Apocalypse Cow

"Apocalypse Cow" is the seventeenth episode of the nineteenth season of The Simpsons. It was first shown on television on April 27, 2008 on the Fox network. 7.69 million people watched the episode. In the episode, Bart joins 4-H and saves a cow named Lou. He gives it to a girl named Mary and her father, Cletus Spuckler, thinks that Bart wants to marry her. Jeff Westbrook won a Writers Guild of America Award for writing the episode.
Story
Bart and Lisa watch a cartoon called "Transclown-O-Morphs." The main character tells kids to buy their new cereal to survive an emergency. Marge gets annoyed by the commercials and wants the kids to get away from TV. She gets Lisa to make banana bread and Bart to go to Shelbyville with Homer to have bean bag chairs "rebeaned." While driving, they see Martin Prince driving a combine harvester. Bart asks him why he would drive a combine harvester, and Martin says he joined 4-H. Bart joins and learns how to drive a tractor. A 4-H volunteer tells the members about a competition. He says you have to pick a calf and raise it over the summer, and the cattle will be judged at a county fair.
Bart gets stuck with a weaker cow and can not trade it away. He meets Mary, who gets Bart to not give up on the competition. Through the competition, Bart takes good care of the cow, which he names Lou, and makes him stronger and starts loving him. At the judging, Lou has grown up into a bull and is given a blue ribbon as an award. Bart is very happy until Lisa tells him that Lou will then be sent to a slaughterhouse.
Bart wants Marge and Homer to buy Lou, but do not want to because it is expensive. At night, Bart starts hearing mooing and thinks he is hallucinating, but Lisa tells him it is just a CD of animal sounds that she started playing. Bart, Lisa, and two friends, named Compost and Solar Panel, go to the slaughterhouse at midnight to save Lou. They find Lou and see that he has been fed growth hormone pills and is much bigger, so they use a forklift to move him away from the slaughterhouse. They decide that they should take Lou to Mary's house because it is on a farm. The next morning, they discover that Mary's father is Cletus Spuckler.
Bart gives Lou to Mary. Cletus yells for Brandine, Cletus' wife, to come to the door. Brandine learns about Bart giving Lou to Mary, so she tells Bart that giving a cow means that he has made a proposal of arranged marriage. Bart and Mary do not want a marriage, but Cletus and Brandine plan a wedding for the next day. Lisa tells Bart to go along with it so that they have enough time to figure out how to save Lou because she thinks that Cletus will not keep Lou if Bart doesn't want to get married to Mary. Homer and Marge learn about the wedding and are shocked, but Marge agrees to save Lou because Bart cares deeply for Lou. The next day, Marge stops the wedding and tells Cletus to send Lou to the slaughterhouse. However, Cletus ends up sending Homer in disguise as Lou. The real Lou is sent to India because cows have a sacred status in India. They then save Homer from the slaughterhouse after he nearly gets killed. Homer promises to eat less meat, and Bart says with pride that "I had a cow, man."
Reception
Richard Keller of TV Squad thought that the episode was another good episode of The Simpsons that feature Bart and Lisa together and says that "episodes that center around Bart and Lisa tend to be more interesting...because those characters have more dimensions, and their diverse personalities and passions [show that] there is more to explore about them." Robert Canning of IGN enjoyed the episode in a special way and was surprised by some plot elements, giving the episode a 7.5 out of 10. Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, said that this episode was his favorite of the series in a 2008 interview and said that the scene with Homer in the slaughterhouse was the part he liked best.
References
The Simpsons episodes
2008 in American television
2008 television episodes
Television episodes about marriage