followed a butterfly.[1] When Homer puts his daycare permit in the picture frame Bart and Lisa gave him was based on a real life experience of former writer Dana Gould in which he gave his parents a newspaper article about him winning a boston comedy competition and later found out that it was replaced by Larry Bird dunking butterfingers.[2] The third act did not initially include a police car chase and it was placed in after the table read.[1] The scratches in Homer's day-care video were added to the animation in post-production.[1]
The title is a spoof of the play Children of a Lesser God and the 1986 film based upon it. The episode features the original basket for basketball.[1] Professor Frink's use of "Flubber" directly references the 1997 film of the same name. Lugash is a parody of Béla Károlyi.[1]
A short segment of the episode features Bill Cosby asking a child on his show Kids Say the Darndest Things about a specific hobby, of which the child promptly replies "Pokémon!" Cosby begins incoherently rambling about what Pokémon is whilst flapping his ears. This is a parodied mannerism of Cosby's that is often used on the show.[3] This is also the second time Cosby has been parodied on The Simpsons. Another similar gag was used in the episode Helter Shelter.
This sequence involving Bill Cosby's over-exaggerated mannerisms from this and other episodes on The Simpsons (as well as the Family Guy episode "Brian Does Hollywood") became an internet meme when many parodies on these particular segments became internet memes in their own right, especially on YouTube and YTMND.[4]
Colin of Jacobson of DVD Movie Guide gave this episode a mixed review, saying "When Bart and Lisa team up to pursue a goal, the result usually succeeds. And that’s true for “Clod” – at least to a moderate degree. Like most Season 12 episodes, the program doesn’t become truly delightful, but it does more right than wrong, so it ends up as a decent success."[5]