Brother from the Same Planet

"Brother from the Same Planet" is the fourteenth episode of Season 4.
==Synopsis==
Fed up with being neglected by Homer, Bart joins the Big Brother program posing as an orphan in order to find a better father figure. However, Homer finds out about Bart's new friend Tom and exacts his revenge by donating his time as a big brother to a real orphan named Pepi. Meanwhile, Lisa tries to break her addiction to calling a hotline where pretty boy teen idol Corey talks to girls.
== Full Story ==
After playing soccer, Bart waits for Homer to pick him up. At the Simpson residence, Marge reminds Homer to do so on her way out the door but Homer is so focused on the game show that he doesn't hear what Marge said, and he forgets to pick up Bart. Bart is left alone as a storm approaches. At his house, Milhouse is seen writing a strange sentence "Trab Pu Kcip" on the wall. He recite the words before his father Kirk comes and see what Milhouse is doing. He angrily scolds Milhouse for writing on the walls, and grounds him by sending him to his room. When they both leave the room it is shown in a mirror reflection that "Trab Pu Kcip" is in fact "Pick Up Bart" spelt backwards. Meanwhile back home, many occurrences, such as what is most likely a documentary of former Green Bay NFL quarterback Bryan Bartlett Starr telling a true story of his retirement from playing on the team in real life and transition to coaching in 1971, remind Homer that he was meant to do something important, but he cannot recall what. When Homer finally remembers what to do after a horrible daydream about seeing Bart's skeleton on the soccer field, he rushes there to try to pick up Bart. Upon arriving, Homer finds Bart completely soaked and when Homer gives Bart a sundae it leaves his head covered in ice cream. Homer, knowing that Bart's anger is truly justified, carefully tries to put the issue behind them. However, Bart nonetheless remains furious at Homer for almost forgetting to pick him up and refuses to even make any eye contact with him. Bart then angrily imagines Homer's face melting while Homer moans "Now, how bout a hug?" in a frightening voice.
When they return home, Bart watches Krusty the Clown host Tuesday Night Live, when a commercial for a mentor program called Bigger Brothers comes up which is for any boy who lost their father and just needs an older male influence. This gives him an idea and he goes to the Bigger Brothers Agency disguising himself with an 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 (the purpose of the tomatoes is revealed when a recruiter for the Springfield Communist Party is introduced on the field before the start of the game; he is pelted with tomatoes before he can begin his speech, and remarks that it is at least better than "Dart Day"). Afterwards, they go to lift weights and watch Ren and Stimpy. Eventually, Homer finds out about Bart's Bigger Brother and angrily confronts him about the issue. Homer plans to go to the Bigger Brothers Agency to get revenge by being assigned a replacement son. There, he is assigned a child named Pepi (whom he calls "Pepsi" for a brief period). 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 heads up to talk to Lisa who is hiding in her room, as the entrance is decorated with a Corey poster. Marge tells Lisa that she understands what Lisa is going through and that when she was a girl she had a crush on a young man named Bobby Sherman. This revelation causes Lisa to laugh uproariously. Even so, in the end Lisa promises her mother "...you'll never be billed for another call." However, Lisa continues to make calls to the hotline from such places as Doctor Hibbert's office, the Retirement Castle and from a phone at Springfield Elementary. After Principal Skinner catches her calling the hotline, he calls Marge. In Skinner's office, Marge suggests that Lisa try to go until midnight without calling the hotline; if she can do so, she will have conquered her addiction. Lisa is eventually able to accomplish after a struggle.
Elsewhere, Homer takes Pepi to Marine World to attend Big Brothers Day. Tom also takes Bart there. After Homer runs into Bart, Tom tells Bart not to talk to strangers and begins to lead him away from Homer. Homer states that he is Bart's father. As Bart has told Tom many false or relatively over exaggerated stories of Homer being a terrible parent, Tom halts and asks Homer with barely-restrained anger "His father, the drunken gambler?" Homer seeing nothing wrong with the connection, instinctively and cheerfully replies, "That's right, and who might you be?" Tom punches Homer in the face, beginning a brawl between the two men. Homer manages to match Tom by fighting dirty; distracting Tom by saying a there's a troubled kid nearby and punching him when he looks away. The fight rages across Springfield, with Homer tackling Tom into a china shop, then sending him back out with an uppercut. At one point Homer and Tom tumble down one side of Springfield Gorge... and fight their way up the other side!
In the end, Tom stuns Homer with a series of punches which causes him to bend painfully backwards over a hydrant dislocating vertebrae in his spine and leaving him paralyzed. Homer ends up in a stretcher and Bart—who feels guilty for indirectly causing the fight—gets ready to ride with him to the hospital. Tom is left 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 finishes with them sitting on the couch, Homer teaching Bart how to fight dirty (like he did with Tom).
==Behind the Laughter==
=== Production ===
The writers wrote the role of Tom for actor . However, when offered the part, Cruise repeatedly turned it down, so the producers used Phil Hartman instead. This is probably why Tom is an F-14 pilot, according to Bart. The writers based the Corey character on the actors Corey Feldman and Corey Haim, known as The Two Coreys. Pepe was based on the fictional character Dondi from the daily comic strip of the same name.
In the episode, Bart and Tom watch The Ren & Stimpy Show. The producers contacted Nickelodeon to get authorization to use the two characters for that sequence. Nickelodeon was strict about what The Simpsons was allowed to do, and the producers were not allowed to have the savageness that they wanted. The Ren & Stimpy Show's animators offered to do the layouts of Ren and Stimpy for the episode.
The television show Bart watches, Tuesday Night Live, is a parody of NBC's Saturday Night Live. Krusty appears in a sketch called "The Big Ear Family", and says that the sketch goes on for twelve more minutes, even though the joke's punchline has already been established. That was Jon Vitti's way of criticizing Saturday Night Live for having overlong sketches with thin joke premises. The sequence originally had a longer version of the Tuesday Night Live band playing into the commercial break, but it was cut because Vitti, who was a writer on Saturday Night Live during the 1985–1986 season along with fellow Simpsons writers, George Meyer and John Swartzwelder, did not want to come off as being bitter.
The writing staff was looking for a way to end the episode and executive producer Sam Simon suggested that they watch the film The Quiet Man. The writers came in on a Saturday to watch the film together. They were inspired by the film's fight scene between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen's characters to do a fight scene between Homer and Tom in the episode. The scene was difficult for the producers to sound-mix because they wanted it to be funny but not horrifying. They discovered that the more realistic the effects used sounded, the funnier the scene became. The producers tried all sorts of different sounds for when Homer cracks his back on the fire hydrant and chose the tiniest realistic sound, because they believed that it was the most painful and "hilarious".
The scene where Bart imagines Homer’s face melting off is quite dark for a non-Treehouse of Horror episode, and has scared many viewers since the episode’s original airing. This particular scene was further adapted into a Creepypasta story entitled “Dead Bart”, despite the story’s picture being of Homer’s melting face.
Despite this episode being considered one of the "good" episodes of the show's golden age, James L. Brooks used this as an example when he told season five showrunner David Mirkin not to make "shitty" episodes of the show during his tenure.
== Citations ==
de:Großer Bruder - kleiner Bruder
fr:Le Grand Frère
it:Fratello dello stesso pianeta
pl:Brother from the Same Planet
pt:Irmão de ocasião
Category:Homer episodes
Category:Bart episodes
Category:Simpson Family Bonding episodes
Category:Episodes featuring guest stars
Category:Milhouse episodes
Category:Episodes with recycled animation
Category:Episodes on DVD
Category:Written by Jon Vitti
Category:Directed by Jeffrey Lynch
Category:Highly Rated Episodes
Category:Episodes in which Maggie Speaks
Category:History
Category:Film Roman
Category:Episodes Where Homer cries