Simpsons Did It!: “Children Of A Lesser Clod”

Homer Simpson is often not a good dad.

But he might be good with other people’s kids.

It’s open session at the YMCA.  Free sample classes, and Homer somehow gets his leg through a basketball hoop and broke it.  The leg, not the basketball hoop.  Actually, he probably broke that too.  Some surgery later, and Homer is told to stay off his leg.  Sure, he tried to run after pointing out a bear when Dr. Hibbert mentioned the bill, and there really was a bear, but he can’t move.

Then one day, Ned Flanders needs a babysitter.  He got tickets to a Christian rock concert…no, wait, it was a Chris Rock concert…and Marge is out identifying a corpse that isn’t her uncle or dead (poor Hans Moleman).  Homer opts to watch the boys and everyone involved has a good time.

Before you know it, Homer is running a day care in Marge’s name (for legal reasons), and he has a lot of kids running around besides the Flanders kids, like Milhouse and Ralph Wiggum.  Apu even drops off the Octuplets and then runs like the wind.

And Homer is good at watching kids in his stupid sort of way.  Where’s the problem?  Bart and Lisa have an issue with Homer suddenly looking like a good father type figure to kids who aren’t his kids.  He seems to have forgotten his own kids.  What to do?

Well, when Homer wins a Good Guy Award, they splice the video with footage of the Real Homer, a guy who loses Maggie in a poker game or who threatens Bart with a good macing.  Not with the spray.  With a flail.

That just causes all the parents to want their kids back, but Homer makes a run for it with the children in tow until he gets stuck in a storm drain.  Everyone is forgiven.

Well, maybe not by Ron Howard.  He was originally supposed to be in this episode and then dropped out.  So much for that celebrity feud with Homer!

Also, Homer believed George Jetson broke his leg, but that was probably the morphine talking.